Hiring “gray beards” is only a band-aid, not a strategy
There have been a few recent articles about manufacturers hiring back former, seasoned employees for their institutional knowledge. Without this knowledge, organizations struggle to effectively run their operations. Ford is the latest example of this. Over the past three years, Ford has brought back 350 veteran engineers, or “gray beards,” as they like to call them to fix their quality issues.
While this may be effective in the short-term, rehiring employees is not a long-term solution as more employees are leaving the workforce: 26% of the existing manufacturing workforce is expected to retire by 2030, leaving more than 1.5 million roles vacant.1
Without a mechanism to capture the institutional knowledge of these experienced workers, the gap is only going to increase. Today, Industry research estimates as little as 30% of operational knowledge in a typical plant is documented.
That's why hiring “gray beards” is only a band-aid and not a strategy for solving this knowledge gap.
Technology will solve this problem
I believe manufacturers should focus their attention on investing in technology that can seamlessly capture employee knowledge and turn these insights into actionable intelligence for improving operations.
The good news is that manufacturers want to use technology to solve this challenge. Seventy nine percent of manufacturers say they are interested in using AI to capture institutional knowledge, but we are seeing that the majority of them are still relying on manual methods.2
Viaduct can make this transition easy. Viaduct's intelligence platform provides a unified view of your operations by connecting all of your manufacturing data such as QMS, MES, telematics, and warranty data with your employees’ institutional knowledge, whether it’s notes, documentation or tribal know-how.
Taking it one step further, our “Memories” feature is trained on your organization's terminology, business context, and institutional knowledge to surface related events, group similar issues, and uncover insights that matter most.
For example, when a new employee identifies the same failure mode that was solved two years ago, “Memories” provides the necessary context for expediting the fix without wasting time diagnosing it from scratch.
That way the internal expertise doesn't disappear when your employees leave the company.
Takeaway for all manufacturers
As manufacturers face a crossroads in managing a changing workforce, there is an opportunity to use technology to make this transition smoother.
Since millions of manufacturing roles are at risk of not being staffed, investing in the right technology now is a lot cheaper than hiring your way out of the gap later.
With the power of Viaduct's intelligence platform, manufacturers can capture their employees’ institutional knowledge to gain better insights into every defect, fix, and action so their operations are set up for long-term success.
Learn more by visiting viaduct.ai/for-manufacturing or reach out directly to me.
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