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Why Traditional Methods Aren't Enough
America is entering a new era of reindustrialization. Beyond the construction of new factories and the return of supply chains, the real challenge is rebuilding the deep manufacturing knowledge and expertise that has eroded over decades. It is not enough to add machines and automation. What matters is restoring the practical understanding of how to run them, how to perfect processes, and how to transfer that mastery to the next generation. Reindustrialization is as much about creating a living network of operational knowledge as it is about physical infrastructure, ensuring that skills, safety, and productivity advance together to secure America's leadership in manufacturing.
The pace of change in these industries is accelerating. By 2030, 54% of the workplace in advanced manufacturing will require training to meet evolving skill demands. New technologies, stricter compliance regulations, and increasingly complex equipment require workers to be more skilled, adaptable, and autonomous. Meeting these demands will be a challenge without change, as 71% of U.S. manufacturers already struggle with workforce stability.
The outlook is bleak, as the manufacturing labor pool is aging rapidly. The percentage of employees over 55 has increased from 12% in 1995 to 26% today. In the aerospace industry, the situation is even more dire. The average age of a certified aircraft mechanic in the U.S. is 54, and 40% of them are over the age of 60. Manufacturing is already seeing the impacts of ineffective labor strategies. For over fourteen years, the sector has faced a period of stagnation, with labor productivity declining by 3.5% since its peak in 2011. In contrast, labor productivity across all non-farm sectors has grown by 22% during the same timeframe. While multiple factors influence productivity, such as capital investment levels and industry transitions, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of New York indicates that these factors alone do not fully explain the persistent decline in manufacturing. As such, frontline talent innovation and workforce development are viewed as a strong strategy for enhancing labor productivity.
Learning Management Systems are beneficial for broad training, compliance, and certifications. They are effective for delivering standardized knowledge across a wide range of roles. But they are not built for the realities of operational knowledge. They do not capture the know-how in people's heads, the specifics of SOPs, or the procedures unique to your line and machines. Most importantly, they cannot deliver that knowledge in a way that workers can apply in the flow of work.
What matters most on the floor is not another general training course but the ability to access and apply operational knowledge that improves safety, quality, delivery, and cost every single day.
Learning Management Systems (LMS) have long been the foundation of corporate training. They're effective for delivering structured learning content, tracking completion, and ensuring compliance, especially in regulated industries. For these reasons, LMS platforms continue to play an integral role in the broader training ecosystem, which is why investment in LMS systems is expected to grow at a 17.1% CAGR over the next seven years.
However, that is not the complete story. The corporate sector makes up 30% of LMS users, while the education sector is a high-growth area for the platform. These systems are primarily designed to support employees who work behind the desk, rather than those on the floor or in the field.
These systems weren't built to support real-time problem-solving, capture on-the-job expertise, or deliver guidance in the flow of work. To enable frontline performance, organizations need to complement their LMS with agile, embedded solutions that support execution—not just education.
Here's where LMS platforms fall short for frontline teams:
LMS platforms have never been the only method for scaling workforce knowledge. Manufacturers rely on a mix of classroom instruction, manuals, mentorship, and pre-skilled hires. But each of these approaches has severe limitations when it comes to transferring expert knowledge.
Classroom Training: While structured and hands-on, classroom sessions are costly, time-consuming, and require workers to be pulled away from the floor. Also, knowledge retention suffers when training isn't immediately applied. Sixty-eight percent of employees want to learn on the job, and half of workers (49%) prefer to learn when necessary, not before.
Text-Based Manuals: Static and often outdated, these manuals are difficult to use under pressure. Physical copies are confined to physical locations, making them frequently overlooked and ineffective in multilingual environments.
Mentorship & Shadowing: Though valuable, this method doesn't scale. One mentor can support only a limited number of workers. Mentorship may build skills, but it slows productivity when your most experienced people are taken off the job.
Pre-Skilled Workers: Even with a technical education, new hires still require factory-specific training. Certifications don't account for unique machines, workflows, or safety standards on the floor.
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) have captured attention with their promise of immersive training experiences, simulations, and interactive overlays that replicate hands-on learning without the risks of real-world environments. On the surface, they offer a compelling vision for the future of workforce development.
But the reality is far less seamless. The high cost of hardware, the time and resources required to develop custom content, and the need for complex integrations make it difficult for AR/VR to scale beyond pilot programs.
Implementation often takes months. Even when deployed, adoption can still be a challenge. Many frontline workers are reluctant to wear headsets, citing discomfort, fatigue, and motion sickness as reasons for their reluctance. Up to 25% of users experience motion sickness, with women being more susceptible than men.
The tools themselves struggle to adapt to the variability and complexity of real-world operations, and current platforms lack the maturity and flexibility needed to support large, diverse workforces. For most manufacturers, AR and VR remain promising but impractical. They are better suited for niche scenarios than as a scalable, everyday solution for enabling frontline teams.
Scaling operational knowledge doesn't require a massive overhaul, but it does require more than traditional training methods. While foundational tools like classroom instruction and LMS platforms serve essential purposes, they fall short because they separate learning from work. What is needed, in addition, is a way to capture, share, and apply knowledge directly within the flow of the job so workers can access the guidance they need exactly when and where they need it.
It starts with making expert knowledge easy to capture—not as a one-time event, but as an ongoing process. Teams need to easily record how tasks are performed and transform static documents into bite-sized, searchable resources.
That knowledge then needs to be instantly accessible, available on mobile devices, in multiple languages, and delivered in a way that aligns with how workers naturally absorb information.
Access alone isn't enough. To ensure knowledge translates into action, organizations must validate that it's being applied through assigned tasks and completed with visual verification.
And finally, knowledge must scale. It should be shared effortlessly across teams and locations, becoming an integral part of daily work.
When learning becomes continuous, embedded, and operationally relevant, it empowers people. That's how expert know-how is built sustainably and at scale.
Companies have ERPs for data, CRMs for customers, and LMSs for training. But where does your operational knowledge live — the tacit, undocumented, unstructured expertise that drives your frontline and operations? An Operational Knowledge Management Platform is where that knowledge is captured, structured, and activated. It becomes the platform layer for your expertise, turning what was once trapped in people’s heads, paper manuals, and siloed systems into an accessible resource that drives productivity, safety, quality, and engagement.
An Operational Knowledge Management Platform embeds continuous learning into daily work. It is not traditional training, but learning through repetition, practice, and in-the-moment access to the correct information, delivered in ways that match how workers actually consume knowledge. Unlike an LMS that serves static content and tests, this platform captures expertise at the source and makes it usable on the floor.
Think of a field instruction manual with pictures, tables, and steps. Now take that manual, upload it into the platform, and suddenly you can zoom into images, dive into tables of error codes, and access risk notifications tied directly to the procedure steps. If a machine throws an error, a worker can enter the code and instantly be guided through the fix, supported by visual steps and video segments.
With mobile devices, workers retrieve the knowledge they need in the moment, in their preferred language, and in formats they can absorb quickly. Whether they need a short video, visual steps, or task-specific guidance, the platform ensures they get answers without interrupting their workflow.
Companies that adopt this approach are seeing measurable results. International Wire has created over a thousand operational videos, shared across its plants, resulting in fewer downtime incidents. ArcelorMittal uncovered gaps between written SOPs and actual practices, leading to a 49 percent reduction in delay incidents and a 78 percent reduction in safety incidents once procedures were updated and digitized.
Validation is built into the platform. Tasks can be assigned and completed with photo or video confirmation, which the AI can verify, thus ensuring work is performed according to standards.
The change of workflow builds repetition, and repetition builds knowledge. ISAIC reported that the ability to watch a section of a video repeatedly, until they comprehended the steps, was a significant benefit and preferred by their employees. Anheuser-Busch InBev employed videos to transfer their expert know-how to reduce onboarding time from 18 months to 4 months across more than 100 breweries worldwide.
Most importantly, an Operational Knowledge Management Platform enables the scaling of knowledge across the entire enterprise. What is captured in one plant can be shared across sites, shifts, and teams, eliminating the need to send top experts to every location. The platform integrates seamlessly into a manufacturer's existing ecosystem, working alongside systems already in place, such as Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Quality Management Systems (QMS), and Learning Management Systems (LMS). Companies do not have to replace the tools they rely on if they already meet their needs. Instead, the platform connects to and enhances them by embedding operational knowledge into them.
When knowledge is captured, structured, and continuously delivered through an Operational Knowledge Management Platform, organizations create a living system that grows with their workforce. Stanley Black & Decker captured over 30 years of expertise to transfer critical knowledge and used it to engage new generations of workers, simplifying roles, supporting career development, and improving retention.
To evaluate the impact of training and operational enablement, manufacturers must focus on SQDC metrics, not course completions or training hours. Safety incidents, product quality, delivery performance, and operating costs are the true indicators of whether workforce investments are making a difference. These are the measures that reflect stronger operations, a more capable workforce, and sustained competitiveness.
With an Operational Knowledge Management Platform, manufacturers can improve:
The reindustrialization of America is underway. New factories, advanced technologies, and reshored supply chains are fueling a manufacturing resurgence. Yet the challenge is not only in building plants, but in rebuilding the operational expertise needed to run them. Decades of offshoring and an aging workforce nearing retirement mean that critical skills and knowledge are at risk of being lost just as the demand for them rises.
Traditional approaches such as Learning Management Systems (LMS), classroom training, and mentorship are not designed to meet this moment. They handle general knowledge and compliance, but they do not capture or deliver the plant-specific, line-specific, and machine-specific expertise that keeps operations running.
An Operational Knowledge Management Platform provides the foundation for this new era of manufacturing. By capturing expertise directly from manuals, processes, and experienced employees, structuring it into step-by-step digital guidance, and making it instantly accessible on the floor, it ensures that critical knowledge is preserved, scaled, and applied in daily work.
The payoff is not measured in course completions or training hours. It is measured in SQDC outcomes: safer workplaces, higher quality, reliable delivery, and lower costs. Reindustrialization is about building new capacity and ensuring a workforce equipped with the knowledge to run it effectively, now and into the future.
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