The Human Factor: Equipping Our Digital Workforce

Adapting manufacturing processes to better respond to the emerging and fundamentally different manufacturing environment requires rapid interventions and continuous worker training. Modern learning technologies, when appropriately applied, can embed learning processes intrinsic to production routines. 

The new training and education systems should be more worker specific and promote knowledge transfer across manufacturing workers while reducing the mental resources. The dynamic character of future manufacturing jobs requires continuous learning and new and expanded skillsets (e.g., analytics and cybersecurity) that can balance business understanding, innovative thinking, and personal interactions.

The current training paradigm for manufacturing does not equip workers for future manufacturing jobs or supporting ICPS environments.

Future training paradigms for ICPS environment that includes collaborative robots, augmented reality, intelligent machine tools with embedded metrology, digital twinning, IoT sensors and sensor fusion, industrial AI/ML business intelligence, ultrafast 3D printing and hybrid manufacturing, smart projector interfaces, and voice directed actions, should be designed with a human worker centric approach (i.e., a human-in-the-loop focus).

However, creating these training paradigms requires a fundamental understanding of how a manufacturing human worker fits within smart manufacturing or ICPS technology loop.

Brought to you by:

AutomationAlley-LOGO -edit