An effective way for manufacturers to tackle and outpace the increasing complexity of product designs and ever-shortening product lifecycles is to effectively develop and assist the workforce. Yet the current management of manufacturing workforce systems relies mostly on the traditional methods of data collection and modeling, such as subjective observations and after-the-fact statistics of workforce performance, which has reached a bottleneck in effectiveness.

While U.S. manufacturers are investing tremendous efforts and resources to regain the power and growth of manufacturing, they are confronted by a set of critical and challenging issues on the workforce. Specifically, (1) lack of workforce with advanced training and skills; (2) need for rapid, smart, and individualized training to achieve workforce agility; and (3) on-the-job personal assistance to improve worker performance, safety and comfort.