New World of Work will be center to Factory of the Future

Last week at a conference, a couple of my colleagues and I had the opportunity sit and debate the changing world order that will make the “factory of the future”. The three of us are involved in the major opportunities we see in the market and it provides us the real opportunity to engage with companies with transformation plans, and engage with thought leaders. We decided to approach the discussion of the future factory by approaching it from different industries, as well as markets.

Sure enough we ended up aligned on the core to the “factory of the future” will around what two companies labeled “New World of work”. I have mentioned this many times in this blog around “smart operational work”.

We were able group companies who looked at the future thru "new technologies" and how they could apply them, (I seem to visited a number of this type in the last month) vs those companies that we believe will be the leaders with the successful approach of “how they must operation, work” in the new world.

We defined the new world means the next 5 to 10 years with characteristics of:

•       Brand loyalty at customer reducing, so “Brand Promise” is key
•        Agility to satisfy is key
•        Shrinking mid tier market as the larger companies continue to consolidate to address the supply of new products and service markets. (especially in consumer products).
•        Dynamic workforce where workers rotate locations/ roles, experience in a role will be less than 2 years.
•        Supply chains with limited inventory requires transparent/ agile manufacturing across the sites.
•        “Constant Change” in assets, process, people, products is the natural state in the 2020.

The diagram below is an interesting on Agility:

The Sense of time shortening causing the decisions, lifetimes of products and lines and roles getting for ever shorter. The ability to rapidly introduce, change in not just product but also delivery, and supply is key in order to satisfy.

The fact that each of us engaging different industries such as oil and gas / process, to consumer manufacturing saw the core catalyst the leading companies have identified as the transformation in the way their company must react, capture and execute work. Shifting from isolated plants, and people to teams of plants and people that work as an aligned operational team to achieve a goal.

The “New world of Work” is fundamental built on :

• New ways of working with dynamic workers that share, collaborate and are connected but assume experience from the system, they trust the system
• New Processes around agility, new product  introduction that leverage the skills and approach of the “digital Native” collaborative worker, combined with new technologies to enable new processes and operational awareness. The ability to see situations early, continue to learn, and act fast to changing conditions is key.
• New technologies provide the opportunity to deliver these new ways of working, with new processes. The likes of leveraging the data, through “big data” to use the past to determine the future in a natural manner. The industrial internet of things (industry 4.0) will enable smart devices providing new levels of embedded autonomy in machines and processes, shifting workers to “exception based” management, but with greater responsibility.

The diagram below shows this shift, which will require different tools and approaches.

So as you look at your plans, are you stepping back and looking at the way you will work, then understanding the profile of operational team, how they will developing the processes to satisfy this work and required agility, and then looking at what technology you can leverage to accelerate the success in a sustainable and evolutionary way. This last comment is key as the natural state of the new world is one of “change” and the systems and culture must be able “master” naturally.

On the Road Discovering and Listening: Again Operational Work Transformation Leads the change

Sorry, I have not been home for a month, and need to just listen to what people are trying to do, explore new opportunities.
While I found many new thought leaders, and opportunities, when you investigated the core goal, outcome of the project or theme of the people it was a "CHANGE IN WORK EXECUTION".

Much of what I have written about over the last year came up over and over again. Very few people articulated the project as a transformation in the way they work, but when you applied "Outcome Driven Innovation techniques" it was clear two things where happening:

• They wanted to execute a "functional job" faster and more consistently now moving to that job decision and action been taken by a community / circle of people.
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• They expected more jobs to executed by the same team, and in the same period, this aligned with the increased responsibility that operational teams where taking on.

Again the driving strategies and challengers people where seeing are:

•  Transparency with trust to see/ understand the current situation of the operational landscape across sites as if one operational plain. Note the word trust, this particularly was on data and information, moving away from local excel, or reports to trusted data that is in context and validated.
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• Embedded Experience/ knowledge to enable faster decisions but more importantly consistent actions across a changing demographic of workforce.

But an interesting point came up a couple of weeks ago in discussion or capturing knowledge, one group made clear that "embedding experience and knowledge into the system was the ultimate goal" but that this was not reality, and that Augmented Experience will come from a combination :

• Embedded knowledge and experience, but it was clear that this was not just a system, but the culture of workers contributing in context regularly is a major step in the knowledge journey for companies.
• But also a "community of experts, contributors" who can be tapped into in real time. They are able to see the situation in real-time, in context and with trust on what they seeing, and can then apply their own experience to enabling the decision. This again needs new thinking in how to enable, and culture to work in teams.

While this is not new to this blog it was good to continue to validate as I traveled, driving the energy needed to create potential solutions for this space.  
  

2016 the turning point in the Operational Work Transformation!!

Will this statement stand true to the operational execution world we live in, probably only time will tell, but based on the trends I outlined at the end of 2015, and looking forward I believe 2016 provides the opportunity.

By the way, welcome to 2016 may it be an exciting and productive year!

The holiday break it provides a time to reflect and discuss, and in one conversation my last blog was raised and really “how much transformation was happening?” Initially, I thought it was a comment against the trend we are seeing with the “Operational Transformation”, but this was a friend working in a major food manufacturing company. His comment was actually the momentum of change is well underway, and happening at increasing pace.

There were 4 areas that he felt his business and associated industry where trying grapple with to stay ahead:

1/ Agility of effective, valued productsand brands to the market (which he stated was regional, eg specific tastes of similar products changed by region and so your go to markets, packaging, etc. His example was around cheese how the tastes in say Mexico for cheese are totally different to Australia, and then Italy. This leads the increased importance of regional new products vs global new products, and effective speed and cost of innovation, execution and introduction.. So the challenge of “new product Innovation” and then “New Product Introduction” and delivering it to the market at the correct margin to be competitive in timely manner is a whole focus. His comment was this is the core competitive advantage that his company identifies, and must keep driving while dealing with the other transformations happening.    

2/ Operational Workforce transformation: He agrees with me that too much focus has been on the “aging workforce issue” and that most of HR and Operational teams have missed the bigger transformation, and that is the one of new generation work methods and transformation in workspace that goes with it. He felt like his company woke up to this mid way thru last year when they could not just not fill positions, but are having significant challenges in retaining talent, not within the company but in roles. He felt like initially people thought that would just get a transition to a new workforce yes younger of different experience. But they had not realized that way in which people will work, think, interact, and gain satisfaction will also change.

3/ “Planet Awareness, Image”: this one was an interesting discussion, as he raised it as a real strategy for evolving the brand of the company to been seen as proactive to the environment, to attract further “feeling satisfaction” of customers. He also stated that government regulation, and increasing costs of disposing of waste, and energy costs also are now seen a significant bottom line costs, and must be managed more efficiently. But during this discussion, it was also clear that the perception of being “proactive to the environment” in use of energy, carbon footprint, environment etc was also a key strategy for attractive talent to work in the company.

4/ Transparency across the total product value chain, “end to end”. This strategy was about tractability and making sure they happy with brand all the way to customer, but also about cost as they were “outsourcing” increasing amounts of the value chain. But this did not mean they lost responsibility for product while in “outsourced manufacturing partners” execution. The transparency across the supply chain enables increased flexibility and lower costs through inventory reduction.

These 4 strategies are combined with the current strategies to increase plant performance utilization and lower cost of materials through waste /loss reduction.

When you sit back and look at these strategies a constant set of pillars came up in the Operational Solution approach:

·       Everyone having access to information and knowledge no matter their state or location, this means internet becomes a part of the solution backbone.

·       Cyber Security is very much top of mind, both in strategy to secure,  manage, to contain cost and risk.

·       Data validation/ and contextualization, if transparency and faster decisions are required how do you gain consistent information across different sites. \

·       Delivering a new “operational Workspace/ experience” that has embedded knowledge that does not get stale, and enables imitative learning for a dynamic and collaborative workforce.

As the night conversation went on it was clear that the 4 strategies was really about changing the way in which the company manages and executes operational work, no matter how big or small. But becoming in control of not just the planned product work, but the day to day, minute to minute work at the different levels of the operational loop.

Based on the trends of 2015, this long conversation, I wonder if we will see 2015 as the year people recognized that needed to rethink how they handling “Operational Work”. With 2016 becoming the year where momentum continues to grow on projects turning to programs, that span plants, and value chain and an increasing amount of companies put teams, strategies and programs in place to evolve their operations to transform the way handle “operational Work”!

You might ask what about “big data” and the “internet of things” but these are technologies that will be part of the enabling system for a  new operational solution.

"Times are a changing": Re imaging of Our World, it is flow on to Industrial Experience

As I sit on a plane heading over the Pacific again, I look around me and even my life and see how we are re imaging, or changing the way we perform daily activities. The different devices, applications change the way in which we engage with traditional activities.

Example below in the images are real:

Hotel checking happens from the applications on my smart phone instead of registering at the front desk.

In Singapore last month it was was Friday afternoon, I was on the street hoping to get a taxi to airport, initially, you think wave one down. No, not today there must have been 8 of us trying to compete for taxis at peek hour. So out comes the smart device and Über application, and I nominated a price on line for car, happy to pay a little bit more to not miss my flight, and secure a service, a win for me, a win for the driver ( he got a bigger fair).

I travel allot overseas, and I use electronic money/ wallet from my smart device to pay for immediate services when I arrive when credit cards are not available.

All of these are natural approaches to practical day to day actives and there are many more, how many of use the traditional A to Z street maps, does not even exist in the car anymore we have the GPS.

So how is this re imaging coming over into the industrial world, it is happening fast than you expect. The operational day to day life of all of us in the industrial space will be totally different in 5 years, but it has already started. With changes in company IT to enable commercial off the shelf devices into the plants, allows the innovation of industrial world to leverage these devices.

Last week I was working with a supplier with irradiation pivots for farmers. They had empowered the farms to monitor and control the moisture on their fields and control the irrigation pivots from an application on the smart phone. Replacing the need for the SCADA application at each farm, very logical. See image below.

Source "Waterforce"

Alarms and motivations now going to smart device which could be smart phone, of the new smart watches from google see below.

The traditional field worker contacting central controls room by radio, to the empower field agent, who has cameras so that control room can see the field. Plus the field worker has smart devices iPads with context to gain knowledge of current state of an area, plus information at his finger tips instead of going back to the workshop.Also best operational practices have been embedded in the field device so he knows not just the decision but the best action, and how to execute.

Training use to be going around with an experienced worker and learning from him, taking notes and taking time to come to experience. This being replace with operator training simulators, and immersive, 3D virtual environments as seen below. So now in a safe environment operators and field workers can go through scenarios, learn practices without having people in the field in danger and provide "near life experience". Much more effective than in the plant, and faster as situations can be played out, so experience is gain rapidly.

Nothing new to pilots, for years with the effect that situations the pilot and co pilot understand their role, and actions instinctively. Example the Hudson River landing 3 minutes the pilot and co pilot understood roles, understood actions. They did not have communicate hey just executed; this same approach needs to happen between the operator and field worker and even the virtual expert, and it is all possible today.

This re imaging of the industrial operational, worker day is happening with increasing speed but with it comes efficiency and empowerment, all key in agile world, and time of operational transformation.

Factory of the Future 2014 centers on Workers ! Tacit knowledge is key not just explicit knowledge!

Sorry for missing last week, just in too many planes. But time to read and reflect on points, and I was discussing an opportunity in Korea with a colleague. Some in the customers think tank asked him to present at a high level the landscape of manufacturing in the future 2020 +. Not surprising to me he centered the new world of manufacturing and industry around the “worker and human decision making/ action”, going out to the processes and then production assets.

I was then reading some background material around Horizon 2020 call for tenders relative to “Factory of the Future” driven by European Commission.

Under Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, for 2014-2020, the new contractual Public-Private Partnership (PPP) on Factories of the Future (FoF) will build on the successes of the FP7 Factories of the Future PPP.
The FoF multi-annual roadmap for the years 2014-2020 sets a vision and outlines routes towards high added value manufacturing technologies for the factories of the future, which will be clean, highly performing, environmental friendly and socially sustainable. The priorities have been agreed within the wide community of stakeholders across Europe, after extensive public consultation.

The interesting focus of this year of the program was around the worker, both in increasing the effectiveness of the different workers but also attractiveness of industry to entice the new generation of workers to want to engage in this industry. This has been a challenge for the last 15 to 20 years where the industrial sector has been seen as slow, and of limited innovation. But “the times are a changing” and innovation is happening fast, and with the acceleration of the industry down the “internet of things” path (as the biggest potential value growth of this approach is in industry with it’s millions of devices) so will come innovation.  

This year’s Factories of the Future work program includes a call for proposals that address increasing the attractiveness for workers. The scope of proposals could have included:

• Methods and tools for design or adaptation of facilities and technologies to support productivity, well being, and worker autonomy in production

• New methods and technologies supporting knowledge capture and team interaction to enhance work satisfaction, safety, and ergonomics

• Integration of innovative production technologies supporting increased productivity and flexibility, and

• Training and educational aspects to raise job attractiveness for young people and the elderly

The call text specifically mentioned scheduling of work and design of work places, adaptive technology such as augmented reality, addressing tasks holistically, and production systems ensuring efficient transfer of knowledge and information. New systems must support the “tacit” knowledge of the worker in the process of controlling advanced machinery and production lines.

Tacit knowledge is not easily shared. Although it is that which is used by all people, it is not necessarily able to be easily articulated. It consists of beliefs, ideals, values, schemata and mental models which are deeply ingrained in us and which we often take for granted. While difficult to articulate, this cognitive dimension of tacit knowledge shapes the way we perceive the world.

In the field of knowledge management, the concept of tacit knowledge refers to a knowledge possessed only by an individual and difficult to communicate to others via words and symbols. Therefore, an individual can acquire tacit knowledge without language. Apprentices, for example, work with their mentors and learn craftsmanship not through language but by observation, imitation, and practice.

The key to acquiring tacit knowledge is experience. Without some form of shared experience, it is extremely difficult for people to share each other's thinking processes.

Tacit knowledge has been described as “know-how” – as opposed to “know-what” (facts), “know-why” (science), or “know-who” (networking). It involves learning and skill but not in a way that can be written down. On this account knowing-how or embodied knowledge is characteristic of the expert, who acts, makes judgments, and so forth without explicitly reflecting on the principles or rules involved. The expert works without having a theory of his or her work; he or she just performs skillfully without deliberation or focused attention.

Tacit knowledge is typically difficult to capture and transfer from one worker to another, so if systems could be designed to do so, it could minimize loss of critical tacit knowledge and thus help relieve the skill crunch related to the aging workforce. At a macro level, this could increase the industry’s capacity to innovate and capture knowledge. In the concept of Operational Manufacturing Interfaces the ability to capture, embed evolve operational procedures, process based upon experience is key. With this there is a basis for companies to build and evolve through consistent and optimized operational actions aligned to decisions in the NOW, providing the foundation for "Operational Innovation". This is not natural in the traditional HMI, Industrial Workstation and in the way design our industrial systems for the last 20 years, it is time change!

It would indeed be very valuable to adapt the work place, work scheduling, interactions with production technology and documentation to the skill level and mental and physical state of the worker. It would also be a major advance to be able to adapt the decision support content and mode of communication to both the state of the production line or factory and to the state of the worker.

It is pleasing to see the continued evolution and alignment around the thinking of workers, how "operational Innovation" can become a natural part of the systems.

Confusion Over Standards: Limits or Basis for Innovation?

One of the nice things of this time of year the meeting workload drops, providing the opportunity to do some much needed catch up of reading. An article that sparked some interesting thoughts and is related to a lot of the principles of work and activities. It is worth a read on Toyota’s approach to management of standards around the fundamentals of operational procedures.

http://m.industryweek.com/blog/confusion-over-standards-limits-or-basis-innovation

As discussed at length this year there are a couple of key approaches that will effect industrial operational design:

·         That design needs to move away from interfaces to actually design around activities/ Work; these can be executed through any interface hosted on any device.

·         The other trend is to move to manage / planned work, a knowledge worker moves from a “fire fighting” mode to a 70+ % planned work in a day, which increases safety, and consistent process execution through operational process stands combined with significant cost reductions due reductions in the planned time.

These two trends or approaches will grow in adoption in 2014/ 15 as it is the only practical way to deal with the changing dynamic nature of the workplace and rotating workforce.

The structure outlined below by Jim Laker used at Toyota is a good basis for the how to lay out standards in procedures vs the actual operation instruction. But another key cornerstone of this is knowledge management, with 10000 baby boomers retiring a week in the US, and this rate is expected to sustain for the next 17 years, the requirement for skill vs the talent pool will be offset. So the operational systems must incorporate shared knowledge, crowd sourced and managed to maintain the value. Many of the operational procedures and best practices must be captured over the next 5 years, companies must put a maintainable knowledge management  system, and culture in place, and as you can see in this diagram that standard procedures, operational safety and environment procedures, and practices form the basis for the transition to planned work, and activity based systems.

When you think of standards you think of “handcuffs” on design and therefore innovation, but this is not a logical thought process. How do you enable operational innovation which is based on operational best practices, provides the foundational platform on consistent execution to enable innovation and movement forward. The need to capture operational innovation by taking the best operators and knowledge workers based on years of practices, capture their operational practices within a system so that new less experienced users to adopt the proven practice. Is this a one off NO, this is the continuous process of improvement which will provide the edge for companies to agile.

As you sit down for the Christmas pudding and we look forward to 2014, there is much opportunity and change ahead of us, and these articles provide solid food for thought.

Have a great festive season, and see you in the new year.