Fascinated with the art of making things, Michel is working to improve it. Trained in engineering, applied math, and data science, he got his feet wet in production in the early 1980s, and later apprenticed under master Japanese consultant Kei Abe for eight years, starting his own group in 1996.

His specialty is supplementing direct observation on the shop floor and stakeholder interviews with data mining on clients' information systems, often rapidly identifying previously unknown patterns in product demand or manufacturing performance. Michel's recommendations, both in technical content and in implementation management, are specific to the business, technology, and human resources of each client.

Michel has been consulting since 1987 on lean manufacturing implementation in industries ranging from automotive and aerospace to electronics and frozen foods. He has taught with UC Berkeley extension, the University of Dayton, the Hong Kong Productivity Council, and the University of Buckingham. He has authored four technical books: Manufacturing Systems Analysis (1990), Lean Assembly (2002), Lean Logistics (2005), and Working with Machines (2007). Michel has contributed chapters to Jim Ayers Handbook of Supply Chain Management (2006) and Torgjørn Netland's Routledge Companion to Lean Management (2017). He also translated Pascal Dennis's Getting the Right Things Done into French (2010). He has written four refereed papers in applied probability, in addition to magazine articles, conference proceedings, and over 900 blog posts.

Michel intends to keep working with like-minded partners in the Takt Times Group and contributing improvements in the management and technology of manufacturing as a consultant, trainer, and author.