Dynamics within the workforce are shifting, with employers struggling to accommodate a new generation’s shared mentality around how, where and why we do the jobs we do. 

Nowhere is this more acute than in manufacturing and frontline operations, as Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies that have long promised to transform operations for the benefit of workers and businesses have—to date at least—largely failed to deliver. That’s because elements of I4.0 are often introduced without consideration for the humans steering them. This results in both missed targets and waste, as well as an outright negative view of I4.0 principles from workers who have so far been alienated by the concept.

On the one hand, those entering the workforce are rightfully more introspective about the complexity and satisfaction of the jobs they perform in a post-pandemic world. To that end, these workers are accustomed to digital workflows that mirror the seamlessness and personalization of their digital lives as consumers—something that many I4.0 initiatives have so far failed to bring into the factory.

On the other hand, the previous generation of workers are themselves both worn weary by the long-tail promise of I4.0, which so far has failed to improve their day-to-day, and the prospect of onboarding the incoming workforce with a toolkit that older workers may not have faith in.

All of this only scratches the surface of the staffing challenges facing manufacturers, however, as there are expected to be 2.1 million unfulfilled manufacturing jobs by 2030.

Taking staffing woes out of the equation, studies show that 70 percent of manufacturing errors are still attributed to humans, regardless of how much new technology has been adopted across the supply chain. This speaks to an even greater “people problem” for manufacturers, as it alludes to a flawed human-in-the-loop consideration at every step in the supply chain. 

Enabling Lean thinking across the supply chain

At the heart of this disconnect is a lack of Lean thinking across manufacturing workflows. In many cases where I4.0 is failing to meet ROI, manufacturers aren’t arming stakeholders at each step in the supply chain with the tools they need to adopt this mentality organically.  

One-piece flow, for instance, which speaks to a streamlined manufacturing process—from the factory all the way up to the end-user/customer—is an I4.0 concept that relies on synchronicity across systems to ensure Lean manufacturing principles are embraced at every step. 

It’s that synchronicity that’s currently missing from many manufacturing workflows today, and which is ultimately hindering both the data and skill share necessary to seize upon the promise of I4.0.

So how can manufacturers start bridging the gaps between Lean thinkers—who often live in the C-Suite—skilled workers and industrial engineers on the factory floor, and the various subject-matter experts (SMEs) across the larger supply chain? It all starts with combining advanced, digital manufacturing solutions with Lean techniques to identify vulnerabilities and areas for optimization within operations to:

• Zero-in on root cause and reduce error rate across the supply chain
• Reduce training time
• Increase production yield
• Achieve faster time-to-value and time-to-market.

Brass tacks: What is Digitized Lean Manufacturing?

At its core, the concept of Lean Manufacturing is centered around creating more value for customers while reducing waste. It encompasses a systematic framework for eliminating waste from a manufacturing system, or value stream, without sacrificing productivity. 

In practice, Lean manufacturing alludes to 8 areas within the supply chain where waste proliferates, including:

• Transport, ie. unnecessary steps in delivery
• Inventory, which plays out in overstocked warehouses
• Motion, referring to too many people or machinery involved in production
• Waiting, whether that’s idle manpower or equipment
• Overproduction of goods, usually as a result of poor planning
• Over-processing, ie. spending excessive time designing unnecessary product features
• Defects, calling for unplanned costs and effort
• And Unutilized Talent.

While any of these waste areas can proliferate in isolation, this last factor—Unutilized Talent—tends to be the inciting element that sends the other seven factors in motion. If manufacturers have workers who aren’t empowered to efficiently and effectively handle each of these respective workflows from the start, waste and inefficiencies are almost inevitable. 

This tees up a cycle that many in the supply chain space are all too familiar with, which ultimately impacts not just the ability for a manufacturer to be Lean, but drives up operational expenditures.

Digitizing Lean involves marrying strategies that prevent waste in these key areas with advanced digital technologies and analytics that promote Continuous Improvement and process visibility. This includes the introduction of tools that enable active, automated data collection at each step of the manufacturing workflow to remove manual tracking that may otherwise take place in siloes. 

Barriers to Digitizing Lean

Despite holding so much promise, there have been significant institutional barriers in Digitizing Lean strategies to date. Among these is the age-old skepticism about the security of new solutions. 

Many manufacturing processes are custom and unique—if not fully proprietary—and while certain tried-and-true processes may not be digitally advanced, they’ve proven effective and secure enough for decision makers to not want to rock the boat.

To that end, skepticism over introducing cloud technology within environments where sensitive data can be openly shared still remains among many decision makers, despite the efficacy of cloud solutions being well established across frontline operations. Instead, many teams have continued funneling money into legacy ERP systems that, while custom, aren’t effectively driving Continuous Improvement.

That’s because without the end-to-end visibility of a Digitized Lean workflow, SMEs continue to remain in siloes, which enforces rigid implementation and hides opportunities for preventable downtime and improved efficiency. 

There’s also apprehension about going “all-or-nothing” on I4.0 initiatives, which taken as a whole can be a huge undertaking for organizations. But when there is collaboration across workflows that allows Lean Thinkers and more industrial engineers to share knowledge and skills, Continuous Improvement and digital transformation will start to take hold almost organically. 

It all comes down to giving teams the tools they need to bring all members into a Lean Thinking mentality while giving them contextual visibility into the entire workflow. While Digitizing Lean doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing pursuit at the start, there are some key areas where digital lean transformation may be challenging to launch, but payoff can be significant, including:

• Andon Systems: Creating systems that signal downtime require a lot of custom technology—and frankly, work—that hinges on specific software, hardware and subject matter expertise. A platform like Tulip, however, enables the industrial engineers tasked with creating these systems to become Lean thinkers, leveraging the data they’re collecting throughout the process to create applications that can more intelligently alert to downtime and map out resolution from a single workstation.
• Kanban: Similarly with Kanban (or any other kind of inventory management system), a single-pane-of-glass that centralizes data collection and actually automates manual tracking is simply more effective and actionable than legacy systems, which are often manual and by default siloed.
• Motion study: If a production line has stopped for some reason, what does an operator need to do? While standard operating procedure dictates that these line workers will need to go to maintenance when downtime occurs, Lean thinking needs to be folded into this process to track how quickly and effectively these remediations are being executed to remove redundancies in future scenarios. 
• Time studies: Improving speed without compromising quality is one of the key facets of Lean thinking. Paradoxically, the process of manually conducting time studies can itself be a time-drain before the results are even put to analysis. With platforms that digitize and synchronize this whole process, motion and time studies can be conducted almost passively, allowing stakeholders to share details about downtime while deriving actionable insights around removing redundancies.

Industrial engineers need access to all of this data in concert to create successful applications that execute on these Lean thinking strategies. A centralized platform not only makes it easier to track and share all of this data, but opens the door for greater collaboration across SMEs, C-level Lean thinkers and industrial engineers. 

The value of this knowledge and skillshare cannot be underestimated, as it lends critical context to every step of the supply chain that can deliver actionable insights almost immediately. 

Avoiding pitfalls when Digitizing Lean

While synchronous technology is critical, the success of Lean digitization still hinges on the humans spearheading these initiatives. Poorly targeted technology projects and process improvements of any kind can lead to program fatigue and negative returns—not to mention a lack of faith in new processes from stakeholders at every step of the workflow. 

To ensure successful digital Lean implementation, teams need to embrace the four following tenets:

1. Value first, technology second. Focus on solving urgent problems, not exploring the technology, when proposing Digitized Lean solutions. When teams come to a project with clear, measurable goals that are tied to solving a real pain point, the most valuable features of the new tech will come to light organically. If, instead, a team is focused on testing out all components of the new tech without a clear problem to solve in mind, there will inevitably be skepticism about the true value a solution delivers. 
2. Identify the right starting point: Teams must evaluate the people, process and technological readiness within a line and be as specific as possible. Engineers need to be armed with the right tools and training to execute on these processes, and it’s important to understand what existing gaps in expertise or strategy need to be filled for Lean thinking to be shared across teams. 
3. Secure stakeholder buy-in: Develop user personas for each stakeholder, conveying how a new tool can add value to their daily job. If the person performing a specific job isn’t empowered to raise flags when issues occur or pull in other stakeholders for help in the process, continued isolation will inevitably turn this worker sour on the process. With access to a robust collaboration toolset, this can be avoided. 
4. Focus on gradual growth: A digital Lean transformation uses a composable approach to identify critical issues, determine measurable goals, deploy short pilots one-at-a-time, and iterate to improve. Leaders need to focus on the low hanging fruit at the start of digital Lean transformation to add the most value with the least effort. This will in turn help improve buy-in, inform starting points for future projects, and help teams better visualize the value of digitization from the start.

By deploying Digitized Lean in a considered, gradual approach, teams can start making data-based decisions far more efficiently than legacy, manual Lean processes alone ever could. 

Digitized Lean focuses on removing the presence of Unutilized Talent by arming stakeholders across the workflow with the tools they need to be more efficient and analytical at every step. Central to this is the ability for new Digitized Lean solutions to scale wider and faster than manual processes ever could, which has been the biggest barrier to ROI for I4.0 to date.
By being able to solve problems today that manufacturers and frontline operations have failed to in the past, Digitized Lean solutions can help finally start accelerating wide-scale I4.0 transformation and the long-promised delivery of the Future Factory. Perhaps best of all, it empowers workers across generations and stations to start thinking Lean and taking more ownership of their day-to-day tasks.