Humans perform 72 per cent of manufacturing tasks, according to new study

GM Canada Chevrolet Impala seat robot

Photo courtesy of GM Canada.

No, robots are not taking over the manufacturing landscape. A new study by A.T. Kearney and Drishti concluded that humans still perform a little less than three quarters of all manufacturing tasks.

This survey of more than 100 manufacturing leaders demonstrated that the rise of robots, albeit big in the headlines, is not necessarily translating the to the shop floor. People remain central to manufacturing, creating more value on the factory floor than machines.

One of the big challenges facing manufacturing is the lack of data analytics surrounding workers' activities performed on the factory floor, limiting manufacturers’ ability to make informed decisions on capacity planning, workforce management, process engineering, and many other strategic domains. This could lead to manufacturers overprioritizing automation because of an inability to quantify investments in the human workforce that would result in greater efficiencies.

“Despite the prominence of people on the factory floor, digital transformation strategies for even the most well-known, progressive manufacturers in the world remain largely focused on machines,” said Michael Hu, partner at A.T. Kearney. “This massive imbalance in the analytics footprint leaves manufacturers around the globe with a human-shaped blind spot, which prevents them from realizing the full potential of Industry 4.0.”

While manufacturing technology has undergone increasing innovation for decades, the standard practices for gathering and analyzing tasks done by humans—and the foundation of holistic manufacturing practices like lean and Six Sigma—are time-and-motion study methodologies, which can be directly traced back to the time of Henry Ford and have not been updated for the digital age.

“The principles underlying these 100-year-old measurement techniques are still valid, but they are too manual to scale, return incomplete data sets, and are subject to observation biases,” said Prasad Akella, founder and CEO of Drishti. “In the age of Industry 4.0, manufacturers need larger and more complete data sets from human activities to help empower operators to contribute value to their fullest potential.”

Additionally, the survey respondents noted the significant overhead needed for traditional data-gathering methodologies: on average, 37 per cent of skilled engineers’ time is spent gathering analytics data manually.

“Humans are the most valuable asset in the factory, and manufacturers should leverage new technology to extend the capabilities of both direct and indirect labor,” said Akella. “If you could give your senior engineers more than a third of their time back, you’d see immediate gains. Instead of spending so many hours collecting data, their attention and capabilities would remain focused on the most critical decisions and tasks.”

Survey respondents also noted that 73 per cent of variability on the factory floor stems from humans, and 68 per cent of defects are caused by human activities. Perhaps as a result, 39 per cent of engineering time is spent on root cause investigations to trace defects—another manual expenditure of time that could be greatly reduced with better data.

“The bottom line is that better data can help both manufacturers and human operators across the board,” said Hu. "Humans are going to be the backbone of manufacturing for the foreseeable future, and the companies that improve their human factory analytics are the ones that will be best positioned to compete in Industry 4.0.”

To view the full report, visit www.drishti.com.