How explainable AI improves manufacturing jobs

This is a shortened reproduction of the article “Augmented intelligence: How explainable AI is changing manufacturing jobs for the better,” coauthored with Julian Senoner and Stefan Feuerriegel, recently published in the World Economic Forum’s Agenda.

A common narrative suggests AI is poised to replace human work on a large scale. Our research in diverse manufacturing settings and a recent World Economic Forum report on AI in manufacturing reject that vision. Instead, AI holds the potential to augment human intelligence to solve work tasks more effectively while also enriching the work experience. The key to unlocking this potential lies in explainable algorithms, which contrast the often-opaque decision-making processes in conventional AI systems.

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Warping in the real world: Remote factory meetings in 360°

Imagine you put on a virtual reality (VR) headset and immediately find yourself in an entirely different real-world place. It’s like finding a warp zone in Super Mario Bros. Or walking through Alice’s magical mirror into Wonderland or the wardrobe door into Narnia. Only, it is not a game or a fantasy novel, but reality!

We can now remotely visit sites in 360° and real-time. Our new open-access paper in Manufacturing Letters details our research collaboration with Stanley Black & Decker and Avatour. We conceptualized, realized, and tested a remote presence technology that is immersive, real-time, and interactive – all simultaneously! This emerging technology represents a radical new way of organizing remote factory meetings, shop-floor tours, inspections, audits, and training.

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Lean and the Corona pandemic: A clarification

Due to the Corona pandemic, critical supply chain shortages have occurred. Many have looked for the problem and pointed at the Just-In-time principle of Lean as one of the evils. This calls for clarification. Lean is not to blame, but part of the solution.

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Is 3D printing revolutionizing supply chains?

Countless newspaper articles, tech blogs, and proclaimed experts argue that 3D printing is about to turn manufacturing supply chains on the head. There is little doubt that additive manufacturing (the more precise term for 3D printing) will have its impact, but it will be limited to niches for many years to come. The more interesting question is to identify and transform the 3D print-ready niches.

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The 3 Ls of lean management

The Routledge Companion to Lean Management has hit the book shelves. Here is a summary of its main conclusions. The key message? Any lean transformation—regardless of the sector and application area—is dependent on the three essential Ls of lean: Leadership for Long-term Learning.

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Manufacturing Cost Deployment: How to select the right projects

How do firms prioritize and select improvement projects? Unfortunately, the usual method is a combination of guess and chance. Few companies are able to compute the real return on investment from proposed projects, and select the better ones through a rigorous decision process. This is not a trivial problem, but an important one: Many firms spend much money on useless improvements — fixing issues that are non-critical or have low or no effect on factory performance. In these firms, middle managers battle for the attention and investments of senior management by writing up speculative “business cases” for their proposed improvement projects. Few of these firms have heard about Manufacturing Cost Deployment — a structured method for selecting the right improvement project.

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5S done right

5S. Five short Japanese words, each beginning with an “S”. The majority of employees in the industrial sector, and increasingly in the public sector, have heard about the “5Ss”. The problem? The vast majority of companies trying to “implement” 5S fails, and does so repeatedly. Many mistakes it as a concept for cleaning and tidying up—boring but necessary activities for any professional business. This post* takes a closer look at each of the five S-words, and finds that many of us might have missed the point.

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10 benefits of lean games

How can we boost the learning experience when teaching lean production? Admittedly, presentations and monologues from the front of the classroom are rarely something people remember for a long time. Learning can be greatly improved by using games and simulations, which provides the learner first-hand experience in lean and its benefits.

The Volvo Trucks Lego Lean Game played at a MBA course in Norway

My own Volvo Trucks Lego Lean Game played at a MBA course in Norway

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Factory response to a corporate lean program: The 4A model

How do factories respond when the headquarters of a multinational firm rolls out a “new” corporate lean program? In a paper in the International Journal of Operations and Production Management*, Professor Arild Aspelund and I propose that factories can respond in four generic ways; explained by the “4A model”.

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Making operations fly – what business can learn from pilots

I am still smiling. On my flight from Oslo to Rome this weekend, I was asked to sit in the cockpit. I gladly accepted. My seat ticket read C01 – Cockpit 1. In a fully seated Boeing 737-800, the captain and copilot of SK4713 showed me how to get 194 passengers safely and timely from far north to the south of Europe in about three hours. I could not possibly get a better start on my travel to the annual conference of the European Operations Management Association, this time in Palermo, Sicily. For a scholar of operations, it was truly inspiring to get a first-hand view of how the aviation industry operates. What can other industries learn from aviation? A lot, for sure. Here are five quick reflections from my flight over Europe.

SAS cockpit operations

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Implementing the Volvo Production System in a truck plant

To follow up my previous post about the effect of implementing lean in the global Volvo Group, here’s one short story of the implementation of the Volvo Production System (VPS) in the truck assembly plant in New River Valley, Virginia, USA.

Mr. Ebly Sanchez presents the Volvo Production System, POMS Atlanta May 2014

Mr. Ebly Sanchez presents the Volvo Production System at POMS Atlanta May 2014 (Photo: author).

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Beer and Bullwhip: What happens as you drink?

Do you know the far-reaching implications of you ordering a non-regular beer in a bar? I mean, in addition to all the personal pleasures (and problems) that may follow? If you have ever played the Beer Game* you know what I’m talking about: The Bullwhip Effect. When you create small variations in customer demand you start a chain-reaction of amplifying variations upstream the supply chain**. Follow me to the bar. Continue reading

A gold standard lean production system: the Madshus Business System

It is Winter Olympics in Sochi. The world’s best winter sport athletes use world-class winter sport equipment to fight for honor and gold. Just like the athletes use exercise regimens to become stronger and quicker, equipment manufacturers can deploy lean production programs to better their production. This post highlights a gold standard lean production system developed by a leading sports equipment manufacturer.

Lean sports

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The Concept Epicenters of Lean, TQM, Six Sigma & co

When it comes to improving production, a standard question is this one: What are the differences between Lean, Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma, Agile, Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM), and all the other prescribed improvement programs? Underlying the question is a rational need to find a way to navigate through the jungle of “solutions”, and select the one(s) that fit exactly your firm. In this blog post, I suggest that considering “Concept Epicenters” might be helpful in making the right strategic choices.

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Go Lean, get Green?

Good news*: your operations can reach excellence in both Lean and Green. But to hope for success you need to treat Lean and Green as interconnected strategies—not isolated projects. That tip is a key take away from the SMARTLOG seminar “Lean & Green? Yes please both” that we arranged at SINTEF in Trondheim this week. Leading academics and corporations** in Scandinavia were invited to share their latest experiences on the topic. Do Lean and Green go well together?

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Factory Beauty: Does looks impact performance?

Factories are like people; they come in all shapes and looks—some more attractive than others. There is no doubt that a good looking factory is nice for workers and visitors, but does it also have a significant impact on the plant’s operational and financial performances? How much should management care about factory beauty?

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Factory Fitness: What managers can learn from Athletics

This week, the 2013 IAAF World Championships in athletics is held in Moscow, Russia. If plant managers watch carefully, they might pick up a few ideas for improving their factories. A specific concept that comes to mind is the notion of Factory Fitness – proposed by Kasra Ferdows (Georgetown University) and Fritz Thurnheer (Hydro ASA) in 2011. The key take away is the following: Whereas becoming lean is right for many, becoming fit is right for all. How to become world champion depends on the event.

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The rope team: Theory of Constraints

Climbing the highest mountain in Northern Europe, a few thoughts on the Theory of Constraints came to my mind. To get to Galdhøpiggen, 2469 meters above sea level, the most common route takes you over a glacier where rope teams are used for safety reasons. In his must-read book “the Goal”, Eli Goldratt (1984) uses rope teams to illustrate an efficient production system.

In rope team towards Galdhøpiggen, Norway, 21-7-2013

In rope team towards Galdhøpiggen, Norway, 21-7-2013

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This is lean!

A book review of This is lean!

‘If lean is everything that is good, and everything good is lean, what is then the alternative?’ Niklas Modig and Pär Åhlström ask this timely question  in their book This is lean. The authors go on to suggest what lean is, and what it is not. But, at Amazon.com there are more than 7000 books on lean, why should you read this one?

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The World Class Manufacturing programme at Chrysler, Fiat & Co.

The company-specific production system (XPS) of Chrysler is the World Class Manufacturing (WCM) concept, developed by the Fiat Group in 2006. But, what exactly is the WCM? And, what does Chrysler see as keys to success in WCM?

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Company-wide Quality Management: XPS of the 80s

When it comes to quality management, there are surprising similarities between what was suggested in the 80s and what we barely have seen the start of in industry today. In this post, I discuss how Juran’s CWQM-concept from the mid-1980s is both valid and useful for companies rolling out global production improvement programs today.

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Kudos to the quality gurus

What do the quality gurus of the 80s think when they read the modern literature on lean & co? Have we moved beyond their original ideas? Or do we just say the same things using fancy, new words? While preparing a paper for the TQM Journal, I recently re-discovered the wisdom of the 80s. And what a wisdom! This is far too important knowledge to discard as blasts from the past; the ideas of Juran, Taguchi, Garvin, Crosby, Shingo, Deming, Feigenbaum and Ishikawa remain fundamental for competitiveness. In this post, I briefly explain the key contributions of each of the top-eight quality gurus. Kudos to the gurus!

Quality gurus books

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Moods of Norway towards global transparency and happier people

This week, I drove through Nordfjord, one of the world’s most beautiful corners, on the Norwegian west coast. There—in the prosperous and peaceful countryside—problems in China’s and India’s factories seem far, far away. But they really aren’t. Nordfjord is home to several successful apparel companies: Ricco Vero, Skogstad, and Frislid, famous in Norway and beyond. However, the iconic Moods of Norway is the best known of all. After repeated pressure from consumers and a Norwegian NGO, Moods of Norway finally went public with a list of worldwide suppliers [1-3]. That’s a good start, but not enough! It is admirable that they want to make “happy clothes for happy people”—but do they want to make people happy?

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Why my mother drives a Toyota: The Toyota Production System

My mother just got her new car. After driving a problematic Renault for many years, she decided to go for a Toyota Yaris. That’s an excellent choice for her needs. Despite Toyota’s recent recalls, it continues to deliver the best quality at the best price. The choice of the Toyota  also gives me a good opportunity to eventually write about an essential core of my research: The Toyota Production System—the mother of all XPSs.

toyota yaris

My mother’s new Toyota Yaris

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