P&G respond to pandemic challenges with connected workers
How We Helped
P&G's Manchester factory rises to pandemic productivity challenges with the help of a connected workforce
The Problem
Approach
Response To A Pandemic
We were fortunate enough to carve out a 15-minute virtual coffee with Gary Wightman and Gary Manchester at P&G’s plant in Manchester. As Plant Manager, Gary Wightman is responsible for the supply of essential baby care items including Pampers across the UK, and Gary Manchester – a Senior Engineering Manager and key Zaptic user – has been working remotely from home “before it became fashionable” during COVID-19.
Their combined perspectives, therefore, are particularly relevant for this current time.
Outcome
How it went
With increased absenteeism on some shifts, there can be a less skilled workforce and less leadership than normal. However, it is important that if someone is poorly that they stay at home and away from work until they recover so we can continue to protect the health & wellbeing of our whole workforce. But it can become difficult to ensure people follow safety and quality systems, and a shortage of experienced personnel on the shop floor may lead to increased downtime from technical or leadership issues. Increased flexibility and a “flow to the work” mentality has been required of the workforce.
We’ve seen a huge increase in virtual collaboration to ensure smooth flow of information and priorities.The challenge we’ve faced is also an opportunity. It shows that an increase in productivity is possible with more focused priorities, good information flow and management. Stuff gets done faster and more efficiently in crisis mode, decision-making totally changes so having the right data at the right time becomes vital. The range of digital tools we have put in place, from automation to video conferencing as well as Zaptic for digital procedures, have provided a key source of data to avoid losses and communication misses when people are physically not together for long periods.
"Zaptic is a very fluid system and organisation structures and assigned tasks can be changed quickly within the software to meet business needs. I am actually doing this now as organisation demands are changing even on an hourly basis!"
With Zaptic, the organisation’s training, troubleshooting, regulatory mandatory qualifications can be set up for end users to follow on company IT systems or personal tablets and smartphones. So for SOPs for example, because we already used Zaptic to create the training, verify and assign to the relevant people remotely, we’ve been able to continue tracking and managing this with no disruption through a connected workforce.
