LeanProf

I have been where you are, and feel your pain. You need material/inventory to cover fluctuations. To successfully reduce inventory you need to reduce fluctuations. Merely reducing inventory will just cause problems.

What can often help is good communication. Inbound logistic and manufacturing should be close, so both sides can react faster in case of problems. Ideally, some of the Logistics people should have their office in/ or next to the shop floor.

Data science, often also called Big Data: There is much potential in it. Industry collects an enormous amount of data, but then does very little with it. If you have a lot of data, then you can go through it and try to find correlations, maybe even causations. But this is a lot of effort.

Currently this is missing a “killer app” in manufacturing. If you have something like this on Amazon or Facebook, they can analyze millions of users, and generate a big benefit from it. In industry, the expense is similar, but the benefit may be smaller. Also, manufacturing historically lacks the expertise for this, and does not have the right people to do this. Hence there are only few companies that are using it. Yet, as computers get smarter, they may be able to investigate data on their own without a human pulling all the strings. Then it will probably spread in industry like wildfire.

Most job growth: Difficult to say. Definitely not operators on the shop floor. I would be wary of the automotive industry in general, too. When the self-driving car comes around, we need half the vehicles we have now, and they will not be purchased by individuals but by companies (uber?) that are much better at negotiating prices. And, you don’t want to be in an industry fighting for survival in 10 years. What will probably be good is the robotics industry and the machine tool makers. But, predictions are hard, especially about the future.

As for lean: service and administrative tasks are just starting to get lean, there is still lots of potential. Some of my consulting colleagues only rarely get a manufacturing client nowadays.

It will be a gradual change. Sustainability in manufacturing actually has three parts: Ecological, Social, and Financial. You need all three. Focus seems to be on the ecological part, but it also has to make sense moneywise, too. Anything even remotely green is advertised quite a lot in industry, often more than it is worth. During some factory tours they just have to show you their wastewater treatment facility. Changes in consumer opinion and government regulations lead to make it worthwhile for companies to become green. However, appearing to be green and being green has almost the same effect, except the first one is often cheaper.

The social sustainability also sometimes still falls short (e.g. Volkswagen and their Prevent-group supplier problems, but many more)

It doesn’t help if the company is green but bankrupt. I think the measures of many governments are often going in the right direction, but lobbying can water things down. Investigative reporting and the internet do give power to the common people here. Governments are also going after offenders (although preferably foreign ones: Volkswagen Dieselgate anyone?)