Combining Manpower and Machines in the Times of Industry 4.0

Digital platforms and intelligent machines are necessary but not sufficient to create competitive factories of the future, especially when it comes to high-volume staffing. Manufacturers need to grow new skills and hire a versatile and resilient workforce to match the demands of Industry 4.0.

So here we are in the fourth industrial revolution, also termed Industry 4.0. This revolution places automation at the forefront with the help of smart machines, smart factories, and informed data that can bring more efficiency and productivity across the manufacturing chain. This leads to better flexibility and helps meet customer demands using mass customization and thereby achieving higher efficiency.

The global economy exposed the inefficiency of manufacturing supply chains during the pandemic, from the well-documented shortages of protective equipment. In the $2.3 trillion U.S. manufacturing sector, experts have said that the solution to these challenges lies in Industry 4.0.

Stripping factory operations of inefficiency and waste has been a management obsession ever since Frederick Taylor conducted time and motion studies as a steel-plant foreman in the 1880s. Today’s “lean” manufacturing techniques and models all derive from the same philosophy. Digital technology and Industry 4.0, however, present new opportunities.

Industry 4.0 strategies have helped to keep nearly all manufacturing firms running during the pandemic, according to a McKinsey survey. This has led to various companies investing heavily in digital transformation initiatives ($6.8 trillion globally in 2020), retooling factories with digital platforms and intelligent machines. With the help of technologies like 5G, IoT, and machine learning, modern factories can move production closer to their customers and create shorter, more reliable, on-demand supply chains. But what about the existing Manpower and Talent Hunting? Where does their future lie?

In order to that make that Digital leap, Recruiters have to address two main priorities:          

1 - To realize the benefits of digitally powered operations, companies must turn their high-volume staffing strategy from focusing on hiring people to turn wrenches or operate drill presses to recruiting full-fledged knowledge workers comfortable operating in a digital world. Yes, it’s possible. Educate & Empower your Manpower on the floor before automation can be implemented.

2 – Once the above is in place, Manufacturers need to develop digital platforms to automate assembly-line workflows and predictive maintenance, avoiding downtime by allowing managers to anticipate and resolve problems before they occur.

 Remove the Skill Gap

Despite all the futuristic shenanigans, an important piece missing from Industry 4.0 is not technology, but pure human talent. Even before the pandemic, 87% of manufacturing executives said they were facing critical job-skills gaps, or expected to face them soon. Factory employment in the U.S. remains 4% below pre-pandemic levels, but even so, more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs remain unfilled, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The high-volume recruiting challenge is no longer about finding candidates with the right trade-skill but rather identifying those who also have the right knowledge- and skill sets to solve a different array of problems.

Recruiters should grab this upcoming opportunity to shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution and create a future that reflects the organization’s core values and success. This demands a substantial rethinking of how companies recruit, train, and reskill factory workers. In the past, jobs just revolved around long-established trade skills. Its time now to adapt and move with the changing times.

Challenges of Recruiters

Attracting the right candidates, in high volume, has now become one of the biggest challenges for recruiters and HR managers alike. In this era of low unemployment rate coupled with ever-changing needs of the job market, talented candidates are very difficult to onboard. Millennials are now dominating the work sphere and with their keenness to adapt quickly to new technologies tend to favor their personal needs more than that of the organization they work for. The challenge for the recruiters is that these Millennials have the tendency to do job hopping, thereby increasing the workload of recruiters as they have to search for candidates for the same positions more frequently.

Digital Literacy is the Key

With the ever-increasing pace of technological innovation, education – about new skills or professional traits – is becoming a crucial differentiator in organizations. Technological advancement has changed the demands of recruiters, one of the skill sets that a recruiter will look for in a fresher is Digital literacy other than soft skills.

In Industry 4.0, ways of working have changed with Digitization, which indeed has changed the demand for recruiters. If the candidate is not familiar with the nucleus of the digital framework, he will be obsolete for the recruiter.

"New Collar" Workers: The Future of Manufacturing?

One of the biggest changes that Industry 4.0 will bring to manufacturing is its transformation of factories into high-tech environments populated by automated machinery and robots. The increasing presence of technology in such industrial workplaces is expected to create new kinds of jobs and change the nature of existing ones, giving rise to what has been called "new collar" workers.

This new kind of worker is set to replace the old divide between "blue collar" manual labor on the factory floor, and "white collar" clerical and management jobs in offices. The new collar jobs are both intellectually demanding and require accuracy and dexterity. Workers, for their part, are expected to be specialists and multi-skilled – for instance, a welding expert who is also a quality control manager.

The rise of these ‘new collar’ jobs can help redefine high-volume staffing in a big way, which can be a win-win for companies and employees, marking the future of manufacturing exciting and revolutionary.

Adapt to the changing times swiftly and tackle the new age high volume staffing challenges efficiently with Bear Staffing.