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Over one-fifth of the working age population in Canada is nearing retirement, marking a historic high as the oldest group in Canadian census data – and they’re taking decades of valuable skills and experience with them.

As seasoned employees retire, organizations face challenges in documenting and standardizing procedures for efficient training of new workers. This, coupled with the increasing number of retirees, strains the labor supply and leads to potential shortages of skilled workers and higher training costs for employers. Yet, advancements in technologies, including AI, offer opportunities to mitigate these effects of population aging in the job market.

DeepSight is addressing this challenge for the manufacturing industry and are already seeing the advantages of using AI for skills transfer first-hand.

The Canadian company and IBM business partner is providing manufacturing businesses with a software platform to train the next generation of operators and prevent critical operational knowledge from leaving with the most experienced workers.

Currently, training leaders and consultants responsible for developing ongoing learning materials encounter significant challenges. For instance, when a machine malfunctions, workers typically sift through dense training manuals to identify and rectify the problem; however, this step takes up valuable time and resources away from production.

With its augmented reality (AR)-enabled learning platform underpinned by IBM’s AI technology, DeepSight delivers real-time education and guidance for executing intricate procedures with precision and efficiency. The platform also deploys holographic guides that reflect real work environments and task complexities.

“Through our partnership with IBM, we are unlocking a powerful immersive learning experience that saves time, reduces costs, and maintains production flow,” said Jean Pinsonneault, DeepSight Partner ecosystem lead. “By accelerating skill development for the workforce, we are setting a new standard in innovation.”

The DeepSight platform empowers businesses to develop and record immersive, 3-D training and troubleshooting modules. As site workers carry out tasks, they receive real-time auditory instructions and on-screen text guidance through AR headsets or tablets. Managers can then access employee performance data through a dashboard and export the results within their own management software.

“When businesses automate repetitive tasks with AI, they’re able to overcome skills gaps and quickly optimize processes for digital transformation”, said Peter McKay, Director of Ecosystems at IBM Canada. “IBM helps organizations integrate state-of-the-art AI technology within their business models to train, validate, tune, and deploy both traditional machine learning and generative AI through an open and intuitive user interface. With these capabilities, businesses will be able to tackle the challenges of tomorrow”.

What’s next?

DeepSight integrates IBM’s advanced voice transcription feature enabled by AI Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech technologies.

To further advance these proficiencies, DeepSight is looking to tap IBM’s generative AI offering through watsonx. IBM watsonx can grasp the nuances of natural language flow and enable organizations to develop resilient assistants adept at interpreting conversations. It can also absorb industry-specific vocabulary, internal organizational jargon, and can be tailored to recognize subtleties such as regional dialects and colloquial expressions. These features are important for a new workforce, particularly one faced with language barriers.

As more organizations adopt generative AI, we will see major opportunities for the manufacturing industry to automate end-to-end business processes, improve decision making and enhance employee experiences.