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Industrials are facing the urgent need to improve employee health and safety as ongoing workforce challenges further erode the base case. With supply chains presenting significant challenges over the next couple of years, ensuring workers have the right information at the right time in the right location is critical.
As we begin 2025, staggering investments in Industrial AI are revolutionizing manufacturing. Empowering better decisions across the organization must become a top priority for manufacturers. Companies that plan to survive The Great Goodbye will leverage Industrial AI to better capture and transfer knowledge across the workforce.
Agentic AI and Connected Frontline Workforce (CFW) applications will be key in retooling knowledge management for the Future of Industrial Work (FOIW) and achieving step change sustainability improvements. Here are five ways manufacturing leaders can transform safety and sustainability performance with Industrial AI to deliver more profitable operations:
Empowering the Workforce with AI-Enhanced Safety Training
One of the biggest challenges in manufacturing is ensuring newer, less experienced employees can respond properly to changing conditions. Immersive learning experiences can simulate unplanned events to enhance training and provide a safe space for equipping employees with the necessary skills for flawless work execution.
Leaders have leveraged tools, such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and AI-powered simulations, to allow workers to experience real-time safety scenarios, providing an opportunity to practice handling emergencies or hazardous situations without the risk.
Immersive, hands-on training ensures employees are equipped for situations they may face, improving both confidence and safety awareness. With the newer digital-savvy generation entering the workforce, companies must recognize the need for manufacturing practices to better mirror the technology already being used by digital natives at home.
Personalized AI Assistants Protect Workers and Improve Efficiency
Whether it’s ensuring proper safety gear is in place, reminding workers of safety protocol, or offering guidance on machine operation — AI assistants are playing a key role in reducing human error, improving compliance, and enhancing overall workforce safety. Moreover, these systems can evolve and adapt over time, learning from past interactions and capturing valuable insights from experienced workers to improve their accuracy and effectiveness for next time.
AI assistants understand each worker’s specific role, knowledge, and work environment to provide tailored safety recommendations and task instructions. This enhances the application of safety protocols and ensures companies meet changing regulatory requirements. As manufacturing operations become more complex, personalized AI assistants will be critical for ensuring safety and improving productivity across the industry.
Generative AI will Transform Decision-Making
In 2025, Generative AI moves beyond hype to deliver tangible value in industrial settings. Leaders are widely adopting AI assistants to connect cross-functional content with context to support workers across all levels in real-time decision-making.
Manufacturers will no longer have the luxury of having Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in place at every location. Empowering less experienced employees with the right tools to make expert-level decisions will be crucial in bridging the growing skills gap.
AI-automated Knowledge Management to Accelerate Proficiency
As manufacturers lose valuable knowledge as experienced employees leave, companies will increasingly need better knowledge management to capture and transfer critical expertise. There will be a surge in platforms offering AI-powered solutions that seamlessly blend human knowledge and data analytics.
AI-powered systems can monitor and evaluate knowledge over time, identifying outdated information or gaps. They can automatically prompt users to update or improve knowledge content, ensuring knowledge remains relevant, accurate, and up-to-date so employees always receive the latest information. This will revolutionize version management across industries, which is often a time-consuming and tedious process.
Broad AI-Implementation for Predictive Insights to Prevent Incidents
Industrial AI for safety management has been one of the most promising applications, given its ability to predict potential incidents before they occur. Using data from sensors, wearables, and historical safety records, AI systems analyze patterns to identify anomalies and provide early warning signs of potential safety risks.
This predictive approach can replace the reactive methods most manufacturers still rely on today to provide a way to improve workplace safety and reduce workplace injuries. AI-powered safety systems will not only be able to alert workers and supervisors to potential hazards but also suggest corrective actions in real time. Accelerating AI-related efforts will enable broad adoption across industrial operations to drive down increasing rates of injuries and fatalities across manufacturing.
Broad adoption of Industrial AI will be critical in reversing
negative trends across employee health and safety
Preparing for The Future of Industrial Work
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Industrial AI’s ability to identify gaps, predict needs, and recommend improvements will enable manufacturers to evolve antiquated knowledge management and foster a culture of real-time continuous learning. In 2025, we'll see these trends augment human capabilities and drive unprecedented productivity, safety, and sustainability levels.
Manufacturers must distinguish platforms offering basic digital work instructions and those that provide a personalized hub that suggests relevant knowledge and insights in real-time to ensure flawless work execution. Most have only scratched the surface regarding empowering employees with better tools to make more informed decisions that improve safety, quality, and operational efficiency. Leaders, however, have already widely scaled AI-powered CFW applications to expand the Virtual Operations Center (VOC) capabilities for connecting the entire workforce with on-demand assistance.
With Industrial AI revolutionizing industrial software, LNS Research will continue to provide manufacturers with the latest insights needed to select the best CFW Applications for the organization.
All entries in this Industrial Transformation blog represent the opinions of the authors based on their industry experience and their view of the information collected using the methods described in our Research Integrity. All product and company names are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.