Machinery Training Challenges Solved with a Video Training Platform

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), organizations lose more than $1 billion weekly dealing with serious workplace injuries. So, how many serious work-related injuries take place? Well, 2.8 million such incidents took place in 2022. Yes, you read it right.In light of the severe workplace injuries and illnesses above, OSHA mandates that businesses conduct employee health and safety training. This includes training employees to handle complex machinery to prevent potential dangers to workers' physical safety. This means that companies have no choice but to train employees for health and safety at the workplace.

Machinery video training is essential for safety and efficiency in any production environment. Poor training results in low efficiency and many accidents at work. The need for advanced training through a manufacturing video training platform has never been more critical, mainly because this sector has more automation potential compared to less operations-intensive industries.

However, the challenges of machinery training in manufacturing are multifaceted. The good news is that these challenges can be addressed using a manufacturing video training platform. A video training platform offers a centralized, accessible library that helps maintain OSHA compliance through effective employee training.

In this blog, we will discuss the challenges of manufacturing machinery training, the pain points of company management, and how a manufacturing video training platform helps address them.

Understanding the Challenges of Machinery Training in Manufacturing

The complexity of machinery installed in the manufacturing facilities leads to significant employee training challenges in manufacturing. The following are some of the critical issues faced during machinery training in the industry:

Complexity of Modern Machinery

Modern manufacturing machinery and equipment are becoming more sophisticated and detailed due to the emergence of innovative technologies and advancements in the manufacturing process. While this is good for the overall business, it creates a challenge for machine operators who should thoroughly understand these machines, as they are highly complex in their operations and maintenance routines.

However, a major skills gap frequently prevents companies from fully adopting and integrating advanced technologies that enable process optimization and productivity enhancement. If adequate training is lacking, operating such complex systems becomes difficult, reducing efficiency and hurting output levels. It is important to emphasize that employees need frequent, periodic training to use machines effectively and, most importantly, safely.

High Turnover Rates and Continuous Training Needs

High employee turnover within the manufacturing industry poses a serious challenge to the overall effectiveness of training programs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 354 hirings were made in May 2024 in the manufacturing sector, while 352 separations were recorded in the same month.

With each new hire, extensive, time-consuming training needs to be conducted, slowing operations and putting additional stress on existing employees. This makes this continuous training cycle expensive and disruptive, highlighting the need for effective, scalable employee video training solutions that quickly bring new hires up to speed without impacting productivity.

Geographical Disparities in Training

Training a geographically dispersed workforce presents its own set of challenges, particularly for global manufacturing companies. Think of the likes of General Electric, 3M, and DuPont. Ensuring consistent training quality across various locations can be difficult, leading to significant variations in employee competency.

Different regions may face varying training resources, including training instructors and materials, resulting in uneven application of the manufacturing facility's best practices and safety standards. This inconsistency affects operational efficiency and raises concerns about uniform adherence to safety protocols and regulatory requirements.

Safety, Compliance, and Regulatory Concerns

Comprehensive training is crucial for ensuring that employees adhere to safety regulations and compliance standards. Employee video training can address compliances related to manufacturing. For example, a manufacturing video training platform can help meet most requirements such as safety procedures, hazard identification, detailed instructions on machine guarding, PPE use, and emergency response protocols of the OSHA standards. Similarly, it facilitates fulfilling other compliances such as ANSI standards, EPA regulations, etc.

Maintaining safety regulations is essential for manufacturing companies. Failure to do so results in fines, legal action, or even reputational damage. Poor training results in accidents, injuries, and high legal and financial breakage risks. The most effective training programs should be developed to reduce the issue and ensure each staff member is prepared to learn about required regulations and workplace safety.

Cost and Time Constraints of Training Methods

Traditional in-person training methods often involve substantial financial and time constraints. Organizing and conducting these training sessions can be expensive, particularly when factoring in the costs of trainers, materials, and lost productivity.

While training institutions provide modern solutions like simulation-based training, they are highly expensive. As a result, finding cost-effective and efficient training methods becomes essential for managing budget constraints and employee training needs.

Language Barriers and Lack of Understanding

Companies are increasingly embracing a multicultural workforce, hailing from different backgrounds and speaking languages other than English. This creates a challenge around the effectiveness of the manufacturing employee training program. With up to 430 languages spoken and 68 million English as a Second Language (ESL) speakers in the US, manufacturing training programs should be designed to adapt to different language speakers.

If you don't take an adaptive approach, this creates significant language barriers that translate into a lack of understanding of the knowledge provided to employees handling the machinery and equipment. With issues in the interpretation and communication of the training material from both the employee's and the instructor's side, employees are at risk of getting harmed at the workplace.

Difficulty in Measuring Training Effectiveness

Measuring the effectiveness of employee training programs becomes highly difficult. Although different key performance indicators (KPIs) and other metrics are implemented, evaluating the learning performance of employees in face-to-face or in-person training can be biased, depending on the training program instructor.

This also depends on the number of data points. It is a no-brainer for you to understand that accurately measuring the effectiveness of employee training programs requires multiple data points for a granular analysis. However, it is not easy to manually keep track of each and every data point, leading to inaccurate evaluation.

How Manufacturing Video Training Platform Overcomes Machinery Training Challenges

A video content management system helps in overcoming machinery training challenges in several ways, including:

Centralized Training Repository

A manufacturing video training platform provides a centralized platform for storing, managing, and accessing training materials. Any content created or uploaded on the platform is stored in one location, making 'sharing' with various groups easy. Moreover, it ensures that every employee receives the same high-quality instruction regardless of their location.

The platform helps store different content formats, such as videos, documents, quizzes, etc., suitable for varying learning styles in one place. By centralizing training resources, a video training platform eliminates discrepancies from varying training practices at different sites. Moreover, you can also organize the content into collections and playlists.

Access to a Global Workforce

Accessing and streaming machinery training video content is quite challenging for a global employee base. This is why a manufacturing video training platform that supports major content delivery networks (CDNs) or enterprise CDNs helps global employees stream manufacturing training videos without experiencing interruptions or high video load times.

This way, employees can get the same occupational health and safety training and learning experience in the manufacturing industry, no matter where they are located. Along with capabilities such as encoding, transcoding, and adaptive bitrate streaming, the video can be accessed on any device, regardless of the Internet bandwidth limitations. Overcoming language barriers is also easy since advanced video training platforms come with automatic transcription and translation capabilities to adapt to the needs of a global workforce.

Cost-effective Training

With a manufacturing video training platform, you do not need to burn extensive resources to arrange a location that can accommodate everyone, find a training expert, produce content regularly, etc. Imagine how much you can save by simply adopting video-based training.

Also, with an advanced video training platform, you can minimize your training content's search and retrieval costs by using AI-powered search, which searches content through spoken words, AI tags, objects, and text in videos and faceted search.

Interactive and Engaging Video Content

Machines are complex, and their training is even more complicated. It is very demanding and tiring for the brain, requiring extensive cognitive processing of the materials by your employees. This is why they usually experience a drop in focus or level of engagement during in-person training. Constructive learning requires high levels of engagement, especially when dealing with complex machinery.

A manufacturing video training platform excels at developing interactive and engaging manufacturing training videos that boost employee engagement and retention. Interactivity features, such as adding in-video quizzes, forms, handouts, and annotations, make learning dynamic and effective.

Comprehensive Tracking and Analytics

You should understand how employees are engaging with the training material. A video training platform offers granular analytics and tracking capabilities to evaluate the learning outcome. It provides insights into areas where each employee is weak, training completed by each employee, well-performing content, and a lot more.

With detailed user-level and real-time analytics, the effectiveness of video training comes to light and highlights where additional emphasis needs to be placed. This would help companies refine and enhance their learning programs toward better performance. A video training platform lets you incorporate surveys or forms into video content to collect feedback for online manufacturing training. This results in increased productivity if post-training feedback is taken seriously and acted on.

Automatic Issuance of Completion Certificates

Rewarding employees is of utmost importance in an employee training platform. Especially when the subject of training is complex and is a matter of life and death to employees in the manufacturing industry, it becomes even more important to recognize the workforce's efforts.

However, this can be challenging, especially when your company size is huge. The good news is that a manufacturing video training platform automatically rewards successful employees enrolled in the training program by issuing course completion certificates as employees progress through each module. This also keeps them motivated to complete the training program.

Summing it Up

The manufacturing video training platform solves the multifaceted employee training challenges. It provides a centralized hub for training resources, ensuring uniform and readily accessible content across all sites. The platform's interactive and engaging video features enhance employee involvement and retention, while its on-demand accessibility supports training for global teams. Additionally, robust analytics facilitate progress tracking.

As you move into the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0, mastering the integration of physical and digital technologies becomes crucial. A manufacturing video training platform for machinery training is essential for navigating this new era. It helps tackle employee training challenges in manufacturing and adapt to evolving technological demands. This platform allows organizations to equip their workforce with the skills needed to excel in this interconnected and advanced technological landscape.

People Also Ask

What is a manufacturing video training platform?

A manufacturing video training platform is designed to manage, organize, and deliver video content. In manufacturing training, a video training platform acts as a central hub for storing and distributing instructional videos, safety videos, documents, quizzes, and related content. It simplifies the access and shareability of training materials, ensuring they are readily available to employees across various locations.

How can a manufacturing video training platform improve employee training?

A manufacturing video training platform enhances employee training by offering engaging and interactive content in a centralized repository accessible anytime and anywhere. It ensures consistency in training delivery and helps standardize procedures across multiple locations. Additionally, it offers analytical tools for tracking progress and assessing knowledge to identify areas for improvement.

Can a video training platform integrate with third-party applications?

Yes, a video training platform can easily integrate with third-party applications, including video conferencing applications, analytics and tracking tools, content management systems (CMS), and more.

How does a video training platform overcome language barriers in the workforce?

A video training platform overcomes language barriers in the workforce and handles multilingual requirements for effective employee training through automatic multilingual transcription and translation capabilities for training video content.

What kind of analytics does a video training platform provide for evaluating training programs?

A video training platform offers granular video analytics for evaluating the effectiveness of training programs and employees' performance in terms of engagement trends, user-level analytics, audience analytics, content interaction data, interactivity trends, top media analytics, and more.