FOCUS ON WORKFORCE
All image: Shutterstock. com.
By
Garth Coleman, CEO, Canvas Envision
About the author
A strategic innovator with more than two decades of experience in enterprise software, Garth brings a blend of technical depth and business leadership to Canvas GFX. He advances product lifecycle management( PLM), 3D visualisation and generative AI technologies that help organisations turn complexity into competitive advantage.
Before joining Canvas GFX, Garth held multiple vice president roles at Dassault Systèmes, where he helped define global strategies for 3D visualisation, PLM and AR / VR solutions. He also led initiatives to accelerate generative AI adoption across brand marketing and product organisations, driving efficiency and innovation at scale.
Garth focuses on translating innovation into measurable business results, reflecting a clear understanding of how product vision, market strategy and customer experience come together to drive growth. He earned his Bachelor of Engineering & Society from McMaster University and his MBA, Summa Cum Laude, from Babson College.
SOLVING THE PARADOX
The industry has poured enormous energy into the“ connected” part and, somewhere along the way, lost sight of the worker …. Garth Coleman explains why connected worker strategies are leaving workers behind.
“ A connected worker strategy asks how to get data to a person. A connected knowledge strategy asks how to capture, structure and deliver actionable knowledge across the entire workforce and lifecycle, and how to close the feedback loop so that the organisation gets smarter over time.”
Over the past two decades, manufacturers have invested billions into digital infrastructure. PLM systems manage product definitions with extraordinary precision. ERP platforms coordinate global operations. MES software orchestrates production schedules down to the minute. On the product and process side of the equation, the transformation has been genuine and substantial.
Yet walk onto most factory floors in some countries and you will find the people actually building products still working from static PDFs, printed checklists and documents that someone assembled by hand. The engineering systems upstream are world-class. The knowledge delivery at the point of execution has barely changed.
This is the paradox at the centre of the connected worker conversation. The industry has poured enormous energy into the“ connected” part and, somewhere along the way, lost sight of the worker.
Two pillars transformed: one left behind
Manufacturing runs on three pillars: product, process and people. The product pillar has been transformed by engineering systems, digital twins and simulation. The process
24 | ismr. net | ISMR June 2026