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Explore the real future of work in this expert tech implementation guide that goes beyond automation
In Augmented Lean: A Human-Centric Framework for Managing Frontline Operations, serial startup founder Dr. Natan Linder and futurist podcaster Dr. Trond Arne Undheim deliver an urgent and incisive exploration of how to facilitate agile processes amongst a millennial workforce that already lives by many of its tenets. The book demonstrates how to abandon legacy industrial technology that is failing modern operations and hindering operational excellence and digital progress. As an executive and leader, you cannot fall prey to hyped-up notions of industry 4.0's factory of the future automation, artificial intelligence, internet of things, sensors, digital twins, and augmented reality fixing every problem. Instead, to truly reduce cognitive load, complexity, and frustrations in the workplace, we must build cyber-physical technologies so that humans remain at the center. Leaders must ensure that the technology they deploy at an industrial scale has fluid interfaces that demonstrably simplifies work and makes operations more flexible without introducing fear, uncertainty, or doubt.
The authors provide:
A thoroughly practical playbook for augmenting your workforce with the latest cyber-physical adaptations to digital technologies, Augmented Lean provides you with the organizational-, process-, and management-level techniques you need to get the most out of your employees. In turn, as an operator, engineer, or industrial worker reading this book, you will become empowered to be a change agent through no-code interfaces instead of remaining a recipient of endless training demands and ever-increasing technological complexity. Augmented Lean will orient you towards the future with the most effective tools to cut through hype so you can instantly apply your learnings and be productive wherever you currently operate.
NATAN LINDER, PHD, is Co-founder and CEO of the frontline operations platform Tulip, and the Co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Formlabs, a pioneer in professional desktop 3D printing. He received his doctorate from MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group.
TROND ARNE UNDHEIM, PHD, is a futurist, podcaster, venture partner, Co-founder of Yegii, and formerly with MIT, WPP, Oracle, and the EU. He received his doctorate in the Future of Work and Artificial Intelligence from the NTNU’s Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences.
List of Figures and Interviews xiii
List of Tables xix
Acknowledgments xxi
About The Authors xxiii
Introduction 1
Who Are the Frontline Workers? 3
What Is Augmented Lean? 8
How Is This Book Organized? 12
Part I The Evolution of Industrial Lean 21
Chapter 1 The Evolution of Frontline Industrial Work 23
Industrial Frontline Workers and Technological Revolutions 26
Industrial Revolutions Through History to the Future 30
Conclusion 49
Chapter 2 From Classic Lean via Agile to Digital Lean and Beyond 53
What Is Digital Lean? 56
Beyond Digital Lean: How Industrial No-Code Empowers Operators 58
Beyond Point Solutions 63
The Emergence of Frontline Operations 68
Conclusion 72
Chapter 3 The State of Play in Industrial Software 77
An Outlier Reshaping the Industry 81
The Advent of 3D Computer-Aided Design 85
The Emergence of Manufacturing Execution Systems 88
Conclusion 95
Chapter 4 The Journey Past Digital Lean 99
DMG MORI’s Integration with Tulip 101
A Digital Boost to Medical Manufacturing: Another Journey 109
Conclusion 114
Part II The Coming of Augmented Lean 117
Chapter 5 The Augmented Lean Framework 119
Classic Lean vs. Digital Lean vs. Augmented Lean 121
Core Principles of Augmented Lean 123
Conclusion 141
Chapter 6 How to Roll Out Industrial Technology the Right Way 145
The Global Lighthouse Network: Top-Down Synthesized Best Practices 148
Four Distinct Ways to Digitally Transform an Industrial Organization 163
Conclusion 174
Chapter 7 Democratizing Operational Technology Using the Dynamic Capabilities of the Organization 179
No-Code and Low-Code 181
Leveraging Organizational Capabilities 188
Conclusion 197
Part III Engineering, Tech, And Skills 201
Chapter 8 The Emergence of the Digitally Literate Industrial Engineer 203
The Evolution of the Industrial Engineering Field 205
Engineering: The Hybrid of Science, Tech, and Innovation 211
The Slow Evolution of Contemporary Industrial Engineering 213
The Need to Ramp Up Change 215
Conclusion 222
Chapter 9 Training the Process Engineers of the Future 227
The Process Engineer: Today and Tomorrow 230
How to Avoid Training the Workforce for Yesterday’s Challenges 232
Reimagining Training 240
Open-Source Manufacturing 241
What Workforce Training Enables an Engineering Mindset? 246
Conclusion 250
Chapter 10 From Automation to Augmentation 255
The State of Play in Industrial Robotics 258
Where Robotics Is Making an Impact on the Factory Floor 264
Automation Is More Than Robotics 267
What Automation Has Accomplished 269
What Augmentation Is and What It Will Become 270
Conclusion 274
Part IV Augmented Lean Operations 279
Chapter 11 The Potential Augmenting Power of Operational Data 281
From Augmented Reality Experiments at MIT to Frontline Operations Platform 285
The Promise of Machine Monitoring 288
There’s Lots of Big Data in Manufacturing, But Can We Use It? 290
Machine Learning in Manufacturing 293
Case Study: The Impact of Operational Data in Data in Life Science Operations 295
Conclusion 304
Chapter 12 Facilitation Over Control: How the Industrial Systems of the Future Might Emerge 309
Why Does Space Manufacturing Suddenly Make Sense? 311
The Size and Shape of the Future Industrial Pie 316
How Long Will It Take for Industry 4.0 to Mature? 320
The Future of Industrial Operations 321
The Workforce Questions 328
Building a Movement 330
Conclusion 332
Chapter 13 Reconfiguring Global Supply Chains 337
Boosting J&J’s Digital Supply Chain with Augmented Lean Approaches 341
Digital Ordering Process in the UK’s Largest Flower Business 345
Building and Trusting in Supply Chain Resilience 349
The Resilience of Global Supply Chains 351
The Lessons from Digitizing GE 353
Remaining Challenges: Tackling Port Congestion 355
The Future of Supply Chains 357
Conclusion 360
Chapter 14 Conclusion: Augmented Lean Management of the Emerging, Frontline Industrial Workforce 365
Augmented Lean Management for the Frontline Workforce 367
Building the Augmented Lean Community 372
Index 375
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