Solving Machinery Training Challenges with a Video Training Platform

by Nohad Ahsan, Last updated: March 5, 2025

Construction workers looking at a manufacturing video training platform

Machinery Training Challenges Solved with Video Training Platform

20:12

This blog explores how Video Training Platforms can solve the challenges of machinery training in manufacturing. It discusses the difficulties of training a diverse workforce on complex machinery, and how video-based solutions offer scalable, accessible, and cost-effective training methods to improve safety, compliance, and productivity.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), organizations lose more than $1 billion weekly due to serious workplace injuries, with 2.8 million incidents occurring in 2022 alone, employers reported 2.6 million injury and illness cases in private industry for 2023. As a result, OSHA mandates that businesses conduct comprehensive employee health and safety training, particularly in handling complex machinery to ensure worker safety. This makes it critical for companies to invest in robust machinery training solutions to prevent accidents and improve overall operational efficiency.

Machinery video training is essential for both safety and efficiency in production environments. Poor training results in low efficiency and accidents at work, underlining the need for an advanced, scalable solution like a Video Training Platform. The manufacturing industry, with its vast potential for automation, stands to benefit greatly from integrating a Video Training Platform that provides on-demand training for workers, ensuring they are well-prepared to operate complex machinery safely and effectively.

The challenges of machinery training in manufacturing are multifaceted. The good news is that these challenges can be overcome by leveraging a manufacturing video training platform. A Video Training Platform offers a centralized, accessible library for video-based training that helps companies meet OSHA compliance through effective employee education.

In this blog, we’ll dive into the challenges of machinery training, pain points for company management, and how a Video Training Platform addresses these issues.

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 (VCMS) plays a critical role in overcoming the challenges of machinery training in the manufacturing industry. Here’s how video training platforms can help address these common issues:

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.

Meeting OSHA Compliance with Video Training Platforms

Maintaining compliance with safety regulations, especially OSHA standards, is crucial for manufacturing companies to ensure the well-being of employees and avoid legal and financial risks. Traditional in-person training methods often struggle to provide consistent and up-to-date instruction across various locations, leading to potential gaps in safety knowledge and an increased risk of workplace injuries. This is where a Video Training Platform becomes an invaluable tool in ensuring safety compliance.

Video training platforms offer a scalable solution that allows businesses to create and distribute training content that is consistent, standardized, and compliant with OSHA regulations. These platforms can deliver training on critical topics such as hazard identification, machine guarding, PPE usage, and emergency response protocols.

With interactive features like quizzes, certifications, and progress tracking, these platforms also provide a clear audit trail, making it easier for companies to prove that they are meeting regulatory requirements. By using a video training platform, organizations can ensure that employees are always up-to-date with the latest safety protocols and compliance standards, significantly reducing the risk of violations and enhancing workplace safety.

Yamaha Enhances Employee Training with VIDIZMO’s Video Training Platform

Yamaha faced significant challenges in providing consistent and efficient training across its global workforce, particularly in one branch that required seamless monthly live broadcasts for employee education. The need to track learner engagement and provide downloadable resources alongside training videos made traditional methods inadequate.

By adopting VIDIZMO's EnterpriseTube, Yamaha was able to streamline its training process, offering an easily accessible, searchable video library. Employees could not only watch training content but also download important documents directly from the videos, providing a more interactive and comprehensive learning experience.

With EnterpriseTube, Yamaha was able to overcome technical difficulties associated with live broadcasts, ensuring smooth, uninterrupted sessions that reached every employee. The platform’s built-in tracking capabilities allowed Yamaha to monitor employee engagement with the training materials, giving managers valuable insights into how content was being received and areas that needed improvement. By leveraging Microsoft Azure Cloud, Yamaha ensured their training platform was secure, scalable, and flexible, allowing for future expansion as their training needs grew.

Key Takeaways

The manufacturing video training platform addresses multifaceted employee training challenges by offering:

A centralized hub for training resources, ensuring consistent and accessible content across all sites.
Interactive and engaging video features that enhance employee involvement and retention.
On-demand accessibility, allowing for effective training across global teams.
Robust analytics to track progress and evaluate training effectiveness.

As the industry moves into the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0):

Mastering the integration of physical and digital technologies is crucial for success.
A video training platform for machinery training is essential to navigate this new era.
These platforms help tackle employee training challenges and adapt to evolving technological demands.
They provide organizations with the tools to equip their workforce with the skills needed to thrive in an interconnected and technology-driven landscape.

Empowering Manufacturing Training with Video-Based Solutions

In the fast-paced and ever-evolving manufacturing sector, ensuring effective machinery training is not just important—it's essential. The challenges of complex machinery, high turnover rates, geographical disparities, safety compliance, and cost constraints require a robust solution. Video Training Platforms provide an ideal solution, offering scalable, cost-effective, and engaging training that meets both operational and safety requirements. By centralizing training content, improving accessibility, and ensuring compliance with OSHA and other industry standards, these platforms are revolutionizing employee development in the manufacturing industry.

As companies embrace the fourth industrial revolution and navigate an increasingly digital landscape, adopting a Video Training Platform is not just beneficial—it's a necessity. Ensure your workforce is equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed, no matter where they are located.

Start Your Free Trial Today!

Transform your machinery training and ensure OSHA compliance with a Video Training Platform. Get started with a free trial today and see how video-based training can improve your organization's safety, efficiency, and productivity.