Having worked for a manufacturing firm, I can guarantee that the workers doing 99% offline work are fed directly by teams that do a lot of their work online, or

Having worked for a manufacturing firm, I can guarantee that the workers doing 99% offline work are fed directly by teams that do a lot of their work online, or at least connected to a domain/email server/file server/ERP/etc. Many of the machines running in the shop didn't have external network access (a few incidents with adult content and management just blocked everything on the floor) but still do email or access plans from the file share or work order itself. Their process was still mostly paper based including large format printing of plans with bar codes for tracking so if the network goes down they can still work. It's this odd balance of welder demanded processes (workers would boycott new IT or automation tools so they had to hire a new guy to run a parts tower machine) combined with old school practices. When I was there 4 years ago it was mostly old dudes pushing out retirement to do 1 more year of income and buy their truck of choice while management was seeing SEC checks and auditing for tax/securities fraud. I'm surprised it's still in business at this point.