The Millennial movement is underway. As of this year, this group of young adults—also known as Gen Y and defined by researchers as people born between 1980 and early 2000s—will represent a large part of the U.S. workforce.
也许这是个好消息,因为美国洛杉矶bor and Statistics has indicated that more than 10,000 workers from the Baby Boomer generation are reaching retirement age daily. The bad news, however, is that when the Boomers retire, they take decades of intellectual property with them. In manufacturing, this could set productivity back substantially. Whether it’s a process engineer, an operator in the plant, or a field technician, there is a wealth of knowledge accumulated from years of experience that can’t be easily passed down to the new kid.
As a result, every manufacturer in every industry has been preparing for an impending employee skills gap. The industry as a whole is focused on working with educational institutions to create better science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs, as well as finding ways to attract young minds to a career in manufacturing. Once a young Millennial arrives on the job, there’s the challenge of getting them up to speed quickly—especially in sophisticated operations where there could also be safety issues.
”有一个部落的某些组成部分知识that is hard to transfer, and the new technology that has been introduced in the last 10 years is accelerating the speed of change in the industrial environment,” says Gail Norris, director of technical learning services at Siemens Industry. Throw into the mix the fact that Gen Y learns in a different way than Boomers, and it adds yet another obstacle into the mix, she says.
的确，千禧一代是“数字原住民”，他们从技术上长大，从来没有像老一辈一样适应游戏，主题标签和社交媒体语言。他们合作，沟通和电子连接。他们也希望以这种方式学习。
To help manufacturers bridge the skills gap, automation vendors are delivering tools that will accelerate workforce development for those young operators and technicians in the field. From knowledge and workflow management to mobile apps and the strategic use of video, vendors are delivering products that will enhance training, boost overall competency, and increase productivity and safety for people in the plant.
The push for savvy information-delivery tools is threefold. First, the arrival of Gen Y. Second, the rapid growth in developing countries, such as China and India, where capital to invest in new production machinery often outpaces the knowledge of the people operating the equipment. And third, the notion of having experts travel out to remote locations to diagnose and fix instrumentation is cost-prohibitive these days. As a result, operators in the field must have a wider range of knowledge and experience.
It’s a new era in workforce development.
“The term competency management has moved into our vernacular,” says John Roffel, product director of Operator Competency Advanced Solutions atHoneywell Process Solutions. “We have to train people locally in a way that is efficient and repeatable.”
Knowledge mining
Alliance Coal是一个多元化的煤炭生产商，经营11个采矿综合体。当然，安全是关键，这就是为什么该公司建立了一个地下网络来跟踪矿山中的人员和设备的原因。部署和维护网络基础架构通常属于IT团队。但情况并非总是如此，尤其是当网络嵌入地球时。
According to Jeremy Patches, former director of technology at the coal company, there are thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable deployed in coal mines. “The networks have to be maintained, and not by people who are trained engineers,” he says, noting it is the coal miners, not the IT specialists who are doing much of the work. “They are hired as coal miners, become certified electricians, and that translates into becoming a network admin.”
Finding ways to transfer IT knowledge to miners has been done through tutorials and hands-on training, but the company is always looking for innovative ways to expedite the process. Right now, the company works with its network provider to find new ways to transfer knowledge.
But the automation suppliers, too, are delivering products and services geared specifically toward workforce development. In February, Honeywell Process Solutions announced its new UniSim Competency Suite, designed to help prepare console and field operators for on-the-job experiences by creating a realistic environment during training. The suite includes five new technologies: UniSim Operations for dynamic plant simulation; a customized competency model called UniSim Curriculum; UniSim Tutor, which provides a repository to capture domain knowledge and experiences; UniSim Field View, an interactive, realistic view for field operators; and UniSim 3D Connect, which integrates UniSim Operations with a 3D environment.
The Field View 2D technology is designed as a training tool to establish field orientation, procedural awareness, and readiness under normal and abnormal situations by linking real high-resolution pictures from the plant to simulation software to increase an operator’s understanding of the plant topology and field orientation.
Individuals access the images of infrastructure and instruments while at a workstation, providing them with an education at the office of what they will encounter in the field. In addition, they can tap into UniSim Tutor, a game-like tool for capturing knowledge, assessing skill, and propagating information to co-workers. The underlying principle of Tutor is that an operator’s response to a deviation from the normal state in the plant is based on the cause and effect of relationships that exist on a plant and the individual’s ability to detect, diagnose and make a correction to the equipment. The tool can be customized to any plant situation and can capture the experience of decades in a simple, scalable format. As individuals interact with the “game,” the software is providing a score based on operator competency.
相似地，Siemens一直关注如何帮助客户捕获部落知识并有效地将其传递给下一代工人，尤其是在技术每天都在改变时。它从映射工作角色并定义能力水平的评估工具开始。从那里开始，西门子生成了一份报告，建议使用适当的学习工具来缩小技能差距。
In a classroom, Siemens can provide plant simulations and virtual tools to emulate physical devices, which can be easily absorbed. But what happens when the employee is fixing something in the field and forgets what he learned? Then he can stream a Siemens Online Rapid Refresher video to a smartphone or an iPad to get a short tutorial on what to do.
西门子创新开发经理欧文·布朗（Irving Brown）说：“重点是如何更好地影响学习。”攻入YouTube是二十多岁的第二天性，在Halo游戏中保存银河系也是如此。因此，视频和虚拟现实是传达信息的理想方式。“我们一直在努力开发虚拟工具来模仿物理设备，并且由于年轻的人群习惯了游戏，因此它们更容易吸收信息。”
Gen Y is also very comfortable with mobile devices. Arm them with an iPhone and a GoPro and they are not only creative, but also constructive.
Virtual is the new reality
Digital connectivity comes in many forms. When a technician goes out to an oil pipeline, for example, with a tablet and a web camera attached to the front of his helmet, he can be streaming video back to experts in the operations center who can then provide instructions—via tablet or smartphone—on how to fix the instrumentation. Or the technician could be walking around, taking readings, gathering analytics, and providing a real-time view of what’s happening in the field.
“This is not proprietary by any stretch, but it is a new and different kind of practice for troubleshooting problems,” says Bob Lenich, Syncade business director atEmerson Process Management. Syncade, an asset management suite, builds a library of asset data collected from a facility that can be used during troubleshooting. It also includes an electronic procedure engine that provides instructions—walking an individual through the work processes. “The big thing happening in maintenance is around asset and reliability management, and making sure a person in the field has a lot of information and connections to remotely access the experts.”
有趣的是，即使千禧一代通常会发短信，也不愿说话，但在建立健康的培训环境时，人性元素也无法忽视。尽管工程师和运营商可能不会在水冷机上闲逛，但他们确实需要一对一的交互来建立共同的纽带。
建立一种文化很重要，其中专家和现场力量平等 - 从某种意义上说，他们分享工作。例如，在Alliance Coal中，在课堂上培训煤矿工人之后，将网络专家送入矿山，向矿工展示书籍知识如何与他们每天接触的内容有关。Patch说，这是巨大的均衡器，并创造了相互尊重。
“Our IT folks now have an appreciation for the dynamic environment we are dealing with and they appreciate thattaking care of a network is not the coal miner’s job,” Patches says. “This leveled the playing field, allowed relationships to develop on both sides, and the process was focused on how to create problem-solving skills within this group. Now, after months of communication back and forth and research on the underground network, we’ve changed the topology of the network to make it easier for the operations folks.”
Let’s make life easy
有一些复杂的技术和机械构成了制造环境。为了避免停机时间并确保在那里工作的人们的安全，建立最佳实践很重要。Schneider Electric’s WonderwareIntelatrac就是这样做的。IntelatRac是移动员工队伍和决策支持系统，可以在平板电脑或坚固的设备上运行，并提供动态过程，以驱动组织定义的过程。
Designed to enable workflow and general task management required to achieve reliable operations, IntelaTrac allows on-site operators to input information and receive support at any location—without the need of a physical connection.
“We believe the frontline workforce should have the opportunity to improve plant reliability and safety because they know what’s going on,” says Kim Custeau, Schneider Electric’s director of asset management solutions. “The tools we provide not only make life easier, but they mitigate the impact of turnover or an aging workforce.”
ABBServicePro管理系统是一项配备了ABB设备库以及相关工厂和现场开发的预防例程的软件程序，专注于安全性。该软件在PC或iOS移动设备上可用，允许用户识别，对问题进行分类和优先级，以立即解决问题。“这意味着操作员不需要多年的经验或培训就可以解决常见设备或过程问题的问题，” ABB的Process Automation全球产品营销经理Dave Biros说。
The Millennials don’t have long years of experience, obviously. And some reports suggest they have a short attention span—jumping from job to job if it is not fulfilling and they don’t feel like they are growing their skillset or making a valuable contribution to the company. The tools today are just a part of the solution. Companies must also change the culture to accommodate the value system of this next generation.
“We believe companies will find it easier to attract, keep and retain workers by investing in more high-tech ways to do their jobs faster with less stress and more enjoyment,” Biros says. “Arm them with cool, easy-to-use tools that help them successfully do their jobs within their assigned shifts, and avoid emergency callouts and the risk of employee burnout.”
