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Bridging the Skill Gap: 3 Ways an MES Can Help

By Grace Barton Updated
Bridging the Skill Gap: 3 Ways an MES Can Help

Manufacturers today are facing an impending crisis as skilled laborers near retirement age. Although many corporations have invested in apprenticeships or collegiate programs to train replacements for those employees, due to lengthy speed to proficiency curves and a lack of process documentation, it means that valuable skills could still leave with them. Factory-wide, and even industry-wide disruption is becoming imminent.

Do you know where you’ll be when your employees retire? If not, consider these three ways that implementing a our Vital Plant MES might help smooth out that transition.

#1 – Automate Simple Processes

Tasks like data entry and reporting can be done automatically. Connecting your machines and operations to an MES like Vital Plant can automate the flow of information, giving you the data you need to know what’s really going on in your plant. That way, your new employees can focus on learning the skills they need.

#2 – Train New Employees

By having your employees follow work instructions that require validated responses, you can ensure that your employees are doing things the right way at the right time, without having to monitor them. Vital Plant Document Management Module can also store old documents electronically, such as manuals, historic production data, and schedules. This can help your employees easily find the information they need whenever and wherever they are.

#3 – Avoid Troubleshooting

Vital Plant can automatically enforce quality, parts and process flows that helps you avoid issues like unplanned downtime. If downtime does occur, plant managers can be notified immediately. Real-time and historical reporting exists to help understand the impact and determine the correct solutions, one more step in ensuring you avoid downtime altogether in the future. This targeted enforcement and tracking will save you valuable production time and lost revenue. An MES can also track and schedule predictive maintenance further ensuring the prevention of costly issues.

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Grace Barton

Marketing Specialist

About the Author Latest Posts

Grace Barton is a digital marketing and competitive intelligence professional who crafts strategic narratives by bridging marketing insights with analytical expertise. At Advantive, she creates engaging, data-driven content tailored to the distribution, manufacturing, packaging, and quality industries. Her goal is to deliver impactful messaging that drives engagement and growth based on specific gap closure needs, whether responding to sales organization requirements, pinpointing gaps in content, or meeting immediate market trends.
She thrives on transforming competitive intelligence into actionable insights for the sales organization. Grace manages Advantive’s competitive intelligence platform, Klue, to equip the sales team with the battlecards and market data they need to stay ahead of competitors. Since launch, she’s built 28+ battlecards across four lines of business, ensuring the GTM strategy stays sharp.
Grace has a passion for leveraging market insights with storytelling to guide strategic decision-making, empower sales organizations, and nurture organizational growth.

Areas of Expertise: Digital Marketing, Competitive Intelligence, Strategic Narratives, Marketing Insights, Analytical Expertise

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