According to Brent Kedzierski, head of learning strategy and innovation at Shell, industry is historically broken down into four previous focuses, beginning with mechanical production in 1750.
In 1870, mass production was enabled by electricity and the assembly line. In 1969, automated production was accomplished via increased computing power and digital storage, followed by smart production and the IoT in 2011.
In 2020, Kedzierski said, industry entered a fifth incarnation characterized by personalization and "the human touch."
"The future of work is about improving the human performance experience at work through digital solutions [with] seamless connections," Kedzierski said.
Systems are bringing about new ways for people to become engaged in work "in a totally different way" than ever before, he explained. "I've heard lots of stories from our workforce and operators who are seeing that change, so this is a very important point as we take this digital journey."
Speaking as a panelist in a session titled "How to improve plant performance by improving the worker experience" presented by the International Quality and Production Center (IQPC), Kedzierski said industry has entered an era of "psychological safety."
"We think about our digital solutions, and how those plants and infrastructure can help us with inclusion so people feel included in their digital work and like they can do the work through digital means," he said. "They can contribute digitally by documenting and collaborating. They can also challenge it if they see something that is not quite right."
Kedzierski said a hallmark of "Industry 5.0" is its focus on improving workplace health, safety, security and environment (HSSE) as more people entrust both their physical and psychological well-being to their organizations.
More than 40 years of research, he said, proves that long work hours, absence of job control, economic insecurity, work-family conflict, high job demands and "always being 'on'" drive workplace stress, which in turn drives unhealthy behaviors that jeopardize workforce health.
"The workplace can drive stress [that results in] overeating [and] alcohol abuse and drug abuse, which lead to poor health conditions like cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and all of those kinds of things," Kedzierski continued. "You can see this with COVID-19. People are fatigued; people are working overtime."
Industry leaders, Kedzierski said, are wise to challenge themselves to ask how digital platforms are used in this new era of managing content, and if employee input is being tapped as an asset to processes.
"How do we do that better to help resolve these types of issues in the workplace that are actually growing?" he asked.
Mass personalization
"Each industry revolution has had a focus and a power that moves it forward," he said. "We realize that as we connect things, we don't connect them in a way that gives our humans, our workforce, a wonderful experience. You can actually automate bad experience," he said. "This is what we don't want to do and this is why we're looking at a more personalized, adapted view."
Cyber/physical systems help enable this more personalized view to industry, he said.
"It helps us do mass personalization, adapt content and work with people to access these types of things," he said.
Shell implemented its cyber/physical connectivity between systems through digital pilot programs, he said.
"What we found out is that if you don't seriously consider the human aspect of what digitization means on the front line, it's going to present some problems that were unintended consequences," Kedzierski explained. "That is why you want to have a very good taxonomy about what to automate, what to digitize and how to digitize [in a way] that doesn't disenfranchise workers, but uses the benefits of automation to help them enrich their work and improve their performance."
