Europe and the US are experiencing significant skills shortages in industrial labor. And according to a report from the World Economic Forum, 54% of employers expect this problem to worsen.
The conclusion? You need to make better use of the talent you already have at your disposal.
Letting capabilities and skills remain underdeveloped or overlooked is a good way to lose efficiency, and even lose staff.
91% of manufacturers have taken on more responsibility for training their staff to plug the skills gap.
So skills management deserves your complete attention. And like many manufacturing activities, digital solutions await that can make the job of overseeing and deploying skills much easier.
In this post, learn:
Why digital beats analog for skill management
Skill management is like many other industrial activities; it’s traditionally been a paper-based, analog practice.
The good old fashioned whiteboard comes to mind. The way skill matrices are displayed here, on grids with a simple legend, make them easy to digest and give an immediate indication of available resources to team managers.
ILUO assessments are often listed for each available employee, with more detailed information stored either on spreadsheets, in filing cabinets, or in the heads of supervisors.
In principle, there’s nothing wrong with this. Factories require a lot of labour, and it’s not always possible or practical to display anything more detailed for a large group of employees.
Where the problem lies is in the flow and cadence of information as it makes its way to the board. Then, how this board is updated to reflect the realities of your team.
No matter how hard you try, you will always run into problems when you’re using paper and boards.
Let’s say a member of staff operating a machine on line 3 calls in sick. You need to know as soon as possible who can take over this post. Relying on outdated spreadsheets, or even your whiteboard, will give you only a vague idea of the capabilities of your candidates.
Select one, and it might turn out that the last time they operated this machine was 6 months ago. Being out of practice means they’re more likely to cause rework issues, or even unplanned stoppages.
Plus, it may turn out you’ve let a key certification elapse. Many responsibilities and roles require periodic reevaluation and recertification. An analog system makes it more likely you’ll let these time-limited documents expire.
The failure here is not in your staff member. It’s in your system.
With a digital system for skill management, you can know in seconds who is best placed to run the machine. Beyond that, you’ll know who trained them and when, according to a standardized training procedure, which you can update and monitor from within the system.
Which gets us on to the next point.
The many benefits of digital skill management
The skills gap is driving greater investment in digital technology, according to research from the UK. Some 44% of manufacturers have been looking to bridge skill gaps with software and tools.
And the capabilities of this technology go far beyond day-to-day admin challenges. A digital system will help you unlock many more benefits. Let’s go through them.
Eliminating guesswork
The example we cited above of the missing machine operator depends a little too much on instinct and making a good guess.
The fact is that you need to be certain of the competencies of your staff, and all the skills you can draw on at a critical moment. This isn’t possible with an analog system. It relies too much on manual input into a rigid system.
A traceable, malleable digital interface allows you to check down to the minute when an employee was last trained or used a machine. Their skill profile is displayed, giving you a fuller picture of where they could be deployed in the future, and where they might need extra training.
It’ll save you time, and it could prevent accidents or waste too.
Mitigating risks
Critical operational risks can be identified much more easily and clearly with a digital system.
If you find that only one person is certified to perform a quality check or complex machine setup, you’ll know about it. This gives you the opportunity to prioritize cross-training and get more staff available to support in the event of absence or turn over.
You can’t afford to have a single point of failure anywhere on your line. It reduces the predictability of your performance, creates operational risks, and will ultimately put a strain on this team member that may cause them to move elsewhere.
Because keeping your capable people happy is an important part of skill management, too.
Putting people first
Your people need to be motivated to perform well. And nothing kills motivation more than stagnation.
Workers feel stagnation in their job if they see no opportunities for development. A digital skill management system can therefore deliver benefits for both managers and employees.
By incentivizing and enabling managers to improve the core competencies of line workers to achieve better business results, you create a much healthier environment for personal development, too.
For example, the need to get more people trained up to cover a critical operational risk will represent an opportunity for staff looking to branch out a little and take on new responsibilities.
A major area of concern for many workers in 2025 is the need to develop more digital skills.
Increased productivity
Studies show that digitizing workforce management leads directly to productivity gains due to several factors.
The TWI institute reports that training time can be cut by around 50% with the aid of digital tools. Meanwhile, research from McKinsey shows a potential 40% overall efficiency gain thanks to this technology.
Being able to standardize training according to proven lean principles reduces errors, decreases training time, and increases competencies evenly across your team.
The KPIs to watch
Digital skill management is a long term win in terms of retention of staff, creating a lean culture, and reducing dependencies on individuals. However, this shouldn’t discount the gains you could notice in the short term.
Keep a look out for any new tool’s effect on the following KPIs; the most likely to improve almost immediately.
First Pass Yield
Introducing a digital system for skill management should deliver rapid improvements to First Pass Yield or Right First Time metrics, alongside a reduction in your Scrap and Rework Rate.
Let’s imagine you have a critical sealing station on your assembly line. An incorrect application could cause leaks, a quality defect you could do without.
Now imagine the work standard was updated last month with a new technique. A staff member whose last training was 6 months ago will be unaware of this, and produce greater waste. You need the latest data on training and work instructions to avoid this, otherwise you risk a high scrap rate.
Your digital system gives you the data you need instantly. Being able to, with certainty, assign a fully certified operator will very quickly increase your First Pass Yield results.
Unplanned downtime
You can now respond much more quickly to unforeseen changes and disruptions, particularly with personnel.
An unexpected absence shouldn’t be a blocker if you’re managing your resources properly.
Analog systems, however, aren’t dynamic and searchable enough to provide information quickly. This means you inevitably experience delays in changeovers.
A digital system will naturally reduce downtime because finding the right person for the job will take less than a minute. This is the kind of improvement you can get used to very quickly, but which will have a significant long-term effect on your overall efficiency.
Because even an hour of unplanned downtime can cost as much as $260,000. Reducing this risk is worth paying for.
The importance of motivating staff
It’s undeniable: you need to feel progress and variety to stay motivated. So you won’t get the best from your people unless you put them first.
Digital skill management allows you to improve conditions for your employees and help them avoid stagnation in their professional lives.
A 2023 Forbes report identified that the lack of a clear career path was behind 24% of staff resignations. This is something you can mitigate with better skill management.
For instance, with training and competency standards clearly intelligible and accessible to line staff, they’ll be able to see what they need to do to progress to a higher pay band.
Standardized training will allow them to much more easily shift across lines and work patterns by eliminating discrepancies and ensuring everyone skilled up has access to the same information.
And crucially, having transparent and reasonably objective parameters for success along the line taps into a key source of motivation.
As Daniel H Pink wrote in his book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, the human desire for ‘mastery’ of a worthwhile task or skill is a critical ingredient to what drives us.
By improving how you manage, nurture, and measure skill along the line, you can help staff feel these emotional benefits of mastery, while also ensuring that your assessments of individuals are less prone to bias.
Because unless you consistently apply clear standards in assessment, resentment can build. If employees feel like their contribution and talent is being ignored, while others benefit from the imbalance, it can ruin your team’s cohesion. And these people may want out.
Solve the issue with standardization, regular training routines, and clear progression paths, and you’ll have a more motivated team that is more likely to stay together.
Deploying staff smarter
Your new skill management regime will reveal hidden competencies in your team. The data you’re getting from the system will help you deploy your staff much more efficiently and sensibly to take advantage of these talents.
Because if you have a digital method for cataloging and developing the skills at your disposal, it’s never static.
And a digital visual standard display will allow you to show how top operatives perform work at that station.
The issue of absenteeism in manufacturing is being addressed by many employers as a top priority. As studies suggest, increased investment in wellbeing programs and incentive schemes is helping to reduce the problem.
However, if you’re managing a workforce of hundreds or even thousands, it will never disappear. All you can do is be ready when a critical team member can’t make it into work.
Digital skill management helps here by allowing you to much more accurately make safe and efficient contingency plans for absence.
If someone doesn’t turn up for work, you can search and filter available operatives by their competencies, last training times, and where they’re currently working. All this would take some time with a traditional system, and some critical information may have been missing.
Now, the problem can be solved in minutes.
Learn more about digital skill management
Skill Matrix, Visual Standard, and Standard Work Audit are all features of the mlean Production System (mPS). The mPS is designed to help grow and maintain a culture of continuous improvement at your factory, from shop floor to office.
It digitalizes critical processes and routines to help you gain more control and improve the efficiency of your operations. And because it’s modular, you get a package of tools tailored to your needs as a factory or corporate group.
Learn more about the mPS through a discovery call with our team. After learning a little bit about your set up, they’ll run you through exactly how the mPS could help you improve your skill management alongside other core work areas.
