With an estimated 2.8 billion people engaged in frontline jobs, it is imperative that companies look toward digitalization to improve frontline productivity. When frontline workers are given a thoughtful and strategic mix of technology to perform their jobs, productivity is estimated to increase by 22% on average (Deloitte).

Understanding the Status Quo:

In a recent post, Deloitte explained how companies have failed to do right by their frontline workforces when compared to their hybrid and more white-collar employees. Only 23% of frontline workers believe that they have access to the technology they need to be productive, and 80% of frontline employees say that their company provides few connection opportunities at work. This data clearly indicates that frontline workers feel their companies can do more by providing them with the right digital tools to do their jobs better, faster, and, most importantly, with increased productivity.

Work Beyond 2023

An analysis of a Harvard Business Review post that examines nine key trends that will shape work in 2023 and beyond!

Employers are facing multiple workforce-management challenges and are having difficulties coming up with novel strategies to attract and retain top talent. Gartner published a report highlighting the nine trends that will shape work in the future. Refer to Figure 1, below.

Unplanned downtime costs industrial manufacturers as much as 50 billion dollars every year. - Forbes

An average manufacturer confronts about 800 hours of unplanned downtime a year, according to a post from Forbes. This translates to about 15 hours of downtime every single week—a major cost that is also completely avoidable. Manufacturers need to move away from the “We’ll fix it when it breaks” line of thought when it comes to their plants and move toward a TPM or Total Productive Maintenance-based philosophy.

TPM has been around for a while, so it should already have been implemented in most manufacturing operations, right? Well, not quite, according to the below graphic from aMcKinsey survey.