The manufacturing sector is navigating what Rockwell Automation calls a “perfect storm”—a convergence of rising inflation, supply chain volatility, workforce shortages, and rapid technological change. According to the 2025 State of Smart Manufacturing Report, 41% of manufacturers are turning to AI and automation to address skills gaps, while nearly half (48%) are redeploying employees into higher-value roles as a result.
While technology is often seen as the solution, Rockwell Automation emphasizes that human capital remains equally critical. This duality—machines and people—defines the new competitive frontier. For Ng Mei Li, Senior Human Resources Business Partner for South-East Asia at Rockwell Automation Singapore, this moment marks a critical shift in priorities. “The future of competitiveness lies not only in operational efficiency, but equality in workforce resilience,” she told HRM Asia. “Success is no longer measured solely by output—it is measured by whether organizations have the skills, adaptability, and culture needed to sustain innovation in uncertain conditions.”
The report showed that manufacturers increasingly recognize the importance of talent in parallel with technology. While AI and automation can fill immediate gaps in production and processes, their long-term success depends on people who can adapt, apply, and innovate around these tools.
Ng sees HR as a strategic driver in this transition. “For HR, this means developing a longer-term vision where talent strategy augments the organization’s operational strategy, focusing on aligning future-critical skills, accelerating workforce agility and innovation, and enabling a learning culture, to name a few,” she explained.
She added that embedding digital confidence across the workforce is as important as ensuring supply chains run smoothly. “Ultimately, HR’s role is to position people as the differentiator in a highly automated world. Operational excellence is only sustainable when matched by a workforce model that is skilled, engaged, and future-ready,” she said.
Ng highlighted several key practices, including prioritizing continuous learning as a business imperative; ensuring employees feel confident, not threatened, by digital tools; and making resilience and adaptability core organizational values.
This alignment between people and technology is also echoed in the report, which found that 83% of global manufacturers now rank analytical thinking, communication, and teamwork among the most important skills for the next generation of hires.
The manufacturing professional of tomorrow is also expected to be far more versatile than their predecessors. Beyond technical expertise, they must be agile problem-solvers who can work across functions. Ng elaborated, “A future-ready professional is not defined by technical skills alone. They must combine technical fluency with adaptability, problem-solving, and cross-functional collaboration.”
The 2025 State of Smart Manufacturing Report underscored this shift, with nearly half of respondents viewing the ability to apply AI as “extremely important,” up 10% from 2024, while cybersecurity skills have risen to 47% in priority.
Ng went on to outline the key qualities of tomorrow’s manufacturing workforce:
- Adaptability: The ability to pivot quickly as technologies and market needs evolve.
- Digital Confidence: Being comfortable working alongside intelligent systems.
- Collaborative Problem-Solving: Bringing together insights across different functions like engineering, IT, and operations.
- Commitment to Lifelong Learning: Continuously developing new skills to stay relevant.
Rockwell Automation has been addressing this by investing heavily in workforce development and industrial training services, from in-person programs to online courses. Their Learning+ Training subscriptions, for example, combine self-paced e-learning with practical labs and simulations. Ng pointed out that while “technology can scale quickly, people need time, support, and opportunities to build digital fluency and confidence.”
Rethinking leadership in the AI era
As the physical and digital worlds of manufacturing merge, leadership expectations are also evolving. The report noted that one of the top leadership obstacles remains resistance to change, underscoring the need for leaders who can inspire trust and guide teams through continuous transformation.
“Traditional leadership qualities such as vision, communication, and operational expertise remain important, but in an AI era, they must be expanded with new dimensions,” said Ng.
She identified three essential qualities for leaders in the AI era:
- Hybrid Thinking: Leaders must bridge the gap between human capability and machine intelligence, understanding how to apply technology to unlock human potential.
- Change Agility: With rapid technological evolution, leaders must guide their teams through constant transformation with resilience and clear communication.
- Inclusive Leadership: Leaders need to create environments where employees feel empowered to experiment and bring forward new ideas.
At Rockwell Automation, these qualities are cultivated through leadership training programs that blend technical upskilling with soft skills, such as change management and collaboration. Ng emphasized that effective leaders today “champion continuous learning, guide their teams through digital adoption, and foster a culture of psychological safety where innovation can thrive.”
These qualities, she added, are essential in managing the diverse, hybrid factories of the future, where human and intelligent systems work in tandem.
However, in an industry where technical skills can become obsolete overnight, HR is pivoting from role-specific hiring to prioritizing learning capacity. The report supports this, with 41% of respondents using AI to address skills gaps.
This dynamic is reshaping hiring philosophies. “We are shifting from hiring for a static role to hiring for learning capacity, valuing qualities such as curiosity, adaptability, and resilience alongside technical credentials,” Ng explained.
She described a talent pipeline built on curiosity and adaptability: “Recruitment focuses on potential, not just experience.” This means assessing candidates for their ability to learn quickly and solve problems in ambiguous situations. The development process becomes continuous, not episodic, with employees offered ongoing opportunities to reskill. Career paths are also becoming more fluid, encouraging employees to move between different disciplines to broaden their perspective.
Ultimately, the goal for HR leaders is to create a culture where curiosity is rewarded and adaptability is second nature. “This ensures that organizations can weather disruptions not by having the ‘right’ skills at a single point in time, but by cultivating a workforce that is prepared to evolve with the industry.”
Originally published on HRM Asia
