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A
ccording to our latest research, over
half of the industrial workforce is aged
35, and a third is over 40. As the baby
boomers born in the 1940s and 1950s start
to retire, this means that the manufacturing,
lumber, distribution and retail sectors look set
to suffer from a lack of sufficiently-skilled staff
in the next 20 to 30 years.
This means there is a brewing knowledge
gap on the factory floor. The pressure is
therefore on businesses to both upskill
existing employees and also attract young
people with the right knowledge, if they are
to get fit for future growth.
However, employers are struggling to find
people with the skills they need, even for
entry-level jobs. Many are therefore turning
to technology to find the answers to boost
efficiencies where human resource is low,
and also to encourage more young recruits
to consider a role in industries that may be
perceived as less exciting.
How can technology help businesses
tackle the knowledge gap?
Implementing new technology and
ways of working can help businesses
maintain and improve production levels.
Realising this, 41% of businesses are
already implementing some form of robot
technology. For example, Amazon now has
45,000 robots in its warehouses and Dacia’s
factory in Romania uses 800 robots to make
a new car every 54 seconds.
Because robots can automate repetitive
tasks, they are an effective way of relieving
a strained workforce from manual or difficult
labour (54%), can free up people to work on
more creative tasks (40%) and can optimise
processes faster and more effectively than
humans (34%).
In order to make the most of the latest
innovations in workplace robotics and AI,
businesses are also rapidly putting up to
dat e IT infrastructure in place. For example,
cloud-based enterprise resource planning
(ERP) solutions like Epicor ERP, can be crucial
to co-ordinating robot workflows and sharing
data between machines and humans across
multiple digital platforms.
Indeed, around a fifth (19%) of businesses
questioned in our study agreed that they
www.intelligentcio.com
Terri Hiskey, Vice President, Product
Marketing, Manufacturing at Epicor Software
“
TECHNOLOGY,
INDEED, IS
CLEARLY ONE
OF THE KEYS TO
PLUGGING THE
BURGEONING
KNOWLEDGE GAP
IN INDUSTRY.
rely on a single core business system to
manage everything.
In the Industry 4.0 world, ERP solutions
can moreover provide businesses with the
ability to input and manipulate data, making
advanced analytics easier to manage.
This allows users greater visibility of the
information generated by machines, robots,
and AI algorithms on the factory floor, or
across the supply chain.
INTELLIGENTCIO
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