The Manufacturing Training Challenge Isn’t New — It’s Just Getting Harder

Manufacturers are feeling the pressure of a shrinking labor pool and rising training demands. Experienced operators are retiring, new hires are arriving with less hands-on experience, and production schedules don’t leave room for long learning curves.

A recent conversation between Tod Virden of GrayMatter and Mickey Shaposhnik of Next Plus highlighted how digital work instructions help manufacturers respond to operator needs without adding friction on the factory floor.

Training at Scale Without Sacrificing Quality or Safety

Training at scale has always been difficult in manufacturing.

Traditional training methods — paper SOPs, binders, and job shadowing — make it hard to achieve that consistency. Procedures are often written away from the production line, revised repeatedly, and still fail to match how work is actually performed.

Digital work instructions bring that specificity directly into daily operations, helping manufacturers maintain quality and safety even as teams grow or turn over.

“All work should be highly specific in its timing, sequence, content, and outcome,” Virden said.

Why Digital Work Instructions Change How Training Happens

Much of traditional training assumes people will remember what they were taught long after the session ends.

“Training shouldn’t rely on memory. The instruction should be there while the work is being done,” Shaposhnik said.

Digital work instructions shift learning into the flow of work. Operators receive guidance in the form of images, short videos, or prompts at the exact moment a task is performed.

This just-in-time approach reduces cognitive load, shortens ramp-up time, and helps new employees gain confidence faster.

Making Every Operator Perform Like Your Best Operator

Consistency becomes harder as experience levels vary.

“The goal is to take what your best operator knows and make it available to everyone,” Shaposhnik said.

By standardizing timing, sequence, and outcomes, digital work instructions reduce variability across shifts and sites. When everyone follows the same guided process, quality improves, rework declines, and expectations become clearer.

This becomes especially important when onboarding new workers or supporting multilingual teams.

Giving Engineers and Supervisors Their Time Back

Documentation often pulls skilled people away from higher-value work.

“Process engineers should be doing process engineering, not spending weeks writing SOPs,” Virden said.

Digital work instructions make it easier to capture work as it actually happens and keep it current. That reduces back-and-forth revisions and frees engineers and supervisors to focus on continuous improvement rather than document maintenance.

Closing the Labor Gap by Supporting People, Not Replacing Them

At their core, digital work instructions aren’t about replacing workers or removing human judgment.

“This isn’t about turning people into robots. It’s about removing unnecessary decisions so people can succeed,” Shaposhnik said.

By embedding knowledge directly into daily operations, manufacturers can make real progress closing the labor gap without slowing production or relying solely on tribal knowledge.