The role of middle management in change processes

„They all don't want to get their hands dirty anymore“ – head of a maintenance plant of an international European railway.

The skilled-worker shortage is on everyone's lips and concerns many industries – maintenance too. Ever fewer young people decide on a training in this area. At the same time, digitalization advances rapidly and puts maintenance before new challenges. A vicious circle?

The maintenance profession in transition:

For a long time, maintenance was regarded as dirty and strenuous. An image that makes it hard to win young talent. Yet maintenance today is, more than ever, an exciting and diverse professional field. Modern plants and machines require technical know-how and IT knowledge. Digitalization and automation enter the factories and change the working world of maintenance staff. Why the vacant positions are still hard to fill has several reasons:

• The digital divide between private life and profession 
  In private life we're long since surrounded by digital technologies. Smartphones, smart homes and digital assistants have become a matter of course for many. In professional life, especially in maintenance, digitalization often lags behind. This discrepancy makes the profession less attractive for young, technology-affine people. It's high time to drive the digital transformation forward in maintenance too – and that not only in order to shape the professional field more appealingly and lucratively for young talent.

   

• The generational change as a challenge and opportunity
  On the one hand, a heterogeneous user base arises, reaching from digital natives to experienced employees with lower IT affinity, which puts companies before the task of deploying all employees according to their abilities and skills and continuously further educating and developing them. On the other hand, valuable knowledge is admittedly lost with the departure of experienced skilled workers, but this change at the same time offers the possibility to establish new technologies and ways of working. Young maintenance staff bring fresh ideas and digital competencies that are indispensable for the modernization of the professional field and can help to shape the transition to a digitalized and future-oriented maintenance

The two pillars of the future: Attractiveness and efficiency 

In order to counter the skilled-worker shortage, work has to be done on two fronts: 
1. Shape the profession more interestingly in order to win more employees. Digitalization acts here as an answer to the skilled-worker shortage 
 

• AI and remote work revolutionize maintenance. Artificial intelligence and the possibility of remote maintenance make the profession of the maintenance worker more future-oriented. AI-supported systems can predict maintenance needs and support with error diagnosis. Remote work enables maintenance staff to solve problems from a distance and to work more flexibly.
• Automation creates room for exciting tasks. By automation taking over routine tasks, more time remains for complex and interesting challenges. Maintenance staff can concentrate on demanding problem solving and the optimization of plants and technical systems.

2. Through digitalization, to fulfill the requirements with less personnel but the same quality standard too. Here an efficiency increase through IoT and AI is the solution.

The Internet of Things (IoT) enables delivering the same quality with less personnel. Networked machines deliver real-time data that allow a precise maintenance planning. AI systems can, for example, analyze this data and give recommendations for action, whereby fewer experts on site are needed. 

The grandega interim conclusion: The maintenance worker of the future works in a smaller team and is a digital expert who uses technology in order to optimize plants and solve problems innovatively.

 

Obstacles of digitalization

So why hasn't every company that needs maintenance of its machines jumped on the digitalization train yet? The reason is that companies that want to digitalize their maintenance face various challenges:

• High investment costs for new technologies
• Necessity of further qualification of employees
• Data protection and security requirements
• Adaptation of the IT infrastructure (e.g. cloud platforms for data integration)

This list isn't exhaustive, but comprises the essential hurdles that have to be considered. 

 

Finding the right digitalization strategy:

The choice of the suitable digitalization strategy depends on several factors, among others:

• on the company strategy
• on the available budget
• on the existing IT landscape
• on the complexity and structure of the technical plants

In addition, the priorities of the company play an important role:

• Does the focus lie on increasing the efficiency, reliability or availability of the plants?
• Is an integration of future digital maintenance solutions into the existing IT landscape possible or absolutely necessary?
• Or are other aspects in the foreground?

The grandega conclusion: Digitalization as the key to the future of maintenance

Digitalization fundamentally changes maintenance too. Whoever seriously engages with the new technologies can use the opportunities and hold their own in the competition. The profession of the maintenance worker becomes more future-oriented and more attractive, which contributes to countering the skilled-worker shortage.

At the same time, digitalization enables a more efficient way of working that allows the company to counter the challenges of the personnel shortage. Companies, however, have to weigh carefully which digitalization strategy suits their specific needs and possibilities in order to be successful in the long term. grandega is the right partner here to catapult your maintenance into the 21st century.