AI-Powered Industrial Knowledge Management for Future-Proof Operations

Over the past 10 years, the manufacturing workforce has dramatically changed both in experience (Figure 1) and expectations. For many companies, the challenge will be to sustain operations while shifting from 30-year employees to those with three (or less) years. Future of Industrial Work (FOIW) Leaders have proven the LNS Research FOIW framework can guide the organization’s strategy to dramatically improve results.

Figure 1: Industrial Knowledge Management

In this blog, I will unpack how Leaders strategically empower and elevate the entire workforce with Industrial Knowledge Management and a holistic approach for the future of work.

Why Future of Industrial Work Initiatives are Table Stakes

Industrial organizations that are moving to a more proactive, comprehensive, and lifecycle-based approach to building an empowered future-ready frontline workforce have been able to dramatically outperform peers across EHS, productivity, recruitment, and retention (Figure 2). Even better, shifting initiatives towards the more holistic FOIW approach enables Leaders to perform significantly better across operational performance key performance indicators (KPIs). Leaders who are all in are 5 times more likely than Followers to improve operating margin by more than 20%.

Figure 2: The LNS Research FOIW framework is proven to deliver

Investing in the workforce to accelerate business objectives sets Leaders in a position to better meet the expectations of newer employees. PepsiCo, whose operating margin of 13.2% is stronger than most peers, discussed how a people focus has enabled success across manufacturing with The IX Event FOIW Executive Roundtable attendees (Figure 3). To achieve these same results, manufacturers must assess their current strategy against the LNS Research FOIW framework to identify areas of opportunity that drive better performance across both frontline workforce and operations metrics.

Figure 3: The IX Event Strategies for Leaders Executive Roundtable
saw how PepsiCo’s prioritizing people for the FOIW.

How Manufacturers Must Shift to an AI-Powered FOIW Ecosystem

Industrial organizations are faced with the need to quickly adopt newer techniques and digital tools to account for the radically changing experience level across the frontline. The last of the baby boomers are retiring (for real this time), Gen X is now entering retirement age, and Gen Y and Z turnover continues to accelerate. LNS Research calls these combined factors “The Great Goodbye,” and manufacturers must embrace this new reality in order to survive competitively.

The loss of undocumented knowledge is drastically impacting safety, quality, and productivity performance, and requires manufacturing leaders to act quickly to stem the losses. As twenty-to-thirty-year frontline veterans leave the frontlines, manufacturers are experiencing a void in capabilities as these workers take invaluable institutional knowledge with them. In fact, nearly 70% of manufacturers find that newer employees within the workforce need new training to develop foundational skills for teamwork, communication, and collaboration.

The workers left are having to advance to newer positions, which they are often not yet ready for. For all these reasons, Leaders are evolving to an AI-Powered FOIW Ecosystem that leverages Agentic AI co-pilots, vision systems, and autonomy to automate tacit knowledge capture across the enterprise. The LNS Research Industrial Knowledge Management framework provides a proven path to help manufacturers develop employee competency, leadership support, and digital tools needed to future-proof the entire workforce.

Figure 4: AI-powered Industrial Knowledge Management is critical within
the FOIW ecosystem to scale enterprise expertise and accelerate innovation.

Future-Proof Operations with Knowledgeable Frontline Leaders

LNS Research is seeing a significant shift needed to focus on building the skills and capabilities of leaders across the frontline. While the skills for each employee are important, manufacturers are observing dramatic impacts on operating performance following a sharp focus on frontline leadership and building critical leadership capabilities across the plant network.

Global Operations Leaders must embrace the following FOIW practices to build more sustainable manufacturing:

1. Set proactive business objectives at the corporate level to elevate the frontline workforce. Leaders communicate a workforce vision to upskill employees for new ways of working over two times more than followers. Setting expectations from the top with clearly communicated expectations is critical to build the leadership and competency needed across the frontlines to achieve better safety, quality, and productivity performance.

2. Prioritize building frontline leadership knowledge and support capabilities. Mature knowledge management practices are critical to improving onboarding and time to productivity for new leadership that is less dependent on a person for sustainment, but where people are essential to build skills. Leaders are taking a persona-based approach when creating digital toolkits with a strong focus on knowledge libraries and performance management support to create stronger leadership in critical roles.

3. Concentrate on deploying human-centric technology with transformation partners. Transformation partners can be key in helping manufacturers see how people, processes, and new technologies work together for a step change. Connected Frontline Workforce (CFW) applications provide innovative new capabilities to deliver actionable insights tailored for an employee’s role and experience level, with new use cases (Figure 4) systematically improving how work is done at the worker, team, and organizational level.

   Figure 5: CFW applications are critical investments for knowledge
   management, employee engagement, and operational excellence.

4. Join executive events to create a network for accelerating AI and newer ways of working. The secret to facilitating change isn’t just the processes and systems that help organizations remove barriers to transformation. Leadership is essential for providing employees with the tools needed to understand organizational goals, build solutions that support management systems, and embed best practices from across the industry into their operations.

Leaders are remodeling the approach with new workforce development and talent strategy roles that are aligned to operations. Dow Chemical has recognized that meeting business goals and objectives requires a new organizational model that is hands-on and powered by AI (Figure 6). Maturing Industrial Knowledge Management to better support and serve the frontline workforce, but if you haven’t found your “Ah Ha Moment” to attract, train, and retain talent, join LNS Research at our next executive event to learn how to drive meaningful improvements from industry peers.

Figure 6: Joining industry peers at LNS Research executive events help attendees
create a more holistic, AI-powered approach that fuels both  personal and business growth.