Connected worker is fundamental to post-Covid business resilience
Published: 03:06 PM,Jun 05,2021 | EDITED : 12:06 PM,Jun 06,2021
Human adaptability has been on display all through our year of lockdown. With digital transformation providing a workforce refresh, the post-Covid normal looks set to be a world where scattered teams are balanced by a strong emphasis on business continuity.
Having experimented with working from home, more workers would like the arrangement to continue — or at least, to have the flexibility to determine their own working hours. A Pew Research Center survey found that 71 per cent of US workers would keep working remotely if they had the option. At the same time, an increasing number of organisations have switched to long-term remote work, including Google and Microsoft.
But what does this new location-agnostic workforce mean for organisations across the economic spectrum? How might hitherto location-dependent industrial manufacturers and energy companies, for example, prepare for such sweeping changes — even as they work to attract and retain new talent? And what does that mean for business continuity?
Bridges the geographical gap
As business has become digitalised, cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and enhanced collaborative tools are helping create a new reality for industrial operations. Software leaders in the sector are driving this innovation by providing software, services, and digitised power and process infrastructure solutions that enable the transition to the world of virtually controlled sustainable operations and empowered, Connected Workers.
The industrial enterprise that is being created in the wake of the pandemic will have an empowered, connected workforce. As the next-generation workforce — a category of workers who do not know a life without the internet — starts to assume their responsibilities, expertise based on years of experience will gradually be replaced by a new digital skillset.
Designers, engineers, operators, managers will all be equipped with the tools of information, analysis, automation, and guidance to ensure that they are able to accomplish their tasks efficiently and securely, in their individual capacities and as digitally linked teams. These Connected Workers comprise the beating heart of the resilient post-Covid organisation.
Rebuilding the workforce ecosystem
As organisations build back better and stronger, then, technology will continue to play an enabling role for this new workforce. The normal workplace ecosystem to support them over the medium- and long-term is already being radically rebuilt with cloud and AI at its core. Digital solutions will become a valuable shop floor partner, providing remote access to the physical sites that workers once occupied while simultaneously deploying the tools required to collaborate with internal and external colleagues — whether human or robot.
Applications will need to interoperate seamlessly to address complex use cases and provide workflows without boundaries. No matter how complex or domain-intensive the underlying functionality, the relevant information needs to be abstracted, contextualised, and presented simply and clearly. Automated guidance and learning aids are needed to provide digital expert assistance, and the experience of industrial software must be as good as the intuitiveness and ease of use of consumer technology.
While this new enhanced digital collaboration will be delivered over cloud-based networks, it is the acceleration of AI, combined with big data, that will support teams in elevating performance. In tandem, the development of cloud-based learning development tools will help workers align and develop skillsets specific to evolving roles and job requirements.
Two new personas: The Digital Twin and The Connected Worker
When addressing the business drivers that shape the new normal, two key personas emerge: the Digital Twin and the Connected Worker.
Simply defined, a Digital Twin is a data-led digital representation of a physical object. Such a digital duplicate provides the digital backbone across the key industrial disciplines of engineering, production, maintenance, and supply chain management and provides performance-based analytical predictions to enable decision making and address business requirements.
The Connected Worker leverages these elements to give them context, providing the insight, guidance and tools to ensure safe, effective, and consistent work output specific to each role. When workers all along the manufacturing value chain gain instant access to the same information, decision making is faster, more precise, and more profitable.
As digital environments become the norm across the economic value chain, the benefits of using tools such as the Digital Twin enable Connected Workers to make more informed decisions, collaborate in real-time, improve safety and efficiency, and drive sustainability throughout the operation. The result is interconnected, resilient organisations that work together seamlessly — regardless of where they are located and which time zone they operate within. That is the true promise of digital transformation.
Ravi Gopinath is Chief Cloud Officer and Chief Product Officer at AVEVA
Having experimented with working from home, more workers would like the arrangement to continue — or at least, to have the flexibility to determine their own working hours. A Pew Research Center survey found that 71 per cent of US workers would keep working remotely if they had the option. At the same time, an increasing number of organisations have switched to long-term remote work, including Google and Microsoft.
But what does this new location-agnostic workforce mean for organisations across the economic spectrum? How might hitherto location-dependent industrial manufacturers and energy companies, for example, prepare for such sweeping changes — even as they work to attract and retain new talent? And what does that mean for business continuity?
Bridges the geographical gap
As business has become digitalised, cloud, artificial intelligence (AI) and enhanced collaborative tools are helping create a new reality for industrial operations. Software leaders in the sector are driving this innovation by providing software, services, and digitised power and process infrastructure solutions that enable the transition to the world of virtually controlled sustainable operations and empowered, Connected Workers.
The industrial enterprise that is being created in the wake of the pandemic will have an empowered, connected workforce. As the next-generation workforce — a category of workers who do not know a life without the internet — starts to assume their responsibilities, expertise based on years of experience will gradually be replaced by a new digital skillset.
Designers, engineers, operators, managers will all be equipped with the tools of information, analysis, automation, and guidance to ensure that they are able to accomplish their tasks efficiently and securely, in their individual capacities and as digitally linked teams. These Connected Workers comprise the beating heart of the resilient post-Covid organisation.
Rebuilding the workforce ecosystem
As organisations build back better and stronger, then, technology will continue to play an enabling role for this new workforce. The normal workplace ecosystem to support them over the medium- and long-term is already being radically rebuilt with cloud and AI at its core. Digital solutions will become a valuable shop floor partner, providing remote access to the physical sites that workers once occupied while simultaneously deploying the tools required to collaborate with internal and external colleagues — whether human or robot.
Applications will need to interoperate seamlessly to address complex use cases and provide workflows without boundaries. No matter how complex or domain-intensive the underlying functionality, the relevant information needs to be abstracted, contextualised, and presented simply and clearly. Automated guidance and learning aids are needed to provide digital expert assistance, and the experience of industrial software must be as good as the intuitiveness and ease of use of consumer technology.
While this new enhanced digital collaboration will be delivered over cloud-based networks, it is the acceleration of AI, combined with big data, that will support teams in elevating performance. In tandem, the development of cloud-based learning development tools will help workers align and develop skillsets specific to evolving roles and job requirements.
Two new personas: The Digital Twin and The Connected Worker
When addressing the business drivers that shape the new normal, two key personas emerge: the Digital Twin and the Connected Worker.
Simply defined, a Digital Twin is a data-led digital representation of a physical object. Such a digital duplicate provides the digital backbone across the key industrial disciplines of engineering, production, maintenance, and supply chain management and provides performance-based analytical predictions to enable decision making and address business requirements.
The Connected Worker leverages these elements to give them context, providing the insight, guidance and tools to ensure safe, effective, and consistent work output specific to each role. When workers all along the manufacturing value chain gain instant access to the same information, decision making is faster, more precise, and more profitable.
As digital environments become the norm across the economic value chain, the benefits of using tools such as the Digital Twin enable Connected Workers to make more informed decisions, collaborate in real-time, improve safety and efficiency, and drive sustainability throughout the operation. The result is interconnected, resilient organisations that work together seamlessly — regardless of where they are located and which time zone they operate within. That is the true promise of digital transformation.
Ravi Gopinath is Chief Cloud Officer and Chief Product Officer at AVEVA