Lean manufacturing in the digital world

Lean Manufacturing & Operational excellence is never outdated and if done right, smart technologies will enable better, faster decisions. – Lean Manufacturing & Operational excellence never goes out of style, and done right, smart technologies enable better and faster decisions.

This is a question that is always asked with regularity: What follows after lean manufacturing – Lean Manufacturing? Is that really a question? unusual, because it implies that when you have finished lean you will throw it aside to support the next big thing. It shows that today’s Lean’s idea of ​​eliminating losses, improving production flow and maximizing customer value is irrelevant. This concept almost proposes that lean is a term coined in the ancient past, that is, more than 30 years ago, and is an outdated unrelated concept to the present.

And now in 2020,  smart and digital technologies are pervading the factory, promising to provide manufacturers with better and better data to make smarter decisions, as well as quick responses. more with potential downtime events. They will be description, prediction and self-action. They can do it all.

Is smart technology what’s next after lean manufacturing – Lean Manufacturing? Maybe now is the time to boot lean? Switch to lean production? Take a good step? running fast? How does lean fit into this increasingly digital production situation?

And for some manufacturers, there are some very clear answers you’ll find out below.

Zohair Mehkri, director of engineering simulation, XR at Flex, a global electronics manufacturing service provider said: When I look at lean, a lot of its fundamentals are timeless. It really never expires. Lean never really becomes obsolete. From a technology perspective, it is very important for Flex or any company to have a streamlined platform. Therefore, lean will not disappear. In fact, the opposite came true?

Lean Manufacturing is really about making issues clearly visible, identifying core issues and solving problems. Anything that can help you do it more effectively is good, Bob Argyle said. He is currently a business director at Leading2Lean, a technology solution provider that supports lean implementation. Smart technologies, used correctly, have really enhanced or accelerated the ability of companies to perform lean manufacturing – Lean Manufacturing and drive innovation in a bigger way than before without digitization.

Argyle is in a unique position to consider both of technological equations: lean / smart. He is a veteran over 30 years of production. He works at automotive supplier Autoliv, a manufacturer with a close relationship with lean manufacturing – Lean Manufacturing, and advised by Toyota, is the model of a lean executive as well as a The company captures technology in production.

Later, Samuel Bouchard, CEO and co-founder of robotiq robot manufacturer. Bouchard goes beyond lean and technology recommendations. He wrote the entire book – Lean Robotics – outlining a method to simplify the deployment of robot cells through lean principles. How tighter can lean and technology intertwine? As Bouchard noted early on, lean robots are not about technology. The ultimate goal – as with everything you do in your company – is to create value for your customers and drive business results, he wrote. Sound familiar?

Equally interesting is the reason Bouchard wrote Lean Robotics as he explained, an in-depth analysis of why he had difficulty selling that points to a problem that leads potential customers to struggle: Integrating robotic systems is simply too complicated. The method that Bouchard’s team has developed aims to reduce that complexity.

This is rubbing

There is a very passionate saying about this: Technology will not fix a bad process, it will only accelerate a bad process.

Similarly, the ability of smart technology to enhance lean implementation depends a lot on the lean group’s proficiency. For example, John Carrier, senior lecturer at MIT Sloan noted that the first major impact of digital transformation is to provide real-time visibility into parts of the system that were not previously seen. OK. The new visibility, he said, provides clarity on which issues will be addressed next and the value they will create.

In theory, those words are great news for a lean organization whose purpose is to create an organization that is solved by problem solvers. In fact, very few organizations are lean. So while smart technologies can intensify the pursuit of continuous improvement, they may initially add a layer of complexity that lean implementation may not be mature enough to handle.

Indeed, I find that many companies fail to make a connection between the first phase of digital transformation (it solves problems instead of solving them) and the lean / six sigma functions, often are organizations that have to train instead of solve problems, Carrier said.

Similarly, the introduction of smart technologies is no substitute for the challenges that lean manufacturing industry – Lean Manufacturing always faces on the leadership front. In particular, without leadership commitment to lean or true, any other continuous improvement initiatives – it will fail at its worst. Smart technology is no substitute for leadership, it’s just a tool.

Similarly, the introduction of smart technologies is no substitute for the challenges that lean manufacturing industry – Lean Manufacturing always faces on the leadership front. In particular, without leadership commitment to lean or true, any other continuous improvement initiatives – it will fail at its worst. Smart technology is no substitute for leadership, it’s just a tool.

Following all the latest trends in production will not yield the expected results if the company’s executives do not create a collaborative, supportive environment for workers, John’s caption. Dyer, contributor to industry for The Façade of Excellence newspaper: Defining a New Normal of Leadership.

For example, he notes that displaying data in real time is an important step in improvement, which is almost worthless if teams of employees are not empowered to make quick decisions, assertive on how to respond outside the control signal.

Moreover, empowering without proper training is also a failure and that is leadership. If workers do not have the tools, knowledge or experience of continuous improvement to do things like find the root cause of problems or identify and break bottlenecks, even production systems The most modern ones will also gradually degrade and eventually fail in digital conversion programs.

Lean and Smart: An effective collaborative approach

Flex is a manufacturer advocating a collaborative approach to efficient operation. They have created a structured process to solve problems and leverage smart technologies, as well as other resources, as needed to achieve the desired results.

Peanash Subramaniam, vice president, global business specialist and global business quality, said that Lean is a method of problem solving. Lean eliminates losses. Smartization and digitization speed up the elimination of losses, allowing us to come up with an optimal solution faster.

Subramaniam and Mehkri shared an example of how lean and smart technologies work together in their organizations. In this example, Flex is setting up a new production line in one of its facilities to support a new customer. Lean team participated in discussions about how to set up a production line or production line, dealing with items such as the number of stations and people needed, the time needed to meet the needs, and the speed at which materials were supplied to the wire. pass, et cetera. When these basics were set up, Mehkri’s team actively participated to provide a layout simulation proposed using discrete event simulation technology (DES).

Intuitive visibility and production simulations under review give the Flex team a chance to handle errors before the physical line is built. What team members can check if user scripts uncover potential bottlenecks and optimize production plans in a virtual environment. The ability to quickly repeat potential solutions is an example of how lean and intelligent technologies complement each other, both speakers.

Data Science at Jabil

Without training, the ability to lean on an organization is limited. It’s simple and it explains why companies are committed to training their employees about what lean is, how it works and provide some explanation of the different lean tools. The same thought holds true for Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma and other continuous improvement methods (TPM, WCM).

With the proliferation of data getting increasingly quickly in the context of smarter technology, manufacturing solution provider Jabil Inc. Ongoing a training method similar to data science. The company has implemented both data science programs for workers and executives, two efforts designed to teach Jabil leaders and employees the tools and methods of data science, as well as how to apply that knowledge to problem solving.

These programs are for anyone interested in learning data science skills, says Candy Mitchell, director, data science and artificial intelligence at Jabil. Leadership tracking is a day-long event, often with an accompanying workshop.

On the other hand, the three-week data science program, Jabil called the boot camp, was completed in a three-month period. Students finish the course by providing data science solutions to a problem they want to solve.

Jabil is also considering another training option, this is simply around awareness. This will be a kind of one day training just to understand languages.

Just like the language of Lean Six Sigma, smart technologies have their own language: machine learning, computer vision, data science, according to Mitchell. Afterwards, people with more interest can get more training, she explained.

In her role, Mitchell oversees the company’s data science programs and advises on use cases throughout the organization. A Lean Six Sigma lean master belt, she also assists in receiving and using Lean Six Sigma at Jabil.

Data science training, Mitchell emphasized, is not just for IT staff. In fact, the focus is on enterprise-side personnel, with the goal, ultimately, to develop the skill set of anyone interested in learning.

Which brings us back around to lean. Lean principles and smart technology promote continuous improvement if done right, Mr. Clark said. We get data faster. We can do analysis faster.

We can analyze ‘what-if’. It empowers everyone in the business to use new tools and platforms to do these things, Mr. Mitchell.

This is really about smart technology and lean manufacturing working together.

Productivity and Quality Office