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lurii Pylypenko, Founder and CEO, OLSOM

observed.“ Today, I have 30 robots and five people maintaining them. And it’ s harder to find these five maintenance folks than 50 operators.”

This evolution towards autonomous factories highlights a critical challenge: as manufacturing becomes more complex and automated, finding skilled workers becomes even more difficult, particularly given declining average tenure rates.

Bridging skills gaps The skills gap has emerged as a top concern in manufacturing, especially in the US, where government strategies around onshoring and reshoring have intensified demand. A 20-year gap in skills transition has created a shortage of qualified workers.

The numbers paint a stark picture. Deloitte estimates that about 2.1 million manufacturing jobs in the US could go unfilled by 2030 because of the ongoing skills shortage. Software and AI-enabled technologies help address this shortage through several capabilities: comprehensive training and qualification systems, digital in-process work instructions and documentation, integrated visual and voice guidance with error-proofing, AI-driven copilots, and integrated augmented reality( AR) assistance for specific applications.

However, Iurii emphasises that technology alone provides no guarantee of success.

“ Any tool is effective only when it’ s utilised in a proper way in a prepared environment,” he continues.“ I witnessed great optimisation technologies being compromised in a culture that was not ready for them. Such cases led to material losses and pushed digital transformation of manufacturing operations back for two to three years.”

Capturing tribal knowledge Perhaps no workforce challenge looms larger than capturing tribal knowledge in an era of shortened tenure and decreased retention.

OLSOM works with one client whose sophisticated equipment

manufacturingdigital. com

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