What is a Citizen Developer in Manufacturing?

In the past decade, new tools have given subject area experts technical capabilities outside of their area of specialization.

We’ve seen this happen in:

• Marketing, to allow marketers to automate email and attribution workflows
• In sales, to make it easier for salespeople to manage their contacts and optimize their client services
• In business in general, to help professionals solve real business problems and streamline their work.

In these industries and many others, business users with deep domain expertise can now do advanced technical tasks without years of training in coding or data science.

It’s the rise of “citizen developers” and “citizen technologists.”

And it’s about time that the revolution reached the manufacturing industry.

Citizen developers are workers who build production-ready applications in roles outside of IT or software engineering. Typically, they use IT-sanctioned platforms to create these applications.

Using no-code platforms, they can leverage their hard-won domain expertise without being limited by technical barriers. These platforms allow workers to build apps through a drag-and-drop style interface.

Though their job descriptions don’t necessarily call for coding, app development, or software engineering, citizen developers can still build out applications and accomplish the same targeted business goals that a technical expert would.

Learn how next-gen manufacturers are enabling the rise of the citizen developer →

Let’s look at an example of no-code citizen development in manufacturing:

Work instructions can be difficult to follow, easy to damage (if paper-based), and prone to misinterpretation. For factories with high-mix assemblies, high turnover, of rapid product cycles, they are inadequate to the task.

Using no-code app platforms, engineers can design media-rich, visual work instructions with IoT connectivity, that responds to operator actions in real-time, and guarantees that instructions are followed to the letter.

According to a 2018 study by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute, more than half of the manufacturing jobs that will open in the next decade could remain unfilled due to the shifting skill sets required by new technologies. Computer skills, data analytics skills, digital skills and programming skills are becoming essential. But not enough workers with these skills are looking to go into manufacturing.

New shop floor technologies, such as Industrial IoT and artificial intelligence, require the statistical and machine learning expertise of data scientists.

However, there is currently a shortage of 250,000 data scientists in the US alone, meaning data scientists have the opportunity to be picky in their choice of industry.

Citizen technologists could fill the skills gap in manufacturing. With the proper tools, shop floor workers can create apps, manipulate data and operate computerized machinery, without any previous experience in these areas.

Because citizen developers are able to build apps and analyze data sets on their own, improvements can be implemented a lot more quickly and efficiently. The iteration process eliminates the extra step of involving the IT team.

The number of tickets in the pipeline can also be reduced, meaning your experts in IT will be able to focus on the projects that deliver the most value.

Many new technologies are giving shop floor workers technological skills that could only be found in IT departments in the past. We will focus on two of these technologies:

1. No code platforms

No-code platforms allow workers without technical training to build fully-functioning, enterprise-ready applications from scratch.

They provide a development environment that is designed to be intuitive. They commonly have a drag-and-drop interface, use if-then logic and event-based triggers, and collect production data as the app runs.

No code platforms are turning frontline engineers and operators into citizen developers. With no code, these workers can create apps to digitize their work instructions, to implement quality checks inline, to create self-directed training modules, to improve machine monitoring, etc.

2. Analytics software

IoT connectivity and cloud computing give manufacturers the ability to record real-time data on their operations. This data opens the door to better root-cause analysis, quantitative problem-solving, and real-time continuous improvement.

With modern analytics software, any shop floor worker can understand the insights that arise from data and become a citizen data scientist. Relevant metrics, such as cycle times, defect causes and step time by user, are visually displayed on dashboards. Thus, all employees can bring data-driven improvements to their work.

1. Save time and money

Citizen technologists are able to build apps and analyze data sets on their own, without wasting time waiting for someone from IT to do the work for them. Changes are implemented a lot more quickly.

The number of tickets in the pipeline will also be reduced, meaning your experts in IT will be able to focus on the projects that deliver the most value.

Furthermore, with the median base salary of a data scientist at $130K, and the average salary of software developers at $106K, creating citizen data scientists and citizen developers in your manufacturing company makes a lot of economic sense.

2. Leverage the knowledge that is already within your company

Citizen technologists’ primary function is not IT related. They are process engineers, machine operators, designers, maintenance engineers, plant operators by trade. They have years of knowledge of how your production lines work.

Those closest to problems on the shop floor understand them best. Therefore, frontline workers are the ones who have the most insight into how to solve problems and optimize production. This insight does not go to waste when these workers are cross-trained as citizen technologists.