In Episode 15 of Razorleaf’s Stay Sharp podcast, Digitalization and the Way People Work, hosts Jonathan Scott and Jen Ferello step away from their typical conversations about the broader organizational impacts of digital transformations and instead focus on what the digital journey means to the shop floor. Joining them is Pat Hume, the CEO of Canvas GFX. In addition to her decades of industry experience, Pat brings to the topic Canvas’s perspective as a company that develops innovative solutions to improve the quality of information for frontline workers.
Digital Data Democratizes Everything
Jonathan characterizes Canvas’s purpose as getting “the right information to the right people at the right time in the right format,” as well as the means for the frontline worker to provide feedback into the digital thread. Not only does this digital loop help free information from the silos it’s traditionally in, but it also helps adoption success for the digital transformation. Jonathan explains, “A huge enabler for folks today who are trying to go through digital transformation is putting the power in the people who need to use that digital data. That’s how you succeed in transformation, is enabling adoption.”
Another way to promote adoption of digitalization is allowing frontline workers to customize how they want to access the data—both how to create it and how to consume it. Pat says, “Once that data is accessed, how do they want to create the content that’s required? And on the consumption side, how do you want to consume it? Do you want to consume it in your MES? Do you want to have the ability navigate that content? Do you want to feed back on that content? I would call it a broad, bold first step at data democratization.”
Workforce Challenges Are Bigger than Supply Chain Issues
Pat explains that the supply chain challenges we’ve all heard about were definitely the biggest issue before and during the pandemic. But post-pandemic, the number one problem for manufacturers has been the workforce shortage. She identifies two major categories of challenges: talent and getting the talent the information they need.
“The ability hire and retain people is a problem,” she says. “Our thesis is that with institutional knowledge leaving the business, we have to capture it. And then we have to repurpose it and make it modern for the next generation.” Hidden in the category of “talent,” however, is an understanding that different generations of the workforce want to create and consume information in vastly different ways, which means the flexibility to handle multiple methods is a must.
That leads to the second challenge Pat identifies: “The digital transformation journey is not complete unless you digitally transform the knowledge that the frontline worker needs to do the job right the first time.” The knowledge has to be captured in a simple way, but it also must be packaged for easy consumption. Because, she adds, “As I’ve said before, the value is in the consumption more than the creation.”
Quality is key, Pat explains. And it builds. Getting the right information into the hands of the worker means they do things right the first time and improve product quality. Doing that reduces scrap, which means fewer replacement parts. Those mean the product gets to market faster, which means the organization reduces total cost of production. It’s “all about connected knowledge, empowering the frontline worker, and delivering high quality opportunity to manufacturing,” she says.
Getting People to Make the Digital Journey
In response to Jen’s question about how to promote organizational change, Pat notes that education is of primary importance. “Change is difficult,” she agrees. “I think the workforce challenge is causing organizations to say the old adage of ‘don’t fix it if it’s not broken’ can’t apply anymore. The men and women that want to stick to the 30-year-old tech illustration tools and the old way of doing things, they’re leaving the business.”
Pat says that Canvas is working with manufacturers that understand they’re losing their competitive advantage because of workforce challenges and are willing to try new ways of thinking, new tools, and new processes. “We do that out of respect for the frontline worker, because our hypothesis is if you can truly respect the individual, you’re going to get so much out of them,” Pat explains. “Respect and empower them. The quality will improve because they’re happier.”
Learn More About Easing Workforce Challenges
The full podcast episode offers many more details on the need for much more transformation in documentation than the industry has seen so far, the many benefits of incorporating frontline worker feedback into the product development cycle, and how AI might play a role in helping frontline workers do their jobs better.
Check out Stay Sharp Episode 15: Digitalization and the Way People Work and join us each week for a new episode.
Follow the Razorleaf Podcast, Stay Sharp in Digital Engineering on:
