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Lean and Industry 4.0 Opposites or
2015 Complements? | Wiegand's Watch Featured Sponsor
This is a translation of Bodo Wiegand's latest newsletter, about Lean in Germany, followed by my
comments:
Lately, I was at a company where the CEO told me "Mr. Wiegand, Lean is over all the About the Author
talk now is about Industry 4.0". Well, I hadn't seen this coming. Then:
1. Lean would have been just a passing fad like many management theories.
2. This company would already be Lean, with all the processes to be designed without
waste.
So if Industry 4.0 takes over from Lean, we can say goodbye to the philosophy of
creating value without waste, because that's what Lean is about: creating value without
waste.
I do not think that's right. Nor do I believe that there are companies that are so Lean that
no waste is present in their processes. And I'm not talking only of the actual valueadded
processes, but also of the minor and subprocesses, for example in the administrative,
service or maintenance areas.
Let's look at the administrative areas. There, the average value added in Germany is
50%. By Industry 4.0 can only optimize the valueadded areas, and slightly if at all.
The conceptual model of Industry 4.0 is: create the Internet of Things, network all
machines and products, and involve people. Then you've got the perfect, lowwaste
production system. It works perhaps if all the products, all interfaces and all
processes are coordinated and aligned. Michel Baudin
Fascinated with the art of making things,
We should have learned this from past experience, for example, with SAP. About the year
Michel is on a mission to improve it. Trained in
2000, there was a run on SAP, based on the belief that we could use it to optimize and
streamline the indirect work. it was not even close. When I model my old nonoptimized engineering and applied math, he got his feet
processes in SAP, it doesn't get any better than before. wet in production in the early 1980s, and later
apprenticed under master Japanese
Neither more nor less, we need to align our processes to Industry 4.0, and that means not consultant Kei Abe for eight years, starting his
only production processes, but also the production support processes, such as own group in 1996.
administration, order processing, maintenance, and service.
He has been consulting since 1987, teaching
Therefore Lean and Industry 4.0 complement each other; they are not alternatives. Just courses and writing technical books. He
as many have now realized that Six Sigma without Lean or Lean without Six Sigma make intends to keep working with likeminded
no sense, but that the two complement each other. partners in the Takt Times Group and
contributing improvements in the
So first I look, at what processes I acdtually need and in which form. Then I stabilize the management and technology of
required processes and make them reliable with the help of Six Sigma. For industry 4.0 I manufacturing as a consultant, trainer, and
need absolutely reliable processes, and it means that, to introduce Industry 4.0, I need
writer.
Lean and Six Sigma.
But it is still not enough. There's still more that is missing.
We must recognize and accept that the machine does certain things better than we can.
Take the example of the autopilot on the plane. Because we have become accustomed
and accept him.
My books
But don't we feel strange about a machine driving our car? OK, the computer won't
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use a cell phone while driving, and won't be distracted by anything else. But driving a car
is multidimensional, and actually too complex for a computer, or isn't it?
No, ladies and gentlemen, apparently, it isn't.
As we speak minisatellites are being tested in space, which communicate with cars,
manage traffic and can predict situations. We just can't throw an oldtimer in, right? And
therein lies the problem. I need safe processes and I need a person who understands the
machine and knows when to take over.
And I need people, who develop machines and products with which we can work more
efficiently and effectively with the Industry 4.0 model. In other words, I need Industry
4.0, Lean, Six Sigma and people as part of the overall system. Only then will we be able
to use Industry 4.0 to make production processes more efficient and more powerful, and
realize our dream of business on demand and the associated batch size of 1.
We still have a very important part of the industry 4.0 not yet considered: the product.
Only when the products of Industry 4.0 have standard interfaces and are configured with
modular structures, will the desired effects occur.
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10/03/2016 Lean and Industry 4.0 – Opposites or Complements? | Wiegand’s Watch | Michel Baudin's Blog
Only with modularity can variability and complexity be controlled. If we believe that we
can model and control seemingly ever growing complexity with Industry 4.0, we are
making a big mistake. Only when all address together people, machines, products and My Bookstore | Shopping Cart
processes can the Industry 4.0 mode be realized and help effectively support the Lean
philosophy of "creating value without waste."
Only then will we be able to truly reap what we have sown.
To find out more:
Michel Baudin's comments:
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I have commented last July about the Internet of Things (IoT) in manufacturing and Industry
4.0, but Wiegand's points require further elaboration.
The parts of Industry 4.0 including "Cyberphysical systems" controlling physical processes
through virtual copies, the Internet of Things on the shop floor, and cloud computing for
services partially exist already in some form in some factories. What is farfetched is the
notion that their integration will constitute a revolution on a par with the advent of steam power
in the 1750s or the assembly line in the 1910s.
At best, these technologies are just enablers. As Wiegand points out, using them to automate
obsolete approaches will yield no benefits. They will only be useful to the extent they are used
in support of improvements in operations.
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