Different Modules leading into the future of digital manufacturing. Many companies are overwhelmed by the wide range of solutions, technologies and possibilities as part of the Industry 4.0 initiatives. Cloud-computing, artificial intelligence, OT vs. IT, big data, machine learning, machine connectivity and more clearly show the potential of these new technologies and the value you could generate. GKN Powder Metallurgy has been focusing over it’s 15 years digital journey to turn technology and solution into new ways of working, operating and organisational model. WORKERBASE provides an innovative software platform to create the Agile Factory.You can benefit from this combined industrial experience in order to accelerate your digital journey and to ensure that you really harvest the benefit of digitalization.

1. Agile Manufacturing
GKN Powder Metallurgy & WORKERBASE
Consulting
Paul Mairl, CDO GKN PM
Thorsten Krüger, Co-Founder WORKEBASE
Mai 2020

2. Different Modules leading into the future of digital manufacturing
Many companies are overwhelmed by the wide range of solutions, technologies and possibilities as part of the Industry 4.0 initiatives.
Cloud-computing, artificial intelligence, OT vs. IT, big data, machine learning, machine connectivity and more clearly show the potential
of these new technologies and the value you could generate.
GKN Powder Metallurgy has been focusing over it’s 15 years digital journey to turn technology and solution into new ways of working,
operating and organisational model. WORKERBASE provides an innovative software platform to create the Agile Factory.
You can benefit from this combined industrial experience in order to accelerate your digital journey and to ensure that you really
harvest the benefit of digitalization.
Digital Processes Worker empowerment Agile Shop-floor Data-driven operations
Digital solutions to extend
your existing production
system.
Benefit from real-time
workflows on mobile
devices.
Focus on employees
strengths and continuously
upgrade their
competencies.
Efficient training and
onboarding of workers.
Competence driven and
highly agile and flexible
shop-floor organization.
Optimal and automatic
work coordination.
Smart data analytics for
actionable insights.
Reliable decisions based on
real-time facts for
predictive operations.

3. Plan & coordinate jobs: Ad-hoc planning due to
imbalanced processes, differing cycle times, batch sizes
Differing sequence of operations, e.g. load balancing of
material flow, Tools, WIP, machine setups
Current production IT systems not prepared for real-time
coordination
Huge efforts to implement change request in existing IT
systems
Digital processes
Organizations based on top-down planned processes have limited capability to
implement real-time changes. Complex planning of workflows and suboptimal work
scheduling results in process inefficiencies, buffers and long waiting times. By extending
your existing production system with digital solutions, your employees benefit from real-
time workflows. Enable the flexible organization of manual work and increases the
efficiency of your production processes, e.g. support calls, material management,
machine alarms, data acquisition, quality assurance.
Challenges Benefits
Workforce utilization: Discover and resolve process
bottlenecks on the shop-floor with real-time work
coordination.
Build resilience: Distribute skills more equally with remote
and on-the-job training.
Increased flexibility: Flexibly react to changing customer
requests and produce more variants in shorter time. React in
real-time to disruptions in production.
Improved productivity: reduced throughput times, reduced
waiting times

4. Shortage of skilled people on the market
Efficient employee training and best practise exchange
Efficient onboarding of new employees
Worker empowerment
Skill shortage is a huge challenge for manufacturers in many verticals. Ensure your
workforce is always well trained and qualified to do the job at hand with skill profiles
and digital training on the job. Use our tools for optimal and automatic work
coordination.
Your employee will benefit from this approach being able to focus on their strength and
continuously upgrade their competencies. A high value workplace will be formed and
you stay competitive in your market by ensuring you are constantly upskilling your
workforce.
The Challenge The Benefit
Increased employee retention by giving people more
development opportunities.
Better identification of skill gaps and talents
Increased organizational resilience by distributing critical
skills among the workforce

5. Role and area based organization not designed to quickly
react to product and production changes
Automation is capable to replace existing work content
which requires our workforce to become more flexible
and upgrade their competences
Shortage of skilled people on the market
Multi generation workforce have different requirements
Agile shop-floor
Today's customer and market requirements drive a much quicker and tailored product
and process development. New products need to be implemented at a much quicker
speed and full productivity is required straight after start of production. All this leads to
a much more complex working environment and requires an agile skill upgrade of your
workforce. An organization is required which is capable to adjust quickly in a very active
mode and agile approach.
The Challenge The Benefit
Agile, which is the capability to adapt itself continuously to
complex, turbulent and unsecure environment
Leaders capable to lead and develop employees/teams to
drive towards self managed teams
A future oriented and attractive work environment focused
on high value activities
Develop highly skilled employees capable to utilize
new digital technology and be innovative problem solvers
Employees acting on data and driving for improved utilisation
of resources to harvest the benefits of digitalization

6. Transparency about production status
KPIs about many machine processes are already known
(e.g. SCADA), but visibility about human work KPIs is
missing
Fact-based organization of human work
Data-driven operations
Although many manufacturers have already implemented software solutions to support
shop-floor processes, most often real-time visibility of the production status is missing.
The comprehensive and visualized breakdown of all manual workflows enables process
transparency and is the basis for actionable analytics for a smart shop floor
management. Bring traditional plan–do–check–adjust improvement cycles to the next
level. Our analytics functions help you to understand the root causes of production
inefficiencies immediately and allow to implement predictive operations.
The Challenge The Benefit
Efficient data acquisition with wearable devices
360 degree visibility on production status
Visualized analytics help with a better and quicker
understanding
Data-driven root cause analysis
Identification of process bottlenecks
Quick and reliable decisions based on real-time facts.