Natan Linder

Augmented Lean: A Human-Centric Framework for Managing Frontline Operations Natan Linder

Augmented Lean: A Human-Centric Framework for Managing Frontline Operations is the book that gets the people-dimension right in the transition to smart manufacturing--what some call Industry 4.0. It's the critical lynchpin for success, scale, and speed. The book narrates an ongoing industrial revolution by retracing the steps currently being taken by software engineers to join industrial process engineers and operators to foster a renaissance in manufacturing. It is this renaissance which, in turn, lets shopfloor workers at the frontlines (in factories, along the supply chain, in physical retail, and remotely) interact with real-time information that improves their productivity and happiness. The Frontline Worker threads the next natural evolution of Lean management in the digital age, a message that has gotten lost in all the automation-speak.

Workers will complement machines. Despite popular hype about robotics--important but not the whole story--workers are not all going away for the foreseeable future. Augmenting, not replacing workers, is an antidote to the current workforce skills gap and tremendous worry that mindless automation technology creates across society. Properly rolled out using this guidebook, frontline worker augmentation is poised to reshape the contemporary worker and empower frontline workers to regain dignity and create a billion good jobs in the next decade. However, the communication challenge is tremendous: it's not going to be enough to convince engineering students at MIT that manufacturing is exciting, the message needs to reach the masses.

There's a method behind adapting to and profiting from change. Augmentation is not just a message; it is a methodology. How to augment? When to augment? Which tools to use? How to scale it companywide? How to fit into a small-and medium enterprise? How to pilot and deploy in a corporation or in a regulated industry? How to track progress? How does this new wave of technology impact traditional Lean methods (which are already considered tricky to get right)? Even though technology gets easier and faster to implement with each generation, at the organizational level, you need a playbook. At the process level and among mid-level managers you need exposure to the right use-cases to make your own experiences of success and failure. There's also a great need to exchange good practices. Augmented Lean will provide you with all of this.