1. Introduction
Who knew about the iPhone, Facebook or Tesla 15/20 years ago… Remember, the iPhone was created in 2007. 15 years ago, Facebook was an embryonic company, and Tesla became a global car manufacturer in less than 10 years.
Every day, we are confronted with the digitization of our environment. Industrial companies are no exception to this revolution, this transformation.
Some say we’re living in the fourth industrial revolution. Let’s leave it to the historians of the future to analyze and explain all these societal changes, and instead take a few moments to demystify what is known as Industry 4.0.
Let’s go back in time: in the early 2000s, new working methods were introduced in Europe, imported from Japan by Toyota. People started talking about “Lean”, “Muda” and process control for pull-flow production. Lean Manufacturing and Lean 6 Sigma miraculously became Lean Management, Lean Office… Even today, talking about Yellow Belt, Green Belt and Black Belt requires a few explanations for the uninitiated.
A business has “naturally” developed around approaches aimed at the continuous improvement of industrial performance. The appearance of all this vocabulary has helped to maintain the mystery of the new.
If you take a closer look and remove the commercial filter, you’ll soon realize that Lean approaches have their origins in the problem-solving methods (DMAIC for 6 Sigma insiders) described long ago by Descartes (Discours de la Méthode). Correctly posing a problem necessarily means working in a group, and developing participative management.
2. What analogy can we draw between the development of Lean and the implementation of digital tools?
By way of example, prioritizing the manufacture of what needs to be delivered as soon as possible minimizes inventory and work-in-progress, streamlines physical flows and boosts profitability. All this is much easier today, thanks to digital technology. It’s finally possible to work with reliable information, available neither too early nor too late. Paper, Excel files, are transformed into production monitoring systems (MES), dynamic document management (EDM), and sometimes into decision support tools (AI), …
GED, MES, Advance planning Scheduling (APS), Deep-learning – these are new words, new acronyms, and for some, new sales promotion vehicles. But what is the reality?
As with Lean, let’s give credit where credit is due. By way of example, APS is no more and no less than an operational task planning tool. Our ancestors knew how to do this just as well as we do without computers: scheduling and organizing the work of several hundred workers at the Marseille shipyard on November 10, 1678 (1) was the key to assembling and launching a galley in 24 hours. Today, digital technology makes it possible to meet specific customer expectations. Products can be easily customized, and lead times greatly shortened.
3. If Lean approaches have brought participative work, digital technology brings collaborative management.
Digital tools can be easily implemented and deployed, if the company’s needs and expectations in the field are expressed. For this to make sense, digital technology must be transferred from the sphere of specialists, IT specialists and Data Scientists to employees.
Demystifying the vocabulary is a prerequisite for driving and supporting change towards participative, collaborative and therefore agile organizations.
I’ll have the opportunity to show you an example in a future article.
V. FELARDOS