The Connected Worker Platform Built for Building Materials Manufacturing
Heavy equipment, dust, and an aging workforce put every shift at risk, and decades of expertise are walking out the door. Poka helps you embed safety, preserve that knowledge, and execute to standard across every plant.
Trusted by the Top Names in Building Materials Manufacturing
Top Challenges Building Materials Manufacturers Face Today
The building materials industry faces more pressure than ever. Injury risk never lets up. The workforce is retiring. And information keeps falling through the cracks between shifts and sites.
Safety & environmental compliance
Heavy equipment, dust, heat, and material handling create injury risk on every shift, and ESG reporting requirements keep tightening. Every high-risk task needs verified training and a signed record. Paper binders mean near-misses go unreported, and no one can prove who was cleared to work.
Skills gap & aging workforce
The know-how that runs a kiln, a board line, or a press lives in the heads of senior operators who are retiring, often just as the plant absorbs major capital investment. USG named this exact problem as the trigger for adopting Poka: a tenured workforce retiring while new equipment came online. When that knowledge isn't captured, new hires start from scratch.
Unplanned downtime & asset reliability
When a kiln, press, or conveyor goes down, recovery depends on how fast the right person gets the fault history, repair steps, and parts information. Scattered or undocumented knowledge means downtime stretches and repeats.
Inconsistent quality across sites
Writing the spec is the easy part. The harder problem is producing the same dimensions, grades, and finishes across every shift and line, and catching deviations before product ships. Informal coaching and outdated binders let variation creep in, and a site can drift from standard for weeks.
Help Your Building Materials Frontline Make Safety and Knowledge Sharing Everyday Practice
Poka is a connected worker platform for heavy-industrial plants. It puts instructions, safety procedures, training, communication, and data in one place on the floor. Every operator, technician, and supervisor can use it.
A safety culture that sticks
Every JSA, LOTO, and safety check is one click away and logged instantly. High-risk tasks need verified clearance first. Masonite cut accidents from 9 to 2 in a year. Soprema improved reporting efficiency by more than 20%.
Retiring knowledge captured
Know-how that runs a kiln, board line, or press becomes digital instructions before it's lost. USG used Industrial AI to build 2,400 instructions and saved thousands of hours.
Less unplanned downtime
Operators log equipment issues with photos the moment they happen. Maintenance arrives with the fault history and repair steps in hand. Assets recover faster.
Consistent quality across plants
Grade and finish checks are standardized at the line. Deviations get caught before product ships. Building materials customers see 58% fewer quality disruptions.
Training that keeps up
Each capital investment becomes a training event the plant is ready for. Role-specific paths deliver at the point of work. USG's rollout took about an hour per site. Customers see up to 45% faster onboarding.
Measurable productivity gains
When safety, knowledge, and communication live in one platform, the floor runs better. Poka customers see 24% higher productivity on average.
What would 24% higher productivity look like on your floor?
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The Poka Capabilities That Matter Most for Building Materials Manufacturing
Poka is a single, unified platform where each capability reinforces the others, building a culture of continuous improvement.
Heavy equipment and constant dust put injury risk on every shift. Poka makes every JSA, LOTO, and near-miss form one click away and logged instantly. High-risk tasks need verified clearance first. Masonite cut accidents from 9 to 2 in a year. Soprema improved reporting efficiency by more than 20%.
90% fewer safety incidents | Instant, timestamped safety records
Expertise on a kiln, board line, or press is retiring, often just as the plant adds new equipment. Poka captures it as digital work instructions before it's lost. Industrial AI converts legacy procedures and training videos into structured content. USG built 2,400 instructions this way and saved thousands of hours.
Each modernization is a training event at scale. Poka delivers role-specific training at the point of work. It tracks competency across the workforce. New-equipment rollouts happen in days, not months. USG's rollout took about an hour per site.
45% faster onboarding | 38% higher workforce retention
Long lines and distant teams mean safety reminders and material changes get lost between groups. Masonite credits the Factory Feed for getting H&S reminders, parameter changes, and material data to every employee in real time. USG cited communication as the breakthrough use case after training.
74% increase in frontline engagement | 40% reduction in shift handover incidents
When a kiln, press, or conveyor goes down, recovery depends on how fast the right person gets the fault history and repair steps. Poka captures issues with photos and context, then routes them automatically. Every fix becomes a record the next shift can use.
20 to 40% faster issue resolution | Full audit trail from report to resolution
How Poka Turns Daily Work Into Continuous Improvement
The best building materials plants don't just run well, they get safer and more consistent over time. Not from a single initiative, but from systems where every shift and every reported hazard makes the next one better.
Poka creates that flywheel, and it sticks because operators own it. USG describes a solution where, almost unanimously, people felt it was their solution. Near-miss and hazard reporting goes up because every form is one click away, the right H&S reminder reaches every operator through the Factory Feed, and each fix becomes the updated standard.
Over time, accidents fall the way Masonite's did from 9 to 2 in a year, quality converges across plants, and retiring expertise stays in the building. Experienced workers feel equipped and new hires ramp faster, and the gains flow straight to the bottom line. The plants that lead are the ones where improvement happens on every shift. Poka makes that possible.
Whether You Run the Line or the Plant, Poka Works for Your Team
You might run a gypsum board line, lead H&S across a global roofing operation, or standardize operations across dozens of plants. Poka adapts to the workflows your building materials team needs to run.
Operators get the latest approved procedure for every product, line, and changeover. The AI Assistant guides complex start-up and shut-down sequences. USG tracks start-up, shut-down, and product checklists as core engagement metrics.
How Leading Building Materials Companies Use Poka
USG
USG: 2,400 instructions and high operator ownership
USG faced a retiring, tenured workforce and heavy new-equipment investment. It used Industrial AI to build 2,400 work instructions and saved thousands of hours. Rollout training took about an hour per site. Operators embraced it. USG went live across 295 users in two divisions. Multi-plant expansion is now underway across 46 sites.
Soprema
Soprema: One click away from a safer plant
Soprema made every safety form one click away. Reporting efficiency improved by 20% for big injuries and more than 20% for near-misses. Soprema connected Forms with Tableau for live safety analytics. This gives workers and management a shared view of safety culture.
Go Deeper on Connected Work for Building Materials
Frequently Asked Questions
Every Operator Deserves to Go Home the Same Way They Came In: Safe.
Poka's modern connected worker platform makes that promise real:
- Make every JSA, LOTO, and near-miss report one click away
- Require verified clearance before high-risk work starts
- Catch quality deviations before they leave the plant
- Train every new hire on the same proven standard
- Give supervisors real-time visibility across every shift
See how it works on your floor.
Every associate shouldn't be more than one click away from opening a form they need to report a safety situation.
Plant Manager, Soprema
