By Yannick Haeck, VP Product, Poka
Key takeaways:
- Generative AI is modernizing factory work by transforming “dull, dirty, dangerous” roles into digitally enabled, engaging experiences — helping attract and retain younger, tech-savvy workers like Gen Z.
- AI boosts training, communication, and productivity through tools like smart content creation, video-based instructions, multilingual transcription, and intelligent search, all of which reduce errors and enhance worker autonomy.
- Connected worker platforms powered by AI are becoming essential for food and beverage manufacturers to stay competitive, improve workforce efficiency, and respond to ongoing labor shortages with scalable, digital solutions.
Generative AI, driven by consumer use of ChatGPT and Gemini, is now being integrated into many industries. While it was initially expected that this technology would impact every aspect of work, it’s becoming clear that its most valuable applications lie in specific, high-impact areas. One such area where Generative AI is proving to be a major productivity booster is in process manufacturing, particularly as a direct support tool for workers on the factory floor in the food and beverage industry.
These exciting digital applications are helping put manufacturing roles back in fashion for Gen Z workforces. When operating alongside AI-connected worker platforms, employees feel safe, empowered, and inspired, which significantly helps staff retention and recruitment on the food and beverage frontline.
Food and beverage manufacturers are facing a significant challenge: a shortage of skilled workers. Attracting Gen Z employees to the shop floor has been difficult, as the work is often perceived as “dull, dirty, or dangerous.”
How AI is the special ingredient for employee retention and recruitment
However, new technologies — especially Generative AI — are shifting perceptions of factory work. Tools like GenAI, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) are helping food and beverage manufacturers transform shop floors into safer, more efficient, and more attractive workplaces. With the global AI in food and beverage market projected to hit $15.36 billion by 2025 and continue growing rapidly, it’s crucial to train and reskill frontline workers across varying skill levels and languages — while maintaining safety standards. Enter GenAI, and connected worker platforms, with content creation and delivery at their core.
GenAI isn’t just a win for food and beverage workers, but also CPG companies globally, where use cases could increase the economic impact of traditional AI by 15 to 40%. McKinsey estimates that bridging that gap means unlocking an additional $160 billion to $270 billion annually in profit, and part of this can be achieved through an enhanced workflow among increasingly connected workforces.
New training content that doesn’t leave food and beverage manufacturers bloated
Food and beverage manufacturers with little AI experience can start small with an early-stage test on a product line for anomaly detection or even look beyond their equipment to support schemes that expand as far as training and workforce development.
From checklists and skills, to procedures and knowledge transfer — content creation isn’t a one-stop-shop. And with costs, inflation, and geopolitical uncertainty on the rise, taking workers away from their duties on the shop floor to create content is becoming a no-go area for management.
Creating content isn’t the only hurdle to overcome. Arguably, facilitating content retrieval on the shop floor is an even greater challenge.
The factory floor digital revolution led by AI
Bringing new technologies, such as connected worker platforms and GenAI, to the shop floor is transforming the dark and dirty shop floor into a more engaging workplace that is revolutionizing food and beverage manufacturing. The industry is grappling to attract a younger workforce, which is an area of recruitment where GenAI may prove useful. But as more manufacturers aim to recruit Gen Z workers, it’s essential to ensure all instructions are available on digital platforms.
Gen Z workers are more familiar with the adoption of AI through the tools arising through and around their education, meaning they would be more susceptible to working amongst AI support systems. Younger workers are tuned in to search for answers and instructions digitally — so making content available digitally is critical to retain these workers and empower them to take ownership of their role — a growing necessity for the younger workforce, especially in the food and beverage processing industry.
Recruitment isn’t the larger challenge at hand; it begins with retention
One of the largest obstacles the food and beverage manufacturing industry encounters is not only the capability to recruit empowered frontline workers, but also to retain them. Technology holds the answer.
Regardless of skill shortages, food and beverage manufacturers need to communicate to their staff about the value of these AI tools and explain just how their adoption is implemented.
Here’s what these AI tools can achieve to sustain and inspire the food and beverage workforce.
1. Dynamic workflows with AI-powered content
The food and beverage manufacturing frontline needs content that can be easily and quickly understood and assimilated. That means it needs to be in multiple formats, such as text-based instructions — but creating all this content takes a lot of time and capital. And it’s not all about new content. CPG factories will already have thousands of existing content files, such as standard operating procedures and work instructions, but converting each one into an easily accessible location is also costly and time-intensive.
According to a global Lenovo survey of 600 IT leaders, 79% feel AI will free employees to focus on more meaningful work — which is key in the food and beverage processing industry, where deadlines are tight and produce has a shelf life. The full value of connected worker solutions can take time to materialize due to the time and effort required to import and build the required digital work instructions into the platform. Here comes AI to the rescue!
2. The potential of video-powered work instructions
AI-powered content transformation significantly reduces the time needed to convert documents into digital work instructions, making them more accessible in a single, secure location. By turning lengthy standard operating procedures into easy-to-understand, step-by-step instructions, companies can deploy training materials faster and achieve quicker time-to-value and streamlined practices.
Video is rapidly becoming the most consumed content format, especially for Gen Z, who prefer learning through short-form videos. Given this, video is an invaluable tool for improving user engagement when creating digital work instructions. However, producing video-based content for the shop floor can be a challenge, especially for factories with limited resources.
AI-powered video instructions solve this problem by automatically extracting relevant details and organizing them into structured steps. It can also integrate images to provide visual context at each step, enhancing comprehension. This makes the process of creating video-based instructions much more efficient.
Workers can independently access these visual instruction guides, improving troubleshooting and expanding their access to a broader library of content. Additionally, younger workers benefit from this format by engaging with the knowledge of more experienced operators in a way that aligns with their digital expectations, ultimately improving overall efficiency and learning retention.
3. Deep bilingual transcription for a diverse workforce
Immigrant workers account for 3.2 million manufacturing workers in the U.S., and the majority of these workers will not speak English as their first language. Despite this, most global food and beverage manufacturers struggle to ensure that critical operational content is linguistically accessible. But not anymore! AI-powered transcription can break down global language barriers and encourage worker inclusion — by translating all types of content.
What makes AI-driven transcription useful over human translators is speed. GenAI tools can translate recordings in a matter of minutes as opposed to hours. This is an intelligent capability that automatically translates the audio from videos into relevant subtitles in the preferred language of the user. Not only does this reduce the effort to create and maintain content, but it also improves the comprehension and retention of information, leading to better safety, quality, and productivity on the shop floor.
4. Empowering workers to work smarter, not harder with AI
Clear communication is essential for boosting worker productivity in fast-paced, noisy environments. Errors are inevitable, but AI can help by interpreting user input and improving grammar, vocabulary, and readability. AI also enables smart search — understanding intent, even with typos or vague terms — ensuring accurate, timely responses to issues like troubleshooting a broken machine. AI can empower workers to work smarter, not harder.
GenAI is providing a future of seamless food and beverage manufacturing
Here and now, Generative AI is playing a key role in the food and beverage sector, with integration into supporting operational solutions such as connected worker platforms. As technology continues to advance, a growing number of food and beverage manufacturers are already embedding, or planning to embed, AI into their production processes.
GenAI’s capacity to strengthen not only working skills but also boost employee retention is bringing in a new era of connected workers that is much needed in today’s worker-short food and beverage manufacturing landscape.
As VP Product, Yannick is responsible for managing the Poka product lifecycle, from the product vision and roadmap definition to its commercial success with Poka customers and partners.
