Human-Centric Digitization in Manufacturing: Optimize, Empower, and Engage Workers

Manufacturers sometimes make the mistake of viewing automation as a replacement for workers rather than to enhance workers’ productivity and skills sets. In failing to invest in digitization in manufacturing as a way to optimize people, manufacturers miss out on the real benefits of digital transformation, including time efficiencies, new business intelligence, and greater productivity.

In a recent webinar, MasterControl SVP of Strategic Growth Brian Curran and Product Management Director Katie Farley explained how a digital transformation in manufacturing should be human-centric, supporting and enhancing people rather than replacing them. They discussed how manufacturing execution software augments worker performance to deliver shop floor speed, flexibility, and visibility.

Smarter Applications for Common Manufacturing Problems

Digital transformation efforts that focus too much on systems and not enough on people leave the door open for issues that are common with paper, including:

• Data input errors.
• Poor data access.
• Out-of-context information.
• Slow review processes.
• Reactive actions.

To drive real digital transformation in manufacturing, technologies must optimize people and processes to increase efficiencies and reduce opportunities for human error. Modern manufacturing execution software like MasterControl Manufacturing Excellence does this by providing manufacturers with:

• A digitally connected system that brings together template management, work instructions and quality events, review by exception (RBE), and training checks.
• Integrated, data-driven prompts that guide operators through work instructions, enforce out-of-specification and nonconformance limits and thresholds, ensure operator training compliance, and inform operators of all open deviations and corrective action/preventive action (CAPAs).
• In-process visibility of shop floor performance and real-time tracking and managing of production status using lot runtime dashboards.
• A configurable, flexible manufacturing execution software that is mapped to the manufacturer’s existing processes and includes a product family tool to manage product recipes and variants.

“We’re helping the operator avoid mistakes in the first place by preventing them, helping to correct them, or drawing attention to specific issues as they occur,” Farley said.

Greater Focus on Value-Added Activities

In a paper-based environment, employees collect, review, correct, re-review, and even report data manually. “Clearly, employees spend way too much time doing the manual steps and extra verifications that are extraneous,” Curran said. With a paper-based system, organizations’ approach to identifying and correcting human errors in the process is often to add more people to the work of searching for those errors.

Manufacturing execution software digitizes, improves access to, and contextualizes data for manufacturing workers. Employee time spent in the past on paper systems and manual data formatting and math calculations can now be done electronically and automatically, freeing up the organization’s people to:

• Analyze data and make faster, data-driven decisions.
• Solve problems and streamline processes.
• Reduce rework and waste and improve yield.
• Get more products to market faster with RBE.
• Focus on meaningful, value-added work.

“All these things result in employees being able to focus on meaningful work. Less time pushing paper and chasing down people for signatures means quality professionals are able to focus on real quality,” Farley said.

Attract, Engage, and Retain Talent

A truly paperless shop floor can give manufacturers an edge not just through time efficiencies, but also finding and retaining talent.

Digitization in manufacturing is an expectation of today’s workers, who are familiar with and comfortable with personal tech like smartphones and tablets and immediate access to digitized information in their daily lives. Digital technology also provides a more engaging and satisfying work experience, where employees can focus less on mundane work tasks. That means greater productivity.

The factory floor should reflect a digitally connected workforce, and Manufacturing Excellence leverages this leveling up for a tech-savvy workforce ready to thrive within a data-driven manufacturing environment.

But despite the current trends in digitization, it’s surprising how many companies stop short of a digital transformation in manufacturing. MasterControl’s recent research on digital maturity in life sciences shows that more than 90% of life sciences manufacturers haven’t digitized their manufacturing processes or have significant gaps in the processes that are digitized. Companies that don’t implement advanced manufacturing execution software aren’t just lagging in digital maturity – they’re falling behind digitally savvy competitors who have enhanced efficiency and overall effectiveness by embracing a digital transformation in manufacturing.

For more statistics about where you stand on the spectrum of digital maturity in relation to your industry peers, see MasterControl’s research report “The State of Digital Maturity in Pharma and Medtech Manufacturing.”

Conclusion

MasterControl customers have estimated that their operators spent between 14% and 30% or more of their time on paper inefficiencies before digitizing their production records.

“That equates to roughly six to 12 hours per week per operator,” Curran said. “In your own environment, how much could you save?”

A digital solution like Manufacturing Excellence can reduce the cost of labor on the shop floor by augmenting and optimizing employees, not replacing them.

You can watch a recording of the entire webinar here,

References:

1. "Digital Transformation That Empowers Workers, Not Replaces Them," MasterControl webinar, Brian Curran and Katie Farley, September 2021.
2. "The State of Digital Maturity in Pharma and Medtech," MasterControl, 2023.