How Squint Solves 3 of Today’s Biggest Manufacturing Challenges
What happens when you put more than 200 leading manufacturing, operations, technology, supply chain and advanced engineering executives in one room? You realize there are a lot of problems to solve.
Luckily, it seems like Squint has already figured out the answers to 3 of the manufacturing industry’s most pressing challenges.
From June 27-28, 2023, I attended the Connected Manufacturing Forum in Atlanta. The event welcomes over 200 manufacturing professionals for a collaborative debate on the latest industry 4.0 trends, challenges, and opportunities. In essence, the forum helps you “benchmark your digital enterprise strategy, create your blueprint, promote effective change management, and learn how to become a smarter, more connected manufacturer”. Notable companies in attendance included Toyota, Panasonic, LEGO, Johnson & Johnson, Amazon, and Honda.
During my time at the forum, I was able to network with professionals across the industry in a variety of ways. We shared our experiences in the manufacturing world and made connections with global executives. Interestingly, I noticed executives from different sectors discussing the same problems - and Squint offers solutions to each.
1) Work Instructions are English Only
According to Zippia, 40% of frontline workers in the United States speak Spanish as their native language, followed by Portuguese and Chinese at 10% each.
Despite the amount of non-English speakers, it is commonplace for facilities to create standard working instructions in English and English alone. From time to time, companies will hire an external team to provide translations for their workers - a process that can be time-consuming and pricey.
I spoke to a few individuals with global workforces about how they standardized work instructions when it just wasn’t feasible to get everything translated. I asked one person, “ What do you do for Spanish speaking workers?” and he replied, “That’s what photos are for”. In global manufacturing, it’s no secret that having one source of truth is paramount, but manufacturers without translation resources face bad margins, limited operator efficiency, and unintentionally create unsafe working environments.
Our technology has an easy fix. Squint now supports instant procedure translation to 134 languages. The operator simply selects a preferred language when they create a profile and our app automatically translates all instructions to the desired language with just one tap.
2) Working with Startups can be Expensive
It’s no secret that working with startups is an investment. Aside from cost, time, data, and continued dedication to the platform are also typically required for success. It can also be hard to digest. When you invest in a startup that integrates with your data platforms, an unsuccessful pilot means all the custom API work you’ve completed is wasted.
Squint allows customers to invest and co-create at a very low opportunity cost. Because our technology is simple to build, our customers can start small (a few area maps or procedures, for example) and then continue to grow the deployment after ROI has been realized. With Squint, your main investment is time used to learn best practices.
In the rare case that Squint just isn’t your thing, you can move to another platform with ease - not losing time or money invested in “implementing”. And the best part? There’s no code needed.
3) Standardizing Insights & Data is a Must
During the conference, it was clear that standardizing insights and data is very important right now. With so much digitization happening, companies are exporting data in a variety of formats and struggling to make sense of it to tell one cohesive story.
This challenge is top of mind at Squint. Our technology was created to be very “universally pluggable” to increase productivity and accessibility. Our team is also actively looking to support a standard protocol for this reporting.
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Have an idea? We’d love to connect with you. Reach out to Devin at devin@squint.ai.