How ERP systems can help manufacturers bridge the skills gap.
(PRWEB) June 01, 2016 -- Research from the Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte predicts there could be as many as 2 million unfilled manufacturing jobs by 2025. The Millennial generation is more than 77 million strong—plenty to fill those jobs.
But Millennials aren’t seeing manufacturing jobs as viable, desirable jobs. And those jobs aren’t keeping up with Millennials. It makes for a poor fit—Millennials don’t see the jobs as attractive and don’t have skills that line up with manufacturing jobs.
But only by mending that gap can manufacturers hope to maintain a strong workforce that will be successful into the future. And like it or not, it’s up to manufacturers to find a way to make it work with Millennials, not the other way around.
Manufacturers can no longer afford to think about their systems, processes, and labor force in the same ol’ way. It’s time to innovate with an emphasis on technology and digitization. Whether it’s optimizing the production line, balancing work flows and labor, or incorporating new technology, there’s an opportunity now to build the future of your organization—and the manufacturing industry as a whole.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software can help companies do that. Here, Guide Technologies looks at how the new connectivity, collaboration capabilities, and added visibility of new ERP solutions hold the key to bridging the skills gap and helping manufacturers find and recruit workers to help them thrive in the new reality of manufacturing.
ERP solutions now speak the language of next-gen workers
ERP solutions have evolved to mirror the changing business world; now, they’re providing new ways to engage with modern, next-generation technologies and mindsets. By doing that, these systems minimize or eliminate the skills gap while setting up functions to operate more closely to how next-gen workers naturally operate.
ERP systems now support:
• Enterprise search capability to allow users to search by customer, order, supplier, part or product, perhaps even combining data residing in your enterprise applications with unstructured data available on the internet. This taps into how next-gen workers, who are used to finding answers with a simple search, naturally work, discover, and learn.
• Configurable user interfaces, so users can customize the design to their individual needs—touch screen input, point-and-click, drag-and-drop.
• Personalized dashboards/workspaces/portals that create a home base of operations from which employees can easily access the data and tools they use every day. A well-constructed dashboard blurs the boundaries between the ERP and other enterprise applications, desktop tools and more. It allows employees to access any of those without having to close or minimize another. This also minimizes or negates the need to learn new “navigational” skills.
• Event management alerts that can be used to push out information to employees, rather than relying on them to go in search of it. An event manager can be constantly searching for conditions or events that occur while employees go about their business, with alerts delivered in a number of ways.
• “Following” customers, orders and prospects so users can capture the trail of activity that has already occurred during the sales cycle, see the conversations between the sales rep and client or prospect, know which documents have been delivered to the prospect, and scroll through support activity over the past few months.
• Collaboration by aggregating all this activity and data and making it available to everybody who needs it.
New innovation doesn’t leave the old priorities behind.
Modern ERP solutions reinforce the traditional best practices while meeting expectations of Millennial users—which is essential to managing tomorrow’s workforces. But today’s ERP systems aren’t just about tomorrow, or about Millennials. They really help all facets of your workforce:
• They help Baby Boomers share tribal knowledge with new recruits through the use of collaborative tools and learn to use and adopt new applications by providing intuitive, modern interfaces.
• Help Millennials get up to speed quickly on best practices and easily obtain critical historical data for reference and training.
Our advice: Don’t wait to implement the tools that will let you connect, engage and retain your workforce for sustained success. Review your current ERP and see if it’s letting you speak the language of tomorrow’s workforce. If not, it might be time for a change.
And if it is time for a change (or when it is) Guide Technologies is here to help you with the process.
Elsa Rodriguez, Guide Technologies LLC, http://www.guidetechnologies.com, +1 (513) 631-8800 Ext: 114, [email protected]
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