Increment

The common narrative is that automation is displacing manufacturing workers. In reality, manufacturers face large skills shortages. They lose significant (e.g. $1M/year) money to retrainable errors made on the shop floor and need more real-time understanding of how training results in cost savings. Ultimately, if manufacturers cannot see the clear ROI of upskilling and training, it remains culturally a cost center, instead of an area for investment and opportunity.

We track when to retrain and upskill workers in real-time, map those inputs to reductions in errors, and ultimately quantify the concrete impact of training. Making the resulting lower production costs transparent incentivizes manufacturers to invest in upskilling for their workers.

As we scale, manufacturers would see the financial impact of upskilled workers, these workers could then take part in the upside through better wages, and ultimately the American manufacturing sector would be secured to ensure a generation of workers succeed.

After interviewing hundreds of stakeholders across manufacturing and workforce orgs in the South Bend, Indiana region and deeply embedding ourselves in the industrial ecosystem, we learned that workers such as Hugo (highlighted in the next answer) oftentimes don’t feel like they’re getting trained and sometimes leave, and manufacturers lose significant amounts (e.g. $1M/year) of money due to retrainable errors occurring. Manufacturers think about everything in terms of "ROI," and there is currently no simple way to tie investments in training to improvements in production in real-time. This results in continued skills gaps, skills shortages, shop floor workers who don’t feel like they’re getting enough training, and very fixable production errors being made.  

To provide further context, there are 250,000 manufacturers in the US alone and 12.8M manufacturing workers. It is estimated by reports from Deloitte that 2.4M jobs in (advanced) manufacturing could go unfilled by 2028. 

During the pandemic, the demand for manufacturing workers and skill sets is higher than ever, with manufacturers unable to reach production capacity to fully supply essential items such as hospital beds, PPE, etc. The results of this gap are tragically apparent, and manufacturing resilience is a core part of Biden's economic recovery plan.

To show through example, Hugo is a shop floor operator we've met in Elkhart, Indiana. He has been diligently working for the past year earning $12/hour, and he's received all of his training so far on the shop floor. He wants to increase his wages to $17/hour and move into an advanced manufacturing role, but he isn’t sure how to do that.

One day, he asks his supervisor, “How do I get a wage bump around here? How do I show what skills I know?” The supervisor thinks and says, “I can’t really tell you. Just keep up the good work ethic."

The manufacturer doesn't have the real-time software infrastructure to trigger upskilling for Hugo, and trainings are currently tracked offline and oftentimes lost. There's no way for Hugo to prove that he deserves a wage increase and show off how the skillsets he has learned directly contribute to the bottom line. Increment's solution is innovative and unique because it directly ties the upskilling and training happening on the floor to the resulting improvements in production metrics, thereby giving Hugo and his supervisor the ability to see how investing in Hugo means better financial results for the company.    

Industrial wage workers

We have interviewed and shadowed numerous shop floor workers and have directly involved them in our product development process. A typical worker in Indiana is someone who doesn’t have more than a high school diploma or GED, may have gone through some training provider courses, and usually makes between $10-16/hour. One thing we quickly learned is that aptitudes in terms of using computers vary greatly, so we will be building out SMS and phone-based and other accessible forms of seeing their own industrial skill sets mapped out and what internal upskilling pathways are available at the manufacturer.

Interior states with industrial presence

We are very focused on the Midwest and other interior states with industrial presence to strengthen their economies and industrial presence. We are starting with Indiana and will also be working with those in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia, Texas etc. next year.  

Economic and workforce development organizations, and manufacturing associations 

We provide a solution that also can provide real time shop floor skills data for various research and trade organizations and training providers to utilize in their reports, research, and initiatives, thus amplifying their impact positively in the communities that they serve.

Enable learners to make informed decisions about which pathways and jobs best suit them

We empower industrial wage workers to understand upskilling pathways at a manufacturer and showcase the advanced manufacturing skillsets that they know and are increasingly needed

Implement competency based models for life-long learning and credentialing 

Workers develop digital industrial resumes through on-the-job tracking of skills learned.

Match current and future employer and industry needs with education providers, workforce development programs, and diverse job seekers

We incentivize manufacturers to upskill their workers, thus building the foundation to bring in further external education provider resources and workforce development programs.

We have 2 full-time staff, 7 part time contractors as well as 2 close advisors. 

We are a proudly female and minority founded and led team, and our foundation was built in South Bend, Indiana, a Rust Belt city that has undergone a tremendous revitalization in the past 10 years under the leadership of Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay mayor of South Bend and recent presidential candidate (he interviewed us here: https://westsb.com/features/an-evening-with-pete-buttigieg-and-invanti). We look to have a majority female executive team in the years to come and hire from those with industrial trades and blue collar backgrounds as well to build a hybrid manufacturing and technology culture. 

We aren't ripping out and replacing any current similar solutions at manufacturers because many of their upskilling and training processes are currently offline, and we haven't come across a direct competitor. We are introducing a new software-based infrastructure for manufacturers to incentivize them to retrain and upskill their workers frequently, which is a very unique product driven approach that arose out of direct research conducted on numerous manufacturing shop floors, and that close approach has not been taken by other organizations in the ecosystem. We co-developed this angle with manufacturers and workers directly, so all stakeholders had strong input. There are tangential solutions focused more on the content side, whereas we are focused on the process side to trigger retrainings in real time. For example, another Techstars company called DeepHow focuses on "AI industrial trades training videos," so they would be a potential collaborator on the content side.

The core technology is software-based, and we execute in the following phases

Phase 1

We digitize the currently offline ad hoc upskilling and training processes that manufacturers have on paper checklists and spreadsheets to build an initial skills data foundation.

Phase 2

We link the now digitized skills data to the manufacturer's production and quality data on the backend to trigger a retraining when a worker has made a certain number of retrainable errors. We develop algorithms to parse through production data and will use machine learning techniques down the road as well. 

As an example use case, if Hugo makes X retrainable errors in the past month, he currently doesn't get retrained and his skills and retrainings aren't accessible or documented. Increment's solution would have his supervisor or another shop floor individual complete the training offline and sign off for Hugo. Hugo would then make less of those mistakes and make the case for increasing his wages while the manufacturer reduces their production error costs.   

Manufacturers in Indiana have agreed to paid pilots that we will be launching early next year, and we have completed a significant amount of sprint work with those manufacturers to co-develop our pilot software. This is something their workers and training directors specifically want. We are also in talks with several Fortune 500 sized manufacturers that are interested in piloting our solution because it resonates with them and their workers. One Fortune 500 company reached out to us directly before we joined Techstars because their innovation arm is specifically thinking about unique solutions for their industrial workforce, and they would be potential investors as well.

As a result of Increment’s solutions, industrial workers such as Hugo are being re-trained and upskilled at a much higher rate than previously. The short term outcome is that they are improving at their tasks on the shop floor and reducing the number of errors made. A medium term outcome would be greater satisfaction with the amount of training they are receiving from their employer, which is a common reason we hear around why workers leave. A long term outcome would be strengthening the labor resilience of industrial wage workers in preparation for advanced manufacturing and being upskilled into in demand and higher skilled advanced manufacturing roles, which also results in strengthening the US manufacturing sector.

Our goals within the next year are to impact 100,000 manufacturing wage workers through the manufacturers that we work with by tangibly creating internal upskilling pathways and digital industrial resumes as well as increasing their wage bumps through the skills data we digitize and collect. 

Within the next five years, we will impact millions of manufacturing workers' lives across the US by working with both mid-sized and very large Fortune 500 manufacturers. We look to build a real-time advanced manufacturing skills database and have multiple partnerships with manufacturing organizations, workforce, and economic organizations to collaborate with them around meaningful training efforts and research initiatives.

We have various strong and positive macro forces behind us as strengthening US manufacturing is at the forefront of economic conversations on both sides of the aisle, and there are numerous resources at the federal and local level being created currently to meet these goals. 

In terms of challenges, it's making sure that we are able to move beyond manufacturing into adjacent industries. We have had conversations where mentors and advisors have thought that Increment could apply to oil and gas, diesel, healthcare, and other skilled trades industries

We will have to ensure that we thoughtfully scale beyond manufacturing to implement similar solutions in adjacent industries and also be able to effectively measure our impact there. We have talked to those in oil and gas, diesel, and tangential industrial industries where our solution has resonated, and we will make sure to build out our network of trusted advisors with deep experience in those fields to overcome scaling barriers. 

First, we would like to collect further wage data ranges for different manufacturers not only in Indiana but across the US and as we scale to other skilled trades industries such as oil and gas. 

Second, we would like to track skills data around different manufacturing sub sectors as each sub sector has its own level of specific skills needed to succeed in the industry. There is currently no real time or up to date source of this, and many reports written about manufacturing workers use old or outdated government jobs data. 

Third, we would like to map out how skills data evolves across manufacturers who have different levels of "Industry 4.0/advanced manufacturing" implementation.

We have a diverse set of backgrounds across manufacturing and software and a range of experiences that have uniquely positioned us to solve this important problem that will impact many industrial workers in the decades to come. Our founder Jessica grew up and worked alongside many industrial and skilled trades workers in southeastern Virginia and deeply aimed to reconnect to that part of her upbringing. She wanted to research how automation and globalization trends are impacting industrial and skilled trades workers in interior states and did this by actually moving to and living in South Bend, Indiana to build the foundation for Increment. 

We are currently part of the inaugural impact driven Techstars Workforce Development accelerator (https://www.techstars.com/news...), and will be a part of the Aspen Institute Tech Policy Hub (https://www.aspentechpolicyhub.org/) next year. JFF, MIT Task Force on Work of the Future, Strada Education, ZOMALAB, and Colorado Thrives are all mentors and/or program partners for our Techstars cohort. In South Bend, we are partnered with a newer $40M initiative called Labs for Industry Futures and Transformation funded by the Eli Lilly Foundation that seeks to build manufacturing and workforce resilience for the South Bend region. We've also established relationships with 20-25 economics and workforce organizations, including Manufacturing X Digital, Association for Manufacturing Technology, and various Chambers of Commerce and EDCs.

Shop floor workers

The shop floor wage workers are the main beneficiary of Increment in that we provide them transparency around potential internal upskilling pathways with the industrial training processes that we’re digitizing. We look to provide these solutions to them through technology accessible ways with phone, SMS, and other options as computer aptitudes vary. We have talked to many shop floor workers such as Hugo who either feel like they’re not getting enough training or don’t know how to increase their wages and document their skill sets. 

Manufacturing owners

We sell to the manufacturing owners and provide them a software infrastructure to understand when workers should be retrained and upskilled in real time. We provide this product directly by implementing our solution at the manufacturing shop floors to digitize their offline upskilling processes and integrating with their production data. They specifically want this because they want to understand the “ROI” of training, which will move them towards investing in upskilling their shop floor workers. 

Local workforce boards and education and training providers

We provide these organizations with data around how real time shop floor and industrial skills are evolving with “Industry 4.0/advanced manufacturing” trends, which is not something that exists or that these stakeholders have access to today. This would allow them to train potential industrial workers to fit these needs and use the latest skills data in reports and research projects.   

We will reach financial sustainability through a mix of revenue gained through signing yearly five to six figure contracts and paid pilots, impact investment capital, and grants.

The inaugural Techstars impact driven Workforce Development accelerator: equity, $120,000 

Comeback Capital: equity, $50,000

Aspen Institute Tech Policy Hub: five figure grant

Kapor Capital: 4 figure grant

Startup South Bend Elkhart: 4 figure grant 

Our estimated expenses for 2021 are $200,000. We're happy to provide a more detailed budget upon request as well.

We would like to complete pilots and partner with organizations such as Michigan Works and the Hampton Roads Workforce Council to expand our reach beyond Indiana. They would also help us expand our impact beyond manufacturing into tangential industrial and skilled trades sectors. Additionally, we would like support in the areas highlighted below with regards to talent recruitment, advisors, and monitoring and evaluation.

We would like to partner with workforce boards to measure our impact as well as reach further industrial and skilled trades workers. 

We would like to have advisors who have deep interdisciplinary knowledge. Some examples would be Susan Helper - a top researcher on strengthening US manufacturing and a former Senior Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, David Autor, and Daron Acemoglu.    

We are in a phase of ramping up our operations to execute, so we are looking for diverse and mission driven individuals to join our team.

We would like to partner with: 

Michigan Works: they would be a strong partner for us to expand into Michigan as Michigan is a strong industrial state as well 

Manufacturing x Digital: we would eventually like to work with Manufacturing x Digital on some of the manufacturing skills reports that they publish 

Association for Manufacturing Technology: they reached out to discuss how to potentially collaborate   

More industrial associations: we have around 20-25 other relationships and informal partnerships with workforce, economic, and manufacturing associations to reach more manufacturers across the US 

Hampton Roads Workforce Council: the founder of Increment is from Hampton Roads, Virginia, so this would be a natural partner for Increment to expand into Virginia and North Carolina's industrial and skilled trades workforce

MIT Task Force on Work of the Future: they are a mentor for our Techstars cohort as well, and I could see potential research collaborations with the real time manufacturing shop floor skills data that we're collecting and how those skills evolve into advanced manufacturing skills over time.