Digitalization in production
Friday the 14th of July 2023
What is the future path to improving production?
In today’s competitive business environment, digitalization is essential to maintain competitiveness and improve productivity. When it comes to manufacturing processes, digitalization can be the key to optimizing your business performance and opening up a world of opportunities for growth.
Maybe you’re worried that digitalization will lead to redundancies and eliminate human influence in production. But at Trendlog.io, we want to share an important insight with you: Digitalization is not just about automating processes; it’s about improving and evolving them.
In this blog post we have gathered a few good advise for how to prepare the business and the employees for new digital times.
For the businesses it is not supposed to be about firing or saving on employees, because they want to work for efficiently. Instead, it should be about companies being able to build upwards with the workforce they have available. By increasing your ability to take on more orders, save on labor costs per item produced and even create more jobs over time.
First stop: The employees
If your employees are not on board with the journey of change, you will be stuck at your starting point. The employees do the work and were it not for them, the company would not produce anything.
When data collection systems and associated digital tools arrive, it means new changes and routines in the everyday life. There are many ideas of how long it takes to adapt and change the old routines. One thing is for sure. It takes longer than you think if the process is not correctly presented. Therefore, be sure to make time to answer all the employees’ questions and involve them from day one. This way you also save time in the implementation process.
Take one step back before you take two ahead
The process of implementing digitalization tools can be compared to the first time you got behind the wheel. You started with the theory where you were presented with the traffic rules. When you were familiar with the traffic rules, you were allowed behind the wheel – in the playpen! Here you were to practice and only when you knew what you were doing, you were allowed on the roads.
The employees need to go back and start with the theory. They need to be taught the new system. They must be informed about how to work with it and which consequences the implementation can have on their routines and daily work tasks.
Are you developing – or changing?
”We are digitalizing following processes which will lead to a number of changes.”
versus
“The organization is developing – and we will make sure that our employees also evolve.”
When it is time to take the first step of digitalization, it can be done in many ways. When you implement a digitalization tool, it will bring changes to your everyday life. But most importantly, the organization and the employees will evolve. The employees get an opportunity to use the collected data and draw attention to the challenges they face. And with that they can use it to improve their work.
”All development is to get out of what you have gotten yourself into” – make sure to help them get started with open communication and a good amount of spirit.
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