Honeywell Forge Workforce Productivity Solution Helps Fill Skills Gap in Industry

Summary

The industrial world faces many challenges. Key among these is the skills gap created by the wave of retiring boomers and fewer younger people entering the industrial workforce. Today’s digital technologies are helping industrial organizations address this challenge. These technologies play a key role in transforming the industrial workers into connected workers. Recently, Honeywell briefed ARC Advisory Group analysts on its Honeywell Forge Workforce Productivity solution, highlighting how the solution can help create a more effective connected industrial workforce.

Key findings include:

• Honeywell Forge Workforce Productivity solutions, built on Honeywell Forge platform, offer owner/operators a collection of remote productivity tools.
• Honeywell Forge Inspection Rounds solution digitizes end-to-end inspection workflows to simplify workers’ jobs and help ensure key data is easily available and accessible when needed.
• Honeywell Forge Worker Assist enables field workers to connect with remote experts through video calls and receive guidance in real time using diagrams, instructions, and annotations on the user’s device screen or field-of-view.

The Rising Skills Gap in the Industry

From the retiring wave of baby boomers in North America, Europe, and Japan to the shortfall of qualified engineers in Asia and other parts of the world, the shortage of available skilled technical personnel is becoming a major challenge for owner/operators all over the world. While the developed world is observing mass exodus of skills from the industry, very few young people are ready to take up the gauntlet.  In the developing world, where many economies are growing rapidly, skilled technicians and engineers are in high demand, but short supply.

As the industry struggles to find skilled personnel, those remaining in industry have more heaped onto an already full plate. Workers are overloaded with different types of job responsibilities. Owner/operators are looking for tools to help simplify their workers’ jobs and empower them to perform their jobs safely and effectively, while making sure the company continues to improve its performance.

Honeywell Forge Workforce Productivity

Honeywell Forge, Honeywell’s enterprise performance management tool, offers an advanced Industrial Internet of Things analytics platform for a wide range of applications and solution suites. A key solution portfolio by the company built on Honeywell Forge, is its People Performance Management suite of industrial-focused products.  These include solutions to improve workforce productivity.

Honeywell Forge Workforce Productivity solutions are designed to help owner/operators address the skills gap in the industry by connecting workers and empowering them with a collection of remote productivity tools.  According to Honeywell, this solution aims to close the loop be-tween assets, processes, and people by connecting workers and enabling easy access to information so they can make faster and better decisions, improve efficiency, and enhance the overall business performance of their companies. 

The Connected Worker of the Future

Honeywell Forge Workforce Productivity, a SaaS-based solution, is helping industry transform its workforce into connected workers. The solution helps bring performance improvements in three key areas:

• Workflow Digitization: In the industrial world, majority of the record taking is still manual and paper-based. This is not only time-consuming and cumbersome, but also makes it difficult to access information when needed. The company’s Honeywell Forge Inspection Rounds solution digitizes end-to-end inspection workflows to simplify workers’ job and help ensure key data is easily available and accessible when needed.
• Access to Information: Honeywell’s solution bridges the knowledge gap by providing the workforce with access to contextual instructional documents and artifacts, step-by-step detailed procedure guides, and a library of video procedures that can be consulted on-demand before or during a job. These guides can be produced easily by subject matter experts.
• Remote Assistance: Industrial professionals must frequently collaborate with other remote experts. Using remote collaboration tools, such as Honeywell Forge Worker Assist, they can now connect more effectively with their peers.

Remote Collaboration with Honeywell Forge Worker Assist

During the briefing, the Honeywell team demonstrated its Worker Assist Solution for ARC.  The demonstration highlighted how the solution enables field workers to connect with remote experts through video calls and receive guidance in real time using diagrams, instructions, and annotations on the user’s tablet or phone’s screen or field-of-view (if they are wearing a smart headset). During the demonstration, one member, wearing the RealWear HMT intelligent headset, connected with a remote expert at a different location on computer through a video call. The member was able to show a piece of faulty equipment to a remote expert and get guidance on how to fix the issue. The intrinsically safe intelligent headset can be operated easily with voice commands so field workers can keep their hands free to perform tasks in the field.

The solution also allows users to view critical task and asset information within their field of view.  This includes both photos and videos. With digitally created content overlaid on the user’s view, the solution can provide field workers with on-the-spot training.   Such advanced technology, often referred to as augmented reality, enables workers to rapidly troubleshoot and address issues in the field.  This can provide owner/operators with high value.

Conclusion

In today’s competitive world, access to skilled workers is a key requirement for industrial organizations to remain competitive. While the industrial world realizes the importance of skilled professionals, the skills gap continues to expand. To address the problem, companies must invest in enabling technologies to empower their workforce and bridge the widening skills gap.

Digital technologies have made their way into the industrial world and the digital transformation is just beginning. Advanced technologies of today are turning out be major tools that owner/operators can  leverage to address the skills shortage. The Honeywell Forge Workforce Productivity, building on its advanced Industrial IoT platform, is well-positioned to help owner/operators digitize workflows, leverage data and analytics, and collaborate more effectively.

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Keywords: Honeywell Forge Workforce Productivity, Connected Workers, Skills Gap, Worker Assist, ARC Advisory Group.