A Perfect Storm: The Shifting Landscape of Industrial Machinery Manufacturing
Part 1: Increasing machine complexity
Famously Elon Musk remarked that cars today are essentially computers on wheels. This underscores the transition from products that were once primarily mechanical, to ones that are now entirely dependant on silicon chips and software.
Industrial products have followed the same trajectory. Consider the lathe– actually an ancient tool dating back thousands of years. Starting from the 1950s electric motors became incorporated, then punched tape systems, and later G-code for Computer-Aided Manufacturing. Fast forward to the present day and this product is now a complex CNC machine fully integrated with enterprise CAD/CAM systems.
The Evolution of the CNC Machine
SOURCE: Hwacheon Asia Pacific, The Story Of A CNC Machine Tool – Part 1
With this evolution of industrial machinery, there are of course numerous benefits from using these products, but this also means that the teams supporting them must be capable of fully understanding their increasing complexity.
Part 2: Differing team experience and specializations
Technical support teams are of course made up of people with differing levels of experience. A senior support engineer with decades of experience can typically address customer issues far more quickly and efficiently than, say, a recent hire straight out of university with only a few months of practical work experience. Yet, in theory, both employees could be faced with similar customer issues that need to be resolved quickly. Bottlenecks can often be created when support resources are strained.
It’s equally challenging when companies with multiple lines of products also have discrepancies in product expertise. Small and medium-sized manufacturers that cannot justify having large teams of product experts are particularly susceptible to these challenges. Imagine a manufacturer of steel processing machinery with one experienced technician that knows all the ins and outs of reinforcing wire rolling machines, but less about welding wire technology (something that his colleague has a great deal of knowledge in). When an inquiry comes in related to the latter, they must rely on his colleague to assist. If the colleague happens to be occupied on another service call, a delay is immediately created.
Again, experience gaps and specialization gaps introduce ongoing challenges for small/mid-sized support teams with limited resources.
Part 3: Team member transitions
Over the past two decades, the average tenure for technical support engineers has decreased significantly. Recent data suggests that almost half of all technical support engineers remain in their positions for one to two years.
Average
Technical
Support
Engineer
Tenure
SOURCE: Technical Support Engineer Demographics and Statistics in the US
With increasing mobility in the modern workforce, the tribal knowledge that a company loses when an experienced employee leaves a team is significant. This is particularly relevant for technical support teams that fundamentally depend on a team of product experts.
In the past, when employees stayed with a company for years or even decades, this was not as much of an issue as this valuable information and cumulative years of learning stayed within the “tribe”. Again, in today’s faster-paced labor environment, the knowledge voids that can be created overnight are putting real pressure on support teams.
Weathering the Storm
Navigating through an environment with increasing machine complexity, differing team experience + specializations, and team member transitions is massively challenging, particularly for companies with complex industrial products.
Leveraging software tools that provide technical support teams with a AI-powered copilot trained on a company’s entire knowledge base provides the most effective way to weather this perfect storm.
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Contact our team today to learn how AI-powered technical support tools can be deployed in your business!