The Frontline is Missing from the AI Conversation
This article appeared in the October 2026 issue of MiMfg Magazine. Read the full issue and find past issues online.
AI is not hard to find in manufacturing anymore. Plants are using it for predictive maintenance, machine vision, quality inspection and demand forecasting. The use cases are practical, the returns are measurable and manufacturers are already putting AI to work.
What gets less attention is who all of it is built for. Most tools point in one of two directions. Toward the equipment or toward the people managing it from a desk. The hourly associate on the line is almost never the intended user.
That is not because anyone decided to leave them out. It is structural. On a plant floor, most of the workforce lacks access to company email or a laptop. A tool that opens with a login screen has already left out most of the building. So the question is not whether AI makes it into a plant anymore but who it reaches once it gets there.
Consider one national food production company. Its hourly associates had already been reporting absences by text. So when the company expanded that same text-based system to let employees ask HR questions and get answers using AI, there was no new behavior to teach. Employees were already using the number, and HR already had a working mobile number on file for every associate.
The AI drew from the company’s own documents. Its handbook, attendance policy and benefits summaries. An associate could text to ask how many attendance points they had, when open enrollment closed or whether Friday counted as a paid holiday, and get an answer in plain language based on actual company policy.
What the associate did not have to do was find the right portal, remember a password set up during onboarding or wait outside the HR office for it to open.
Although the results did not appear on a production report, they were real. Associates stopped waiting in line before shift and during lunch to ask questions that could be answered in a sentence. HR spent less time fielding routine questions and more time on investigations, coaching and issues that actually required a person.
That does not mean every HR interaction should be handed to software. One concern was whether AI would interpret policy or make judgment calls it should not be making. In this case, it does neither. It answers only from approved company information and, when there is no clear answer, it directs the employee to HR.
But even the right use case does not matter if employees will not use it. A company can buy new technology in a quarter. Adoption depends on something simpler: whether the tool fits into how employees already work.
For frontline workers, that usually means starting with what they already have in their hands.
That is the bigger opportunity for AI in manufacturing. AI becomes meaningful on the plant floor when it does more than automate work. It becomes invaluable when it gives the people doing that work better access to the information that shapes their working lives. When reliable information is available in the moment it is needed, employees are better equipped to understand the policies, benefits, and expectations that affect them every day.
About the Author
Sheila Stafford is CEO and co-founder of TeamSense and has worked close to plant operations, supply chain, product development and the day-to-day realities of frontline teams. She may be reached at sheila@teamsense.com.
TeamSense is an MMA Premium Associate Member and has been an MMA member company since April 2026. Visit online: teamsense.com.