Building and empowering a skilled gigafactory workforce... rapidly
Gigafactories represent a new era of smart manufacturing – with the promise of a renewed, cleaner automotive industry and, with it, sustainable careers in the regions where they operate. But doing that will require a workforce that is very different to traditional manufacturing facilities – on the shopfloor and beyond. This demands specialization in a wide variety of fields, from chemical engineering to hazardous material handling, and data analysis to meticulous quality control.
This is an immense challenge for companies looking to enter the gigafactory race. Battery specialists, ranging from chemists to battery management software programmers to production process engineers, are scarce and in high demand globally, as are digital, data, and IT workers. Since large-scale battery manufacturing is only just emerging in North America, there are few experienced shopfloor workers on the job market with skills in specific battery manufacturing processes, like slurry mixing, coating, or drying. Yet projections estimate 400 gigafactories will be built globally by 2030, and a single 30 GWh gigafactory will need 2,000 to 3,000 skilled employees.
Companies transitioning or building new gigafactories will be challenged to ensure they have this highly skilled workforce ready for their start of production. This means building the workforce while building the physical factory.
This training should be as real, interesting, and to the point as possible, to ensure lessons learned can be implemented from day one. Digital twins and immersive environments, in particular, can be highly valuable for training staff at scale and without needing them to be on site, which is also essential when replicating gigafactories worldwide.
Finding the right people and upskilling them quickly are two major challenges gigafactories face. The Capgemini Battery Academy (more on this later) focuses on getting the right people in the right jobs with the right skills.
Finding the right people involves the following.
Defining target skills: The starting point is a detailed analysis of the skills needed for all tasks and activities at every level of the gigafactory. This will make downstream activities, such as talent acquisition and training, much easier. Once the skills matrix is established, categorizing skills into distinct persona types – e.g., battery engineer, quality control, machine operator, etc. – will help with the process of analyzing, forecasting, and planning workforce supply and demand, as well as assessing any gaps. The outcome of this analysis will be instrumental in streamlining and accelerating the recruitment and training process.
Building a pipeline through local outreach: Work with local universities and other schools. For example, Honeywell Aerospace partners with Arizona State University to recruit aerospace workers in the region, through supporting the curriculum and investing in facilities and student projects. Several gigafactories are already exploring similar models, sharing skills needs with university teams to help them adapt educational programs and design new courses that will equip students to work in gigafactories.
Branding your brand: In promoting a gigafactory as a place to work – e.g., through outreach and recruitment ads – appealing to the vision of sustainability, diversity, and purpose has been effective. If a gigafactory location has been chosen based on access to resources, rather than for its exciting local culture, manufactures may need to consider additional benefits to attract top talent.
The newly recruited workforce needs rapid training that is consistent with regulatory and operational standards. We propose the following to quickly upskill a large workforce.
Creating personalized training journeys: Use the skills requirement analysis to define a personalized training journey for each persona type. Create interactive training modules for each persona’s specialism, as well as foundational modules (e.g., organizational values, cross-functional awareness, health, and safety), to ensure a cohesive workforce.
Learning modules should embrace a range of informative approaches, tied to how people acquire different skills, to accelerate overall pace of learning. For example, e-learning is relevant to theorical content, micro learning modules are an efficient way to periodically refresh knowledge, and game-based approaches are effective for building a safety culture and good practices.
Taking advantage of training technologies: It is critical to integrate the training system into the operational system, ensuring connectivity to a single source of truth. This enables operational changes in the factory to directly update training and expert support systems. A joined up digital system is also vital to enable the use of tools like augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) for hands-on learning before the factory’s start of production, or for continuous skill enhancement through real-time support. In the long run, upfront investments in enhanced training technology will dramatically cut training costs, improve quality of training, and accelerate workforce readiness.
Establishing continuous learning: A centralized learning management platform – integrated into the factory’s digital systems (or digital core) – can track employee progress against a wide range of certifications and skills profiles. Production and quality data analysis paired with AI and GenAI can help identify gaps or improvement opportunities between workforce capabilities and operational needs. From this, workforce enhancement programs can be generated and implemented almost in real-time, through specific trainings or guiding and decision aiding in operations. Modules can be added or updated as new machinery, or ways of working, are introduced. The key to success here is to digitally capture the knowledge into a standardized and repeatable format on a continuous basis.
Augmented reality plays an important role in continuous learning, since it can provide on-site guidance on how to operate or fix a machine – delivered via remote experts or AI. GenAI will transform this area in the coming years, thanks to its incredible ability to ingest vast amounts of information – such as machine operation manuals – and present the most relevant points to a user. That supports learning and reduces the need for everyone to know everything on day one.
A well-structured academy, developed using the tools described above, can quickly prepare large numbers of new employees for a gigafactory’s start of production, and support ongoing recruitment, onboarding, learning, people management, and retention. An academy program developed by Capgemini for a major North American manufacturer cut the timeline of turning new joiners into productive employees in half, accelerating time to market and scaling.
Furthermore, the nature of digital training programs means that, once developed, the benefits scale rapidly in subsequent facilities, while ensuring a consistent approach across teams and facilities.
For a company planning to establish several gigafactories in the coming years, the creation of a “pilot” academy in the first gigafactory allows you to experiment and optimize before scaling up to global deployment, ensuring future factories start and scale up even faster.
An academy that defines roles, builds personalized immersive learning plans, and harnesses technology rapidly brings vast benefits, ranging from getting a workforce up and running to maintaining quality over time. That needs upfront planning and investment, but the long-term rewards – as companies build even more gigafactories – will be enormous.
The Capgemini Battery Academy is an end-to-end approach that enables gigafactories to recruit, hire, onboard, train, and certify their future employees, to ensure an on-time start of production.
The Battery Academy includes expert advisory on persona development, workforce mapping, and an advanced digital learning platform that enables digitized training content – including VR and AR capabilities – to be built and tailored to specific gigafactory needs. Through its mix of people engineering and technology, the Battery Academy can handle the whole process of gigafactory skills development, from recruitment, to training, to people management.
