Episode 102: Lean Manufacturing with Michel Baudin

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In this episode of the podcast, the topic is Lean Manufacturing. Our guest is Michel Baudin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelbaudin/), author, and owner of Takt Times Group. In this conversation, we talk about how industrial engineering equals the engineering of human work and why manufacturing and industrial engineering education needs to change because it has drifted away from industrial work and a future where manufacturing is not going away. If you like this show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/). If you like this episode, you might also like Episode 84 on The Evolution of Lean with Professor Torbjørn Netland from ETH Zürich (https://www.augmentedpodcast.co/84). Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (https://trondundheim.com/) and presented by Tulip (https://tulip.co/). Follow the podcast on Twitter (https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/75424477/). Trond's Takeaway: Lean manufacturing might mean many things, but industrial work has largely been a consistent practice over several hundred years, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Having said that, if we want to go about improving it, we might want to stay pretty close to the workforce and not sit in statistics labs far removed from it. Efficiency is tied to work practices, and they cannot be optimized beyond what the workforce can handle or want to deal with. As we attempt to be lean, whatever we mean by that, we need to remember that work is a thoroughly human endeavor. Transcript TROND: Welcome to another episode of the Augmented Podcast. Augmented brings industrial conversations that matter, serving up the most relevant conversations on industrial tech. Our vision is a world where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In this episode of the podcast, the topic is Lean Manufacturing. Our guest is Michel Baudin, author, and owner of Takt Times Group. In this conversation, we talk about how industrial engineering equals the engineering of human work and why manufacturing and industrial engineering education needs to change because it has drifted away from industrial work and a future where manufacturing is not going away. Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim and presented by Tulip. Michel, welcome. How are you? MICHEL: Fine, thank you. How about yourself? TROND: Things are good. Things are looking up. I'm excited to talk about lean manufacturing with you, having had such a rich, professional background. Michel, you're French. You originally, I think, were thinking of becoming a probability researcher, or you were actually, and then you went to Japan and studied Toyota. You have had this career in English, German, Japanese sort of consulting all the way back from 1987 onwards on exciting topics, lean manufacturing, and especially implementing it, right? The real deal. You've authored at least four technical books that I know about. And I think you listed probably a while back, having written 900 blog posts. You've been very busy. You are the owner of the Takt Times Group, which is a consulting firm on lean manufacturing. And you love math, but you have this very interesting attitude, which we'll talk about, which is math is great, but it's not always the best communication tool. Tell me a little about that to start off. You're a probability researcher that doesn't use math; I think that's fascinating. MICHEL: I use it, but I don't brag about it with people that it turns off. So I have to be in the closet for this because people who work in manufacturing usually focus on concrete things, things that they can see and touch, and abstraction is not something