The manufacturing industry has been experiencing a tumultuous time recently, with geopolitical crises, raw material shortages, and supply chain failures, not to mention an ongoing dearth of skilled labor.
This has added even more complexity to an industry already groaning under the weight of constant shifts in technology, competition, and regulation. Manufacturing leaders responded at first like everyone else — by cutting back wherever possible, employing the “do more with less” approach.
Fast-forward a year or two, and the repercussions of this method are being felt: overloaded workloads, burnt-out teams, and even longer production processes. In short, manufacturing teams are busy, busy, busy … doing work that mightn’t really matter.
This is what led Wrike to commission Sapio Research to assess the current state of the workplace. In a multinational endeavor, we surveyed 1,000 business leaders and 2,500 knowledge workers across the U.S., U.K., DACH, France, and Japan, asking them detailed questions about their workloads. The result was the groundbreaking 2024 Impactful Work Report.
Let’s look at what the results revealed for the manufacturing industry of today.
The meaning of impactful work in manufacturing
As everybody in the manufacturing industry knows, the path to production is never straightforward. Getting from concept to launch is often a fraught and lengthy process involving multiple teams, numerous phases, and an abundance of data. It’s no surprise that this makes for complex workflows packed with a variety of tasks and projects, some of which will be impactful — and some not.
While conceding that definitions may vary, the authors of the Wrike report note that impactful work is usually that which “contributes to the strategy, growth, and revenue of the business.”
The good news is that most people can recognize impactful work when they see it. In manufacturing, this might mean developing a concept, designing a prototype, or running pre-release testing. The bad news is that this only accounts for roughly half of all the work done every day.
That means significant time is devoted to administrative tasks, duplicate work, or unproductive meetings. Alarmingly, the research indicates that in fact, around half of all work in manufacturing is this type of low-impact work.
The effects of low-impact work
This costs the company in various ways, some of which are obvious, others less so. The research found that the most common effects of low-impact work include:
- Wasted money: Across the board, organizations are currently wasting $15,138.03 per employee per year on unnecessary work and $7,016.82 per business leader per year on low-impact work.
- Lost time: In general, 30% of the work week is being spent on unnecessary work. That’s like losing a day and a half out of every five. Meetings are a big culprit, with manufacturing workers estimating they lead to almost two hours of wasted time a week.
- Increased workloads: Those remaining days are busy, with manufacturing workers feeling that they have, on average, 27% more on their plates. Interestingly, leaders believe it to be 39%, so there’s a difference in perception.
- Poor staff morale: 60% of manufacturing workers don’t feel that their work is recognized, leading to low morale, sluggish motivation, and general disengagement with overall strategy and company goals.
- Lack of strategic focus: A hectic workload makes it hard to see the wood for the trees. Our survey found that leaders aren’t generally prioritizing alignment on strategic goals, contributing to poor direction and fragmented progress.
One of the biggest takeaways from this report is that only 51% of employees in manufacturing are happy at work. In addition, only three out of 10 workers feel comfortable refusing tasks, indicating a culture of overcommitment due to worries about potential repercussions.
In addition, it looks like every year manufacturing workers are spending, on average, almost 48 hours of their own time making up for wasted time at work. This is more than a full week’s worth of time that could be spent with their families, friends, or pets. Over a sustained period, this extra work could create feelings of resentment, potentially leading to high staff attrition rates at a time when skilled workers are in short supply.
It’s clear that one of the best ways to make employees happier is to let them work flexibly. One recent study found that 98% of employees would like to work remotely but in manufacturing, only 23% of our survey respondents actually work from home.
While not every manufacturing role will be suitable for remote working, it is something that leadership could consider to counteract the creeping sense of employee dissatisfaction highlighted in our report. 
The causes of low-impact work
Our research points to a number of reasons why non-impactful work is a persistent problem in modern work. These include:
- Lack of a single source of truth: Without one clear line of sight into a company’s operations, workers often waste time duplicating tasks, searching for information, and double-checking data. In fact, manufacturing workers estimate they spend almost 2.5 hours a week trying to find information in multiple systems.
- Cluttered tech stacks: Many manufacturing teams combine product lifecycle management (PLM) software with numerous tools, spreadsheets, and emails. These multiple touchpoints create disjointed work, with 46% of manufacturing workers agreeing that information is lost jumping from one application to another.
- Poor alignment: Making sure their organizations are aligned on strategic priorities is evidently low on the to-do list for business leaders in manufacturing, with just 16% of respondents making it a focus.
- Low visibility: Research from Fictiv indicates that 37% of manufacturing professionals say friction created by poor cross-functional visibility on projects is a barrier to new innovation. Our findings indicate that leaders currently have visibility into less than 60% of their team/department’s work.
One of the most interesting findings in this report is the effect of artificial intelligence (AI). Once billed as the magic cure for all business ails, AI has yet to fully transform the way we work.
AI has long been a fixture on factory floors, particularly in the fields of generative design, production processes, quality control, predictive maintenance, real-time monitoring, and testing.
But again, there’s a discrepancy in perception here. The research shows that manufacturing workers believe 16% of their roles are assisted by AI, while managers think that it’s 30%. We can only speculate as to the reasons for this, but they may include a communication gap, poor technological integration, and a lack of managerial visibility into individual and department workloads.
However, it’s clear that most people agree this new technology has benefits. In manufacturing, 80% of workers believe it has somewhat or significantly improved their ability to do their jobs.
The general goal is to task AI with the more mundane, repetitive, and burdensome work that often eats up employees’ time. If that is what’s actually happening, it’s concerning to think that in general, 30% of the workweek is still being spent on unnecessary tasks at a cost of more than $15,000 per employee per year.
Would these figures be even higher without the aid of AI? 
A blueprint for change
The 2024 Impactful Work Report is unequivocal in its conclusion: “To remedy the current situation, organizations must eliminate unnecessary work, consolidate solutions, upskill their workforce, automate low-impact work, and — most importantly — prioritize high-impact work.” In short, we should be doing less and achieving more.
The full roadmap for change is outlined in the report, but three of the most important steps for manufacturing are:
- Eliminate: Production is a complex business, but there is plenty of room for simplification. By embracing a lean work environment and reducing redundant meetings, teams can claim back their time for more meaningful work.
- Consolidate: More than half of all the workers surveyed would like to use fewer software options to do their jobs. By consolidating their tools, they can save an average of four hours per week — that’s an extra half a work day.
- Automate: According to the report, less than a quarter of work is currently assisted by AI, yet it could significantly reduce the time spent on mundane, low-impact tasks. Renewed efforts to fully integrate the technology would help.
The key to turning these abstract recommendations into real-life solutions is all-in-one workflow management software. Wrike fits the bill perfectly as the most intelligent work management platform on the market, offering manufacturers the opportunity to streamline their workflows, harness the power of AI, support and integrate PLM software, command 360° operational visibility, and unite disparate teams, accelerating every stage of the product management lifecycle.
When asked about the leading causes of inefficiencies in their organizations, manufacturing workers listed time wasted on duplicate work and meetings as the main culprit (42%). This was followed by poor communication and collaboration (40%) and then poorly designed or outdated processes (30%). Wrike has the power to fix all three issues quickly and easily.
Globally recognized brands and Fortune 500 companies like Schneider Electric, Electrolux, and DECIEM (Estée Lauder Companies) all rely on Wrike to master their manufacturing. It’s the most powerful, dynamic, and adaptable software available. As Damien Robles of Siemens said in a recent interview, “Wrike provides a flexible system infrastructure that is easily configured to meet our business needs.”
Download the report in full to access all of these incredible findings in more detail. Prefer to see for yourself how the right software can transform your workflows, automate mundane tasks, and refocus your teams on impactful work? Start a free 14-day trial and join 20,000 other organizations in the world of Wrike.
