Today’s European manufacturing industry competitiveness is built on digital and green transition. This manufacturing maturity leap is also known as Industry 5.0 concept, where sustainability, resiliency and human centricity are in focus. Open Smart Manufacturing Ecosystem (OSME) is one of Prohoc’s and Wärtsilä’s and their core partners’ initiatives for the Industry 5.0 transition.
Human-centricity on various levels
Prohoc was invited to the OSME project team with references from our previous role as an ecosystem partner, and due to our strong focus and mission on people in industrial services. OSME focuses on digitalization, people, service value chain, information transparency and resiliency from business co-creation perspectives.
The nature of human-centricity and human relationships is visible in OSME on many levels: Identifying the personal needs and interests, shaping the optimal competency and cultural mix in working teams, and enabling co-creation capabilities between ecosystem partners.
Rather than taking emergent technology as a starting point and examining its potential for increasing efficiency, people’s needs and interests are the starting point for value creation and emergent technology utilization. At Prohoc, we acknowledge the human need for the purpose (for the work to be performed), feed people with the information they need to fulfil, develop, and share their work and learnings.
OSME is about understanding people are not the expensive element to be eliminated from the production or delivery process. People are an asset to boost value creation and produce more diverse value from it.
Role of good leadership in the ecosystem
Developing and adapting to new co-creation platform, tools, and empowering digitalization are fundamental elements to play and succeed in the ecosystem. In addition, our focus is to ensure good leadership and employee value are taken into consideration as the ecosystem is being built and continues to evolve.
A recent survey performed in the OSME project underlines the importance of good leadership. More than 90% of ecosystem workers value most the practices of good leadership, such as encountering people, providing personal and team feedback, acknowledging good performance, investing in competence development, and offering career options. Simple, people-focused actions are valued.
Another significant finding from OSME has been that clear communication about meaningfulness and context of work are important for factory workers too. Regardless of their age, manufacturing workers want their work to have a purpose, to contribute something to the world and to be proud of their employer and ecosystem.
We have identified similar trend in the Prohoc talent acquisition phase too. Interest in and our viewpoint of the company’s purpose, culture and leadership practices have been constant topics in recruiting meetings while we have grown from a 70-employee company to a 300-employee company in just two years.
Read full article from Scope Stakeholder Magazine edition Summer 2022.
