Manufacturing companies are faced with ever shorter product life cycles and increasing product and process complexity. As a result, processes have to be constantly adapted, employees have to get used to new tasks, constantly learn new things and expand existing knowledge. In an interview with Thomas Hösle, Managing Director at ELABO GmbH, "Fabriksoftware" asks about possibilities to successfully meet these challenges.
Mr. Hösle, changing work requirements confront manufacturing companies with massive challenges. Which ones do you face?
We have noticed that the individualization of products according to customer requirements is also steadily increasing in B2B business and has thus become a key driver of digital change. This is accompanied by the challenge of positioning oneself, especially in production, in such a way as to ensure the best possible adaptability. As a result, the demands for flexibility are increasing, both for employees and for the equipment in the production halls.
For us, therefore, mastering the increasing complexity on the shop floor has a double meaning: on the one hand, for our own production and on the other hand, for our customer solutions. However, we benefit from this dual role because, true to the motto "drink your own champagne", we not only offer highly competitive hardware and software solutions, but can also test them ourselves in our own value creation to see where the shoe might pinch.
Keyword complexity: Wouldn't it make more sense to contain or completely avoid complexity?
Complexity should not be demonised in principle. We also deliberately allow for complexity with a very high product variance in order to meet as many individual customer requirements as possible. This increases the market and sales opportunities enormously. The challenge, of course, is that the complexity practiced on the market side remains manageable in order processing and, above all, in production. This is precisely where we at ELABO come in with our ELUTION® factory software.
So what digital solutions do you offer to help companies increase their agility?
With our so-called SES approach (Shopfloor Execution System), we aim to ensure that individually designed workstation and assembly systems harmonise as well as possible with process optimisations and order-related in-house logistics. This helps to optimize the customer processes taking place there.
We increase transparency and traceability because our factory software, as a smart data solution, automatically collects and archives all process-related data. By the way, this enables us to carry out the necessary preparation work in order to optimize decisions via algorithms – keyword: artificial intelligence – in the next phase, i.e. to transform data into knowledge.
With our variant management tool we make an essential contribution to mastering the increasing complexity due to the growing product variance. Even for tens of thousands of variants, only one master plan is created for assembly. Via real-time communication with ERP and MES systems, the worker always receives the relevant assembly information at the relevant time based on the respective parts list for the individual variant.
Our individual digital assistance (idA) guides the workers step by step through the work processes. This means that even less qualified employees can carry out the respective work steps 100 percent in accordance with quality and specifications, regardless of their location in the world. In addition to high productivity, our customers benefit from error-free production and extreme flexibility in terms of employee deployment.
Frequently, acquired knowledge and experience is not documented or passed on by employees. Rather, much knowledge is collected by a small number of experts. As a result, knowledge built up over many years is retired together with the employee and is therefore missing for the company. How should companies deal with this?
The challenge is to make this valuable knowledge and acquired skills available in the company – regardless of the employee. This is another essential advantage of digital assistance systems. The expertise of proven specialists is systematically requested, as these employees are involved in the creation of the digital work instructions. In addition to the advantage of preserving the special know-how, this also means that the employee is highly valued, whose experiential knowledge is retained by the subsequent employees. For many experts, this is a sign of recognition that should not be underestimated!
Isn't the creation effort of these digital work instructions very high?
Yes, there is an initial effort connected with the creation, no question. But since most companies apply the Pareto rule, you should focus on the 20 percent of products that generate 80 percent of sales. This means: Concentration on the best-selling products – here the one-time effort of the creation is amortized in a short time through frequent use. Intelligent solutions can help to create at least parts of the digital work instructions automatically via a configurator. This amortization of the creation effort is also very clearly demonstrated by another aspect: Especially in teams where new employees are integrated again and again, a considerable part of the working time of the "old ones" is spent instructing the newcomers and being available for questions.
This is at the expense of productivity and the motivation of skilled workers. With the help of digital assistance systems, new employees can act independently. This in turn also results in a high level of satisfaction among the employees to be trained.
So is the introduction of digital tools the ideal way to increase efficiency, for example in traditional manufacturing?
Even though we are happy to sell our field-tested digital solutions, it is also clear to us that despite all the digitalization euphoria, the principle of common sense still applies. Wherever the implementation of digital assistance systems provides qualitatively or quantitatively measurable benefits, they should be implemented. Where these solutions do not, or not yet, bring any benefit, they should not.
However, the James Bond motto "Never say never" also applies here. Ultimately, the decisive question is what conditions would have to be met for the use of digital assistance systems to be meaningful and beneficial.
Does the worker guidance also offer the possibility to counteract the emerging shortage of skilled workers?
Companies face the challenge of a double balancing act. On the one hand, the shortage of skilled workers is worsening, the "war for talents" has begun. On the other hand, less qualified employees in particular will lose their jobs as a result of continuing automation and digitization. There are studies according to which every new robot replaces the job of 1.6 employees. In the coming years, 20 million jobs are expected to be lost worldwide.
Germany as an industrial nation faces the enormous challenge of bringing back those people into the labour market who will lose their jobs due to the irreversible developments mentioned above. One of the main keys to solving this problem lies in the qualification of people, especially in the teaching of digital skills. Here, however, we come up against another dilemma. Studied employees with few routine jobs are six times more likely to continue their education than employees without any vocational training. So we also need to find alternative solutions that do not require intensive training and further training efforts by less qualified employees. Quite apart from the fact that it still needs to be clarified what exactly is meant by the teaching of digital skills. Now the aspect of digital assistance systems comes into focus again.
Thanks to these "navigation systems for work steps", less qualified employees are enabled to carry out challenging (skilled) work. In my view, the discussion of the problems outlined above and the two possible solutions via qualification and the targeted use of digital assistance systems should take up far more space in the public debate on the future viability of Germany as an industrial nation than has been the case to date.