In episode 43 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Digitized Supply Chain. Our guest is Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, Head of Global Manufacturing IT, Johnson & Johnson.

In this conversation, we talk about why J&J puts operators at the center of its strategy, the empowerment effect of frontline operations apps, the evolution of personalized production, and how supply chain becomes an integral part of product development.

After listening to this episode, check out J&J as well as Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba's social medial profile:

•  J&J (@JNJNews): https://www.jnj.com/ 
• Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaskarababa/

Trond's takeaway: "Operators are the key to the next phase of industrial evolution, that which involves the deep digitalization of manufacturing, its supply chain, production capacity, personalization, and with that the reinvention of factory production itself.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 21, The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools or episode 10, A Brief History of Manufacturing Software

Augmented--conversations on industrial tech.

Transcript:

TROND: Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers.

In Episode 43 of the podcast, the topic is Digitized Supply Chain. Our guest is Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, Head of Global Manufacturing IT at Johnson & Johnson.

In this conversation, we talk about why J&J puts operators at the center of its strategy, the empowerment effect of frontline operations apps, the evolution of personalized production, and how supply chain becomes an integral part of product development.

Augmented is a podcast for leaders hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time, every Wednesday.

Augmented — the industry 4.0 podcast.

TROND: Arun, how are you?

ARUN: I'm doing great. How are you, Trond?

TROND: Oh, it's wonderful to see you and hear you. I'm very excited. This is a big interview. You have really big responsibilities, Arun. We're going to get to that in a second. But global manufacturing that is a wide, wide topic.

ARUN: Yes, indeed. But the bigger responsibility, but more importantly, what we are privileged is how we are impacting the lives of patients and customers around the world with our products. That comes with the privilege to work in the healthcare environment.

TROND: Well, I'm glad you said that because as we're sort of tracing, I want to ask you a little bit about how you got to where you are. And I know from public records, at least, that you have part of your schooling in India. So you grew up in India, my assumption is, and you got your computer degree there. You worked in India for a little while for the Tata system. And then you made your way over to Michigan. You have your MBA from there.

And then, from what I understand, you then had a bit of a career in automotive and then moved on to Dell. And this brings us to J&J. How did you end up in the U.S.? And how was that journey for you? You've come quite a bit of ways.

ARUN: Yes. It's interesting that you asked how I ended up in U.S. For me, it was a choice of either going to Japan or to U.S., And I'm a vegetarian, so for me, U.S. was a better choice. Growing up when you're a kid, you have two years of experience, the decisions that you make, some priorities.

TROND: That's funny, but you told me, Arun, that you came here with a briefcase and a $10 bill.

ARUN: Yes. I was going to go --

TROND: That's, I guess, not an unusual immigrant story, but it is still quite striking.

ARUN: Absolutely. I grew up in a very small middle-class family. So when I landed, I landed with a briefcase and a $20 bill, actually two $10 bills. And out of that, one $10 bill I still have as a reminder of where I started.

TROND: Wow. And I cut your career a little short because you have had the opportunity to work in all of the BRIC countries, essentially. And you now manage teams across, I think, at least 28 countries. And that brings us, I guess, up to present day where I was alluding to this, but you have a very wide responsibility. We're going to talk about some of it. Can you tell me a little bit about your current role?

ARUN: So, my team supports all the manufacturing operations for J&J across the globe. So we have 100-plus manufacturing plants in pharmaceutical, consumer, medical devices, and vision products. As I mentioned earlier, I am privileged to be in healthcare to serve our patients and customers. We are in 28 countries; my team is spread across. And it's a very humbling experience to really work in a global team and continue to support our operations across the world.

TROND: Well, not only that 28 countries, but I understand you operate about 100 manufacturing sites, some obviously state of the art, very big and sprawling, others actually very small or at least mid-size and have all kinds of other issues. And J&J, you know, what is the breadth of products you make? I mean, you make vaccines. You make knees, artificial knees. What else do you guys make?

ARUN: This is amazing. I used to work for Ford Motor Company and Dell. Definitely, they are also very strong in manufacturing. However, the manufacturing processes are very similar. It is either assembly process, marketing and manufacturing at Dell. I come to J&J, and any type of manufacturing, you say we got it. Whether you talk about process manufacturing or discrete manufacturing, we have that.

So in the pharmaceutical area, we produce biological products where we actually grow live cells and make medicine out of it, as you mentioned, the vaccines and biological products. We also have big chemical products where we actually use big chemical reactions to produce the drugs. In medical devices, we have artificial knees and hips, which are more like a foundry operation. You take a mold, you put it in an artificial knee, and make it happen. And we have sutures that we produce.

And in the consumer side, we have different types of liquids, gels, and tablets that we produce. And finally, in vision care is where we produce our lenses in a very high-velocity manufacturing. So if you look at the breadth of the manufacturing processes and products we support, we support almost every aspect of manufacturing.

TROND: Well, this brings us to today's topic because we're going to talk a little bit about digitizing these operations, the supply chains, the whole thing, and think about what digital means to all of it, whether it's in pharma 4.0, or indeed, you know, manufacturing and industry 4.0. Can you maybe just kick us off a little bit and say what does digital mean to your business today? And what is your main take on how to approach it?

ARUN: The first thing is really I see digital as a means to an end. So if you think about it, it's really why digital is the first and then why digital. We need to be very clearly understanding why we want to digitize. We are in the journey to transform our supply chain so that we can put our patients, our customers at the center of the supply chain and how we can get our products to our customers in a fast, nimble way and in an affordable way.

If you think about healthcare, the key is affordability as well as the ability for us to deliver what they need where they need it. And if you think about even the vaccines that we are producing now, we are manufacturing only in some locations, but we have to distribute them everywhere, whether to sophisticated networks like U.S. or developing areas where we don't even have a lot of transportation like Africa.

So how do we put the customer and the patient at the center? And how can we actually serve them in a much more faster way and in an affordable way? So that is the why behind our supply chain journey. And digitization is a very critical component of that transformation. How do we provide that end-to-end connectivity so that we can reach our customers and patients? How do we understand what is happening in the markets and react to those things quickly as well as respond quickly using digital?

And then ensure that we are delighting our customers beyond just our products, that we have world-class products. But how do we make sure that we are delivering the same customer experience to our patients and customers? So for us, the work from the digital side is how do we build that end-to-end connectivity so that we can reach our customers and we can sense and respond very quickly? And finally, how do we make sure that we significantly improve your customer experience?

TROND: I want to pick up on a couple of things, but let me first ask a basic question. I mean, when I think supply chain, I think back to business school where I was teaching for a while, and I think kind of a fairly dry subject that was a specialty subject. You either cared about it, and then you wanted to become an expert and obviously dominate the field.

But now you're speaking of it as if it is a much more integrated part of product development, which I think that was certainly taught as two separate courses, even in the very immediate past. But do you think of the supply chain as completely integrated with what you do, what you produce?

ARUN: Absolutely. If you think about where the healthcare is headed, if you think about personalized healthcare, if I'm taking a knee right now, we ship like six or seven knees to the surgeons so that they pick the right knee during the operation. And we are getting to a place where we take the picture of the knee, get it back, and make the product, and then 3D print it and give it to the surgeon.

Or if you think about how we are personalizing where we are taking the blood from the patient and making the product that is very specific to the patient and shipping it to them. So this whole flow of here is my R&D, and then it goes to supply chain, and then we deliver it versus it is now becoming a connected world where this all comes together.

So it's really a very integrated part of product development and supply chain. So we really look at that end to end. And then digital is the one that is actually accelerating that journey. Because I can now connect all of these things as a digital thread and then really push the envelope forward.

TROND: But producing for a batch of one, I mean, it's enormously challenging at scale, no?

ARUN: Yeah, absolutely. That is the trick, right? How do I produce that batch of one? And if you think about the future, where we can actually get to that and where we can produce batch of one for almost everything that we do is where we are headed. You're right; there are significant investments in terms of our manufacturing operations and the equipment that we need. And there is that balance between the scale that you need to have versus the personalization that is needed.

And the balance is I don't think the pendulum can go either one way or the other. But really, we still have a lot more to move to the personalized level. How do we really become a full supply chain so that we can produce that batch of one wherever possible? And look at that from the customer and patient's angle, right? If you have somebody who has a traumatic surgery going on and they have a bone that we need to fix...and it is not the same from one trauma to another trauma. There you can't come back and say, okay, here is a batch of things that I'm producing, and I'm going to give it to you.

So the customer expectations are also changing. As a patient and as a consumer, their expectations are also changing. And so we are moving to that batch of one. And how do you do it for different products? And how do you do it for different manufacturing processes is going to be tailored to that business model and then the product.

TROND: So another thing that one might assume when we speak about this, because okay, batch of one, but it has to be an advanced system, and it's covering the globe. I mean, historically, if a factory has machinery or systems and digital technologies, it is a very monolithic, massive system. I understand that you have taken at least some care these days to focus on the operators. Why is that so crucial to you? And what does that mean for the kinds of technologies that you're putting into your factories nowadays?

ARUN: So that's a very good question. If you think about where manufacturing is headed so that we can drive that flexibility, that approach so that we can quickly respond, we have to relook at our manufacturing operations. That means they need to be a lot more nimbler and a lot more flexible. And a lot of technologies are emerging, and that's all driving. But for us, at the end of the day, it all comes back to that operator. We are here to serve the operator. We call it #operatorrules.

Because think about this, we can do all these flexible things. We can bring in automation. We can bring in robots and all of it. At the end of the day, there is an operator at the line who is making it happen. So how do we make sure that we put the operator at the center and then create the experience for the operator so that it makes it a lot easier?

If you take any of our plants, the technology is growing very fast. We used to have an ERP system. The operator has to deal with an MES. The operator then has to look at the equipment interface that the equipment provider has given. Now I'm coming from technology and saying, okay, here is the smart glass. Wear the smart glass, and you can look at everything. Think about the operator, how complex we have made the operator's life. So we are trying to take a step back and say, how do we, first of all, make it simple?

Number two is how do we empower them? So far, we all said that, oh, technology is either manufacturing engineering or the OT or IT people. We held the keys for the technology. But how do we really empower the operators so that they can make it flexible and then they can make it nimble? So that gives you the velocity that we need at our manufacturing operations.

TROND: It's striking when you think about at least digital technologies now clearly. There have been machines in factories for centuries. I mean, that was sort of the various industrial revolution. So there have, of course, been machines that could be operated by operators to some degree.

But the kind of control and the detail-level customization that's now becoming possible doesn't come naturally, does it? It takes a lot of attention to create those kinds of platforms. How do you see that evolving? For example, we said you have over 100 different sites, some of them large, others much smaller; what sort of approaches are you taking to experiment with these solutions?

ARUN: So it's purpose-driven experimentation. Because to your point, when we have these large, fully automated factories, the key is how fast I can introduce new capabilities into that operation. Whereas when I go to a middle-tier factory with semi-automated or not as much automated, it is a very target problem-driven. I have an OEE problem. Let me figure out how do I experiment to bring the technology.

But at both the spectrums, the key is to make sure that there is a good, robust architecture principles. There is good, robust security, and then there is a good data architecture. But from a solutions point of view, how do we make sure that these are modular? Think about the mainframe days where you need to know all those to run the application to now you have apps on your device.

So how do we break these monolithic technologies that are running the operations into smaller apps by bite-sized chunks that we can actually deploy very quickly or pull it out? And that gives me the flexibility to say for a large site; I'm going to deploy all these 100 apps so that they can run it as a suite. Whereas when I go to a smaller site, I might only deploy two of those applications for a specific problem. So it's kind of like really breaking down by, number one, by purpose. Number two, having a good consistent architecture. And number three, really breaking these monolithic things into smaller apps and nimble apps that we can drive.

TROND: I know that you've tried some of Tulip's solutions. Tulip is an app system. But clearly, the bar to completely replace any number of advanced technologies that have developed over literally decades is not done overnight. How do you see the journey that app developers on the manufacturing shop floor...what sort of journey are they going to have with you to prove themselves over time to gradually solve many of these very ambitious problems?

I mean, you describe them pretty eloquently, but they're different in each factory, like you pointed out. And we're dealing with operators, some of whom are very advanced and have taken all kinds of industry 4.0 courses and others who have not. So this is a bit of a journey.

ARUN: Yeah, it is a journey, but there are similarities in this journey. If you think about maintenance of the equipment, it used to be a stronghold of those engineers that are sitting somewhere, and they get to the equipment when there is help needed. Look at where we are now. With operator asset care, we are empowering the operators to own that equipment and drive it. So that is the same journey that we have to go through from the digital side.

And the key is, first of all, making sure that we have platforms like Tulip and others that help us to be able to quickly develop those apps, of course, in a very consistent framework. Especially for us when we are in a regulated industry, some of those framework and validation things become extremely critical. How do you set those boundaries?

The second thing is educate the operators so that they feel empowered that they own the work that they are doing, and they can shape it in the way they need to do it and to continue to train them. And then the third level is to really train the rest of the organization. The management and then the operations leaders all need to be digitally savvy to drive that and then see the value. So it is a journey, but you need to be very clear about why we are doing it and putting the operators at the center and helping them.

The thing that is going to help us is this whole COVID pandemic situation. If you think about the digital savvy of almost the entire world, it has significantly improved. Every operator, whether we like it or not, yeah, they might not have a degree, but they know how to order their Uber Eats. They know how to use an app. So we are seeing digital literacy coming up very fast. So this is a great opportunity for us to drive that transformation. But you're right; it is a journey.

TROND: But you also mentioned regulated industry. I mean, to what extent can some of these apps kind of slide in between the cracks and do stuff that was never covered by regulation? And to what extent do you actually need to take very, very good care that you are, I guess, also updating the regulations and knocking on the doors of governments and telling them that "Look, there's an app for this too."? [chuckles] And we need to upgrade the regulatory framework to take that into account. So it seems to be a bit of both.

ARUN: Yes, you absolutely hit the nail on the head. You need to do both. One is, first of all, have a good, robust architecture. That's why the platforms like Tulip will need to ensure that the architecture is robust so that it has enough control so that we can drive this validation and qualification, those things, and giving the parameters of the freedom for the operators within those constraints. And let's not forget cybersecurity, which is a huge thing, especially when we come to the OT cybersecurity as well. And on the other side...sorry.

TROND: No, no, go ahead. On the other side...

ARUN: On the other side, we need to continue with the regulators and work with the regulators to make sure that they understand what we are doing. We are now working with the regulators to educate them on real-time release. How can we actually use the data rather than having to produce these samples and batches as opposed to relying on continuous data that is coming that shows that your process is in compliance?

So working on both sides with the framework so that it is robust as well as regulators to make sure that they understand how the technology is transforming. At the same time, the compliance is improving. Think about it, when you're doing samples, one, you're taking one sample from a batch. But when you're doing continuous sampling, you have the whole sample, whole product batch data you have in your hands. So we'll continue to work with them to make sure that the regulators are also coming with us on that journey.

TROND: How is pharma 4.0 going? I mean, the acronym is the same as industry 4.0. Is 4.0 actually happening, or are we still in 3.0?

ARUN: In pharma-world, I would say we still have 2.0 to 3.12 to 3.33. And there are some great examples where we have the 4.0 when I talk about what we are doing with the personalized solutions when we talk about how we are bringing IoT to the forefront, how we are doing real-time release with digital twins of our whole process. Now we have digital twins, even for bioreactors, which are very difficult to characterize. So yes, the journey is there.

The key is to keep in mind why we are doing it to really make sure that we have the patients that are waiting for our products in mind and then really transform around to support them. So the journey is continuing. Yes, there are very good examples for pharma 4.0. But are we there yet? No. But is everybody working together to get there? Yes.

TROND: Let's talk a little bit about this operator and the training of an operator because training the workforce is something I ask a lot of the people who come on this podcast about just because technology is one thing but training people on the technology to implement it in a fruitful way is a whole other challenge. What approach are you taking at the whole J&J complex when it comes to training your existing future and even training your ecosystem around you?

ARUN: A couple of things there; one is, first of all, making sure that you start with the user experience in mind and design everything from there. So you need to start with the design aspect. The second thing is how do we make it simple? The more simple you make it, the less training. How many people are getting trained on how to use an iPhone? So really, how do we make it simpler?

But actually, in the future, I'm thinking...and this I actually got from one of your podcasts, Trond, is, are we going to get to a point where there is no interface? So can we get our apps to a state where there is no interface, then your training becomes a lot more part of the evolution rather than you have to go; oh, now I need to learn this, and I need...no, it should be so intuitive. It's like gesturing with my hands.

So how do I get to that state? Hopefully, that state comes in soon, as you've been discussing with some of them. But for me, it is really how do we keep on making it so simple that it becomes intuitive? And it starts with the design, where you put the operator at the center and design around the operator.

TROND: Can we talk a little bit more specifically about the digitized supply chain? Because it is such a core to what you're up to. And I know that there are some characteristics that you care about the most one of them I think you mentioned to me was being very responsive. But what are the priorities when you are redesigning a supply chain? What are the kinds of things that are top of mind for you? And where do you start?

ARUN: You start with the customer experience. How do we make sure that that is clear on how it is impacting the customer experience? Now to help with the customer experience, how do we drive that responsiveness in your supply chain so that you can respond very quickly to what is happening at the demand side, the customer side, and then link it back?

Then the next one is really the resiliency. How do we build that resiliency in supply chain so that we can react very quickly? If there is one thing that COVID taught us is that resiliency in our supply chains actually helped the world in one way to survive this pandemic and continue to survive. So how do we drive that resiliency in the supply chain?

TROND: What do you think about these very traditional concepts that have been part of...and, you know, you had the start of your career in automotive. Lean management is something that everybody wanted to copy, and the Toyota processes and a lot from the country you chose not to study in [laughs] essentially because you weren't convinced they were vegetarian enough.

But anyway, what do you think about the heritage from lean and mixed in with some of the agile tradition from software? Is that altogether creating a new paradigm? And what does that look like, and who's describing it? If you would maybe describe where some of your influences come from when you are designing such a large organization around these principles.

ARUN: At the heart, the lean principles and agile principles are still really valid. Like, if you think about lean, what it is saying is think about the floor, eliminate the waste, and continue to improve and zero defects as possible. So that mindset has to be there for us to even look at digital. What digital is doing is actually helping us to implement lean even faster. How do you get there?

Now, from responsiveness, and we talked a lot about the responsiveness, and reacting, and resiliency that requires this agile mindset, this traditional boundaries of I'm going to go from plan, source, make, deliver. This is becoming a network. The only way you can survive in that network is having that agile mindset where we bring people together very quickly, get the problem solved, deliver that MVP, and don't look back and then move on to the next one.

So the agile principles around bringing the teams together very quickly to focus on the key priorities and delivering on the MVP aligned with the lean thinking to make sure that there is no waste and we are really getting the floor done actually is a great combination of these two. And these are the two things that need to come together even for us to roll out the digital solutions very quickly in our operations.

And COVID has been a great example if you think about how we came together to deliver a product for the instruments in a very quick way across the world in a virtual way. It has been a great example that shows that it can be done. So that's where the lean foundations and then the agile mindset are extremely critical, even for us to drive this digital transformation.

TROND: If you think about how this was built, what are some of the best influences that help you along the way? We talked a little bit about startups that bring the app mindset and maybe some of the agile thinking. It doesn't necessarily come from startups, but certainly, it does exist with startups. Where are these industry practices that you are increasingly embodying at J&J? Where do you think they come from?

ARUN: Actually, they come from many places. And for startups, really one of the places where we can actually see how their mindset is there in terms of test and learns, and learning from failure, and more. And even I'm looking at some of the journeys like how companies like Tulip are evolving as well. Especially those companies from a startup to accelerating phase, that's where we are seeing a lot of the learnings that we can learn.

And one of the big things that we at J&J look at is how can we look at our CEO and saying, "Hey, we need to act like a 135-year-old startup."? So how do we actually look at it? And to your point, where we are looking for, we are looking for everywhere; one is really those startups. But more importantly, those startups that got that first phase and are now accelerating, that's where all the processes need to come together.

And then, at the end of the day, we still have to be reliable. And we are in a regulated industry. So how do we make sure that the patient safety, product quality are the top priority and our processes are reliable? That's where the established companies also help us on how we continue to drive that.

TROND: Yeah, because that's what I guess I wanted to drive to because there is an established idea in the established industry to look for industry best practices. And in the manufacturing space, there are these lighthouse projects. Companies on their own might have lighthouse projects that are especially good. And the World Economic Forum has lighthouse factories. In fact, they have designated places around the world where they have tracked and figured out that they are of sufficient quality to put up as inspirational lighthouses for others.

What is your view on how well that works as a practice? For example, you have 100 sites. Is it possible to tell one site to become more like Site A? Because look at site A how well they're doing. Isn't that also a bit of a challenging message to communicate?

ARUN: Yeah.

TROND: No one likes to be like, all right, I understand. [laughs] My golf swing is not up to par, I get it. I need to look at my neighbor over here. It's not always a fantastic message.

ARUN: [laughs] But speaking of that, actually, we have five sites that are lighthouse sites. And we have one that is going to come up with one of the projects that we're working on as well is in one of the sites with Tulip for the lighthouse site. But the thing is, knowledge grows by sharing. The more you share, the more you're going to grow the knowledge and the faster the adoption is going to be. You're absolutely right.

It does not mean that just because this is a lighthouse site, they are at a pedestal, and then everybody else is in another place. I actually look at it the other way around. What did those lighthouse sites do that we can actually copy and paste, so I don't have to reinvent? And then I can focus on something else as well. So the lighthouse sites are helping us to really share that knowledge so that we can learn from one another. We can build on it. And then we eliminate the need for us to redo the things that they have gone through.

But you're absolutely right; that doesn't mean that those are the only sites that are doing everything and everybody else is not. But sometimes, the copycats that are coming behind the lighthouse might be the best of things because they can get lighthouse practices and implement and then really show that they can actually transform their manufacturing operations much more faster.

TROND: Well, and that's true in the history of manufacturing that you can actually leapfrog. It is still a field where if you do many things right, you definitely make a difference. I wanted to shift tact a little bit, Arun, and move to coming years. What are some of the industry developments that you are the most excited about?

So we've talked generally about digital. We've talked about personalization. What are some of the things that are going to be most crucial to get right and even just like in the year ahead? It's been a very...it's been a wild ride in the last 12 to 15 months. What's going to hit us in the next year, and what are you focused on?

ARUN: So let me break it into a few different areas. One is purely from the technology side of it. If we look at how 3D printing is going to evolve and how it is going to help us to change significantly, how the digital twin and digital threads that are coming up fast that we can actually connect. And then, more importantly, how the machine learning and AI models that are coming up that help us to be responding very quickly. So I'm very excited about those areas, how 3D printing is transforming our operations, how we are able to bring digital twins, digital thread, and machine learning to really drive that end-to-end thread all the way to the customer.

The second area is, from a mindset point of view, is how resiliency and responsiveness has become kind of like a norm. If you think about the COVID pandemic, what it has done is how that resiliency and responsiveness has become a norm. So how do we actually drive that and don't lose that as we come out of the pandemic and then go forward?

And the final one is I'm going to go back and harp on the culture side of it. How do we drive that culture where we let operators be empowered and learn from it and let them be the kings? And we also have the operator hashtag #operatorrules. And we support that culture change, the digital change, and which is really going to be accelerated because they are becoming more and more digital savvy. So there is the technology aspect. And there is actually the responsiveness. And finally, how do we drive the digital savvy across the organization?

TROND: So my last question, and I don't know how fair that question is in the context that you're in, because I could imagine that given the amount of factors that are moving at any given moment, very long-term thinking seems perhaps a little farther away from your everyday life. Because there are so many things that could go wrong literally every minute.

But if you permit yourself and me to think a little bit longer term, towards the next decade, are these things on the digital side, you know, digital twins, and AI, and machine learning, and 3D printing, as this decade moves to a close, are there other things on your horizon as well that will even more drastically transform the landscape? I mean, are digital factories going to be really coming into the scene and really transforming the way?

Are we going to recognize a factory even in the next decade? Or am I kind of overblowing this, and things are just fairly complicated, and it's going to take quite a long time to shake out and integrate all these technologies with all of the workforce challenges and cultural challenges that you just pointed out?

ARUN: Imagining the future, first of all, I really love the idea of almost no interface, intuitive use of technology. Can we get to that? That's one. The second thing is, yes, there will still be big manufacturing areas. Some of them are tied to the physics and biology, so we cannot change, but everything else can actually significantly change. And if you think about can we actually do a factory in a box very quickly for vaccine production in a developing world that cannot afford and we deploy it very quickly?

So will we get to a point where it becomes more of Lego blocks that we can assemble very quickly and get it up and running and everything has an equal and digital model that we really don't have to worry about it? It is not about the digital twin of my operations. But if I take the digital twin of my patient's body and the digital twin of operations, think about how easy it is for me to actually respond to that personalized request or personalized medicine.

Since you let me imagine and let my thoughts flow a little bit more broadly, it's really bringing the digital equivalence. So can I actually take my digital equal and to respond to the digital twin to get the personalized product for me either in a batch of 1 or even maybe a batch of 10 if batch of 1 is not possible? So the factories of the future, yes, some of them might not significantly change, but most of them will be that flexible way to bring them together for specific product or specific customer and being able to re-assemble very quickly to do something else.

And then the intelligence, can it move to the equipment so that the equipment itself can rearrange itself based on the customer base? But then, what is the implication to the workforce? And what is the implication to the operators? So this way of getting those operators to be a lot more digital savvy and really helping to manage this complexity will be a great foundation. But at the same time, that is something that we all need to watch. Yes, all of this can happen. But we need to watch for how do we bring our people together?

TROND: Yeah, and I could just imagine putting myself back in my old government days, scratching my head about self-regulating systems in the medical field, right? [laughs]

ARUN: Yes.

TROND: That would seem to be a little bit of a challenge as well. So there are so many interesting challenges. But it seems to me that even if you are occupied every minute with operational challenges and even just digitizing a supply chain without fundamentally changing its logic, it's going to take all men and women on deck. It's a cultural challenge. It is not just a technology challenge.

ARUN: Absolutely. It is. It is a cultural challenge.

TROND: Well, look, it's been fascinating to hear, and I hope I can check back in with you. It seems to me that if we had had this interview just even just 15 months ago, some of these challenges might have looked a little bit less rosy, and we wouldn't have been discussing about the next decade. I'm assuming that a lot of things for you in your business have really, I guess, opened up throughout this pandemic. Is that right?

ARUN: Yeah.

TROND: Some of these opportunities just weren't there before.

ARUN: Absolutely. A lot of the acceleration...first of all, we are privileged to serve our patients. And we have a big part in helping the world get through the pandemic, our vaccine. And even how we have brought in digital twin into our vaccines in a very faster way was enabled by the pandemic situation.

The whole digital acceleration of some of our solutions that were sitting on the shelf for almost six to nine months, the demand for them grew up within the first few months of the pandemic. So the digital acceleration of our operations has happened. The third thing, as I said earlier, is the digital savvy of our day-to-day citizen is helping us to bring these much more faster to our patients and customers around the world.

TROND: That's a very interesting statement. Because when you cannot innovate faster than your end client, then you're really dealing with the total ecosystem here. You actually depend on your end client to be caught up with all of these technologies. It's a fascinating challenge and probably very important too because there isn't a little bit of an insurance policy there, no Arun. Because if you cannot be more advanced than your end user is, at least you have the time to, or you have to take the time to educate the end user and get their real feedback on what needs to happen.

So that leaves me on an optimistic note, and if you have any last statement...I certainly thank you for your time. And if you have a last challenge, you know, there are so many challenges where you could launch, but if you think to your fellow industry executives, what is the one thing maybe you want to leave them with what you think is a shared challenge that people should focus more on in industry these days?

ARUN: Keep the operator at the center #operatorrules. Let's make sure that we empower them. We help them to be as digitally savvy as possible. That will actually help us to move these needles much more faster.

TROND: Arun, I thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. And I hope I can invite you back someday.

ARUN: Definitely. It has been great, Trond.

TROND: You have just listened to Episode 43 of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was Digitized Supply Chain. Our guest was Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, Head of Global Manufacturing IT at Johnson & Johnson. In this conversation, we talked about why J&J puts operators at the center of its strategy.

My takeaway is that operators are the key to the next phase of industrial evolution that which involves the deep digitalization of manufacturing, its supply chain, the production capacity, personalization, and with that, the reinvention of factory production itself.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 21: The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, Episode 27: Industry 4.0 Tools, or Episode 10: A Brief History of Manufacturing Software.

Augmented — conversations on industrial tech.

Special Guest: Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba.

After listening to this episode, check out  Microsoft's manufacturing approach as well as Çağlayan Arkan's social media profile:

• Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/manufacturing/microsoft-cloud-for-manufacturing 
• Çağlayan Arkan: LinkedIn,
• Blog: https://aka.ms/CaglayanArkanBlog

Trond's takeaway: The future of digital in manufacturing is enormously impactful. Yet, even deep digitalization will not make workers obsolete. Rather, the challenge seems to be achieving a dramatic workforce transformation which also entails empowerment, upskilling, and autonomy through augmentation of frontline operations.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 9, The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19, episode 4, A Renaissance in Manufacturing or Episode 20, The Digitalization of Körber.

Augmented--industrial conversations.

Transcript:

Augmented reveals the stories behind a new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. In Episode 21 of the podcast, the topic is The Future of Digital in Manufacturing. Our guest is Çağlayan Arkan, VP of Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft.

In this conversation, we talk about where manufacturing has been in the past, why manufacturing has been lacking a sense of urgency in the sense of industry 4.0, but how everything we know about manufacturing has changed. We also discuss workforce transformation, democratizing operational technology, and the future of industrial innovation.

Augmented is a podcast for leaders hosted by futurist, Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the manufacturing upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented - the industry 4.0 podcast.

Çağlayan, how are you today?

ÇAĞLAYAN: I am very well. Great to be here. Thank you.

TROND: So I am alerted to the fact that you're an outdoor person. And I wanted to cover that just because a technology discussion in manufacturing is not complete without a little bit of personality. And I think you said you are a backcountry skier. I was curious about this.

ÇAĞLAYAN: I am. Skiing is my passion, one of them, but probably the one that makes me happiest, the one that I love the most. I like ski touring, and I like skiing the backcountry, the off-piste. I like climbing. I'm a very physical person. And on a similar note, I also am a cyclist. I'm a sailor, a windsurfer. I just love being out, and I love the wind on my face.

TROND: So at some point in the future, when the pandemic is over and behind us, I think my next podcast with you we will simply go for a hike.

ÇAĞLAYAN: Well, let's do it. But doing it with me has the following potential downside for you. The other piece of my outdoors work, or kind of world, if you will, is that I love miserable weather. I'm a winter person. I love my rain, my cold, my wind. [laughs] And people typically, even if they categorize themselves as outsiders, like outdoor people, they will just love fair weather, I don't. I'm not that person. I don't like the sun on my face. I don't like a lot of people out. I like trails to myself. I like mountains to myself. [laughs] If you're up for it, we'll do it together.

TROND: Well, this is probably something you didn't realize. But I grew up in Norway, and there are no people. And we have plenty of bad weather. So admittedly, I don't live in Norway, so that could give you a clue. [laughter] But there is something there.

ÇAĞLAYAN: All right, we're on. We're on.

TROND: Yeah, we're on. Okay, so having settled that, I wanted to ask you this question. So we're going to talk about, I guess, the future and the current state, present state of manufacturing. But where has manufacturing been in the past? And by the way, when you think past, how far do you go back? I mean, is this just pre-COVID? Because I've heard you talk a little bit about manufacturing traditionally, and I want you to just give us a quick sense of where you think the industry was just a few moments ago.

ÇAĞLAYAN: You started personally. Let me personalize manufacturing for me. I'm an industrial engineer with an MBA. And so, my whole education was in plants in the manufacturing environment. And I studied from operations research to metallurgical engineering, to electrical engineering, to construction, to electrical. You just name it. And so that has been something that I really really liked, the system's thinking, the optimization. I've done a lot in OR back in the day, linear and multiple. So maybe too much detail for now.

But where is manufacturing? Manufacturing has been mostly manual siloed with a separation between information technology and the data estate that that brings to the table and operations technology that that brings to the table. Technology has never really been, particularly from an IT standpoint, top of mind. Digital transformation has not really been a sense of urgency in manufacturing because things worked. Yet people at the shop floor and things were working until the pandemic hit.

So pandemic question, slap on the face for manufacturers. Business continuity none. You can't send people to the shop floor. You cannot operate. You don't see your inventory. You can't see your suppliers. You don't even know whether they're surviving or not, financially or otherwise. So it was a huge, huge, huge problem. But the silver lining of all of this is now there's acceleration into the transformation of manufacturing.

Look, why is manufacturing important? Let's spend a minute on that. Manufacturing, unlike many other industries (And I kind of make fun of my peer industry leaders at Microsoft as well.), manufacturing is very real. Manufacturing creates employment. Manufacturing creates growth, builds the economy, builds capacity. Manufacturing is about innovation. Manufacturing is about competitiveness. So it is core to populations, countries. It's core to politicians, to business leaders, and it's just phenomenal.

And so if you do things right in manufacturing, things work, including climate change, and sustainability, and a lot of other stuff. And if you do things wrong, you could see a lot of damage done. It collapses economies. It collapses, grids and stops, and creates a lot of disruption. So it is very real. And so I'm sorry I'm providing a long answer, but you can tell I'm passionate about it. It's very personal for me.

But by and large, I'm actually excited about where we are. We are at an inflection point. And we'll see a lot of acceleration coming out of the pandemic, the crisis. And stuff we're working on is actually to ensure business continuity and resiliency. Those are the things that are the conversations going forward.

TROND: Çağlayan, you took me in an interesting direction. I was just thinking as you were speaking, right before we go to the inflection, it's actually not just a little bit surprising but actually quite surprising that there haven't been any reported massive disruptions due to the pandemic. If you think about all of these mission-critical systems that we have around the world, in every manufacturing-related industry, how do you explain because, as you were saying, historically...and some of these silos are sort of still there, although obviously, we are at this inflection point so somehow already transitioned.

But how do you explain that we haven't had more horror stories? And by horror stories, I guess I mean operations completely collapsing, or I guess grids falling apart, or that one manual worker couldn't go in. So X happened that they had never, never thought about. Why haven't we heard anything like that? Are those stories going to come out, do you think, or did nothing seriously happen?

ÇAĞLAYAN: Well, it happened. I know for a fact because once this started, I started calling down on my customers, like, "How are you doing? What do you need?" For one, I think that from a table stakes standpoint, we've seen massive teams deployment because people wanted to communicate. They wanted continuity in terms of being able to talk to one another, being able to work, and then work from home, of course, because they couldn't go to their plants or to their offices. So there was a lot of pain. There was a lot of disruption.

I talked to some of my customers, and they were like, billions of dollars are tied in inventory, and we have no idea where that sits. Again, they're disconnected from suppliers as well as their customers, and so there was disruption. But luckily, we've had some leaders actually having foreseen what is to come, or they were disruptors or at least early adopters. And they have taken pre-COVID pre-crisis steps for digital transformation.

And I love my examples and partnerships where Erickson had started work pre-COVID in terms of digital manufacturing, Outokumpu, a leader in steel manufacturing, significant progress including during the pandemic, Airbus, Unilever. I mean, those are leading examples, only some of them. But you look at the World Economic Forum Global Lighthouse Network; there are so many lighthouse factories that are just like literally lighthouses for people to look at and look up to. That work started years ago.

So there are some extremely encouraging examples. There are some very, very dark stories in terms of complete stoppage and horror stories. But by large, we are at a good place in terms of we understand the issues and we understand how to deal with them. And I think most importantly, that notion of time to value is accelerated in manufacturing. And we're coming from prohibitively expensive, I mean, we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars of IT projects that never end to now negligible cost and like 10-12 weeks, a couple of months, and then you stand up a digital factory capability. You have visibility into your supply chain by standing up a control tower.

And then, in the case of Airbus or Alstom, you can have your 2,000 engineers still keep doing design and engineering work from home; examples go on. But we understand the issues. We have a very quick ability to build capability, to show that stuff works and you can operate remotely, et cetera, et cetera.

TROND: But would you say that this is the definite end to, I guess what you were alluding to is kind of this pilot purgatory? Is COVID the definite end to pilot purgatory? Or is it just that this particular situation was so serious that everybody kind of scrambled, and most of them got it right? Or would you say that...I guess possibly because once you have made this transition, that is the hard work. Do you think that these pilots that everyone was waiting for will that problem disappear because people have learned that this is not the way to introduce technology? You sort of learned it the hard way.

ÇAĞLAYAN: Oh, well, my view is if you take a step back, Trond, here's how I see it. One hundred years ago, we were by and large an agricultural society, and we had like 50% of the workforce in agriculture. Today we are by and large an industrial society. And we have like 2% of the workforce in agriculture, and we brought everyone along in terms of The Industrial Age. Today we are at the next junction; some call it industry 4.0, some call it other names. But we as a society assume...like humanity, we're moving from industrial to digital. So that's the higher order.

Now, what's the role of the pandemic in this? I think it's that of acceleration. So in any major shift, there are behaviors and categories of actors or players. There are the disruptors. There are those who go and make a market, build a trend. And we have seen those, and we're still seeing them. They are the early adopters. We talked about some of them as well. And then there's going to be the slower adopters and the laggards. And then some of the laggards will not see the light of day or will not maybe exist after we transition to the new reality, new realm, or that notion of digital society.

So what I'm saying is it was going to happen, those pilots or people's way, like, slow adopters' way of touching it, putting their toes in the water. For some, it's proving value and acceleration. Pandemic, again, that kind of disruption is going to accelerate and bring more to the table. But it certainly has a role to play. But the higher-level order is we are moving to a very, very different reality for manufacturers and supply chains and even as a society.

TROND: Super interesting. Çağlayan, I've heard you talk earlier. And I guess we talked a little bit in the prep about whether this is a different wave of technology because I know you have some views on the democratization of basically operational technology because there are different waves of technology in manufacturing. And traditionally, like you said, the industry has been siloed. But one of the reasons the industry was siloed is that the technology then also turned into silos, arguably.

And what is it about the technology these days? Is it getting simpler? Are you, for instance, in Microsoft spending more time on user interfaces than you were before? Or I guess even the introduction of your company so deeply into manufacturing is in and of itself a bit of a novelty. The tech players that weren't specialists are now going deep, deep into industry segments. Give me a sense of why this is happening. And what exactly is this democratization? Gartner calls it citizen developers.

ÇAĞLAYAN: Yeah, that's one aspect of it. The way I see it is, very shortly, technology now works.

TROND: [laughs]

ÇAĞLAYAN: Honestly, I don't know, like five years ago, it just didn't. It was so hard for implementations, for integration, et cetera. It now works. There's virtually nothing technology cannot deliver today. It's up to the leader's vision, leader's ability to execute, and magic happens. There's so much at play right now, that's one.

Secondly, technology is the business right now. I mean, technology was isolated. Trond, you will remember those days not too distant past. We had our own language. The CIO, it's like they were from Mars in the organization. [laughter] And they were not mainstream as an executive in the company. Company did their work, and CIO did stuff that nobody really understood.

Now, technology is the business. I mean, if you look at any research, you will see that the mainstream business leader, whether it's the CMO, the Chief, Marketing Officer, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Financial Officer, whatever those may be, they're making more technology decisions and have bigger technology budgets than the technology people themselves. So that's the other piece that business is technology. Technology is business.

The third piece is that the siloed nature of not only manufacturing, so many different industries, was because it was an application-led view into enterprises or into business. Now, it's data-driven work. And so data dictates everything, and data is actually end to end. So to the extent that you have a data architecture, enterprise-level data architecture, and a system-level approach to things, it's a completely different world.

And to bring those three together as a business, you have to forget more than you remember. And then you have to reinvent yourself. And if you do that, everybody knows cliché examples here, but then you find yourself as a completely different company or services company or actually at the risk of being disrupted by competition in ways that were not thought of or unprecedented. So that's what's happening.

So what we like to approach this whole kind of...I like to call this opportunity. It's a major opportunity. It's a huge inflection point. It's all about reinventing your business. None of that is about technology. Technology is a tool. It's a powerful tool. It's a tool that works. It's very capable. But it's about the business outcomes. Because we said, you have to reinvent your entire enterprise, starting from your culture, how you operate, your value proposition, all of that.

It is where you start should be dictated by which outcome is most important for you, or the highest value for you, or the most burning for you. Whatever your drivers are, focus on the outcome. Go back to work to find the relevant data for it and get to that in weeks, literally seriously in weeks and get to the next outcome, the next outcome. And don't forget the people and culture. It's all about the people piece, and we can talk about that later. I think we should. But those are the things that I will say to your technology question.

TROND: That's great.

ÇAĞLAYAN: Focus on data, lead with culture, and always major prioritizations on the outcomes you want to drive.

TROND: You said lead with culture, but it's not just company culture, I guess. It's the whole nature of the skills that are now needed in this new workplace. A lot of people are saying that that is changing and that the workforce needs are changing. So you initially said well, technology now works. So that's true, but what are the skills that then are needed?

So okay, technology is easier. But what are some of the tasks that are, I guess, less relevant because of this influx of call it industry 4.0 type technologies? And what are some of the skills that are more relevant? And the frontline worker of the future, what should they be focused on? And your clients, what are they starting to teach their workforce?

ÇAĞLAYAN: Great question. I will say at the highest level, Trond, it is a data-driven culture. I mean, in manufacturing, maybe other businesses and industries as well, we operate on the basis of past successes, habits. This has been delivering for me. This has been working for me, et cetera, or experience. You kind of listen to stuff. You kind of watch stuff. You anticipate stuff. And you're like, I've been doing this for 25 years. None of this has anything to do with data because, again, we established we were using less than 1% of our data, at least in manufacturing. Now the biggest cultural change is data-driven.

And then once you go to data telling you what to do, data giving you predictions, data giving you systems of intelligence like the insights in terms of what to do, and when to do it, and how to do it, et cetera, then that dictates actually two things. Again, I'm trying to come down to it in terms of a hierarchy. Manufacturing had a skills gap, has a bigger skills gap in the face of digital. And we're not an attractive industry. The young generation does not see career opportunities in manufacturing. Actually, manufacturing is fantastic. It's real; it's innovative. So we have to change that, and so we're working on it.

And secondly, the existing jobs, even if they may still be the most important jobs in manufacturing, those people have to learn new skills in terms of doing their jobs using technology. Let's see now a couple of examples. You talked about the frontline workers, first-line workers, or just shopfloor, the very people who get the job done. They typically did not use any technology. They were all mostly manual, what we called HMI, like Human-Machine interfaces, old, very, very, antique equipment, if you will, blue screens. I think anyone who's close to manufacturing will know that we used a lot of paper, et cetera.

Today's frontline worker is actually acting on data, acting on predictions, double-clicking under the modern interface, and responding to traffic lights, responding to alerts. You got to be able to do those, wearing augmented or virtual reality devices. We call it mixed reality with the unique technology that we have in terms of HoloLens in our entire mixed reality platform.

But you come to a job, and then you don't need to learn to do the job. You just wear your HoloLens. And the mixed reality platform will actually teach you how to do it with your two hands-free. If you're in the field service, someone at the back office, remote connections, or remote assist capabilities can actually guide you through as to how to deal with that; I don't know, grid asset, extruder, or packaging line because they know how to and you don't need to. And then this is the way you learn how to do stuff.

So I guess the gist of it is some jobs will no longer exist. Most of the repetitive low-value-added jobs can be automated, robots, artificial intelligence, and other means in terms of process automation, et cetera. Most of the jobs, if not all of the jobs, will be rescaled in terms of technology. And at the highest level, probably 75 million jobs will go away. Again, this is a World Economic Forum study. One hundred thirty-five million new jobs will be created. What are those jobs? Data jobs, software jobs.

And then how you do your design and engineering, you have to be able to understand AI-led generative design, additive manufacturing, 3D printing to be able to be successful. And so, all of that is a call to action for universities, policymakers, corporate learning officers, for all of us, and calls for partnerships to lean in. And again, I used agricultural example. Bring everyone along from the Industrial Age to the digital age.

TROND: It's a fascinating challenge, and it's a big one. I was just curious; there's a lot of talk about middle jobs meaning jobs that are somewhere between more than high school but less than traditional college. But then you also have an echelon above that, of course, which traditionally certainly Microsoft was hiring into, which is more high-level cognitive jobs which required bachelors, and masters, and PhDs traditionally in computer programming. But I'm guessing now certainly in your field in sort of hybrid engineering studies where engineering plus IT.

The middle jobs is a big challenge, even just from an operational point of view. It's hard to educate a billion people worldwide or whatever it is that we have to do continuously to keep the lights up. How is all that going to happen? And what sort of effort does this require? Can we use the existing institutions we have to do this? Or do you foresee that it's going to be a lot more on-the-job type of training in digital training?

ÇAĞLAYAN: I'll say all of the above in the following ways; for one, we're already working with Purdue, University of Wisconsin, and many, many universities and education institutions. So for one, manufacturing-related jobs were kind of graduate jobs. We're trying to bring the curriculum to undergrad, if not high school, so there's that. So vocational training, et cetera, all of this is important.

Secondly, we partner with the National Association of Manufacturers, MxD, Sesame, obviously Tulip, and many others in terms of call to action and doing institutionalizing, programatize, very, very important for all of that. Thirdly, I deliberately talked about corporate learning officers because a lot of people, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people in large corporations, actually had to learn new skills. And it is happening as we speak in multiple ways in many, many, many, many leading enterprises. But it's a huge part of the whole equation.

And then, I talked about the World Economic Forum and the Global Lighthouse Network. Programs like that actually bring it to everyone's attention in terms of what is possible, and how it works, and how some leading institutions deal with it, which brings me to this notion of what I like to call art of possible. I think leadership at large, political leaders, enterprise leaders, any institution, education, leadership at large has to understand what I call the art of possible, and that is how technology has already transformed everyone's lives.

And what is that leaders need to do differently? Starting from communication, setting new standards, to building the new curriculum, to encouraging everyone, bringing everyone along, and all the rest of it from cultural change to change management and defining the new normal. But by and large, just bringing everyone along. And so that is really, really important that we start that education and understanding with the leadership because it's all about leadership. It's all about them having the right vision and being able to execute to that.

TROND: What is the role of actors such as startups? You mentioned Tulip. What are startups' role in the emerging manufacturing and frontline operations ecosystem? Tulip thinks of itself a little wider than manufacturing. But what is it that startups can do? Because clearly, this is a game, technology overall, and also industries. It's an industrial game. Industrial companies are massive traditionally.

So the juxtaposition traditionally in the old world would be between the industrial conglomerates and then the SMEs. And the game was to get the SMEs to be useful providers and suppliers into the supply chain ecosystem was an educational challenge. But you now have startups somewhere in this picture as well. Can you address how you think these startups function in the ecosystem going forward?

ÇAĞLAYAN: Yeah, I think the example that I would use is startups are like Tesla for automotive, Airbnb for hospitality. They're the disruptors. They have zero legacy. And so we're talking major change, major transformation. What happens in change? Lots of the legacy will drag their feet. They will want to protect status quo. They'll be slower. What startups do is they teach you the new normal. They teach you the art of possible, and they go on and do it. This is how you carry from years of implementation time to weeks. This is how you go from hundreds of millions of dollars to pennies and cents.

And so Tulip and many, many others that I'm so excited to work together with, define the new normal. They make it happen. They go and make stuff. And actually, they are the ones who bring what I call art of possible to life. Let's take Tulip's example. Again, they go into the shop floor. And they look at that low-code/no-code citizen developers, a term that you used in this very conversation. And then they bring it to life in the context of manufacturing operations.

And so suddenly, the human-machine interfaces are modernized. The legacy-heavy applications that do not necessarily connect the enterprise have changed, and there's a new workflow in place. And people just act on data and intelligence. The job is much easier to do, et cetera, and then you can build on it. And so what they do is just extremely important, actually much bigger than their sizes or the number of people that they employ. The role that they play is actually what's going to change economies. And this is one reason why we embrace and work very, very closely with the likes of Tulip at Microsoft through multiple, multiple tools and investments that we have from Microsoft for Startups to M12 and to many others.

TROND: Yes, I understand. That's fantastic. However, it does remain the case that right now, you are a gorilla in the big space, and you do have a privileged position to analyze what you think is happening. So if you use that futurist hat that you have from your vantage point of a large player that does work with everyone, I guess, where is this now heading?

You said it's a disruptive time. It's an inflection point. You were using big, revolutionary words. We're talking about industry revolutions. There's also some uncertainty, and we have been dealing with resilience issues. But you pointed out simplicity has improved. Where is all this taking us, all of these bits and pieces altogether? Where is the manufacturing industry heading?

ÇAĞLAYAN: Manufacturing is very complex, and it's actually not one industry. So many industries are manufacturers. So let's kind of break it down and simplify to maybe customer-facing systems, sales, services, et cetera, design, and engineering making stuff which is really manufacturing, supply chains, and then maybe you look at people.

In the customer systems, particularly the pandemic, taught us that online sales and delivery, omnichannel strategies, profit optimization, pricing, contact lifecycle management, all of that is here to stay. Connected field services or field services at large is going to be changed forever. Again, we talked about mixed reality, remote assistant, remote capabilities, all of that. So that is where that is headed.

In terms of the design and engineering piece, we talked about AI-led generative design, where AI engines actually design stuff like mother nature. They don't have corners. They're not straight lines. So the existing manufacturing paradigms like welding, and bending, and et cetera, can go away, and 3D printing actually is very revolutionary in that it's the only way to actually make the stuff that is designed by AI engines which is faster, stronger, lighter, cheaper, et cetera. But again, you can only build them with the new 3D or additive paradigms, and so there's that.

And obviously, from design and engineering, that whole design supply chain is moving to a virtual environment so that you do not have to send designs in paper when it comes to like...You look at Boeing, and they have like six million suppliers. You look at Rolls Royce, the same deal. And then what they do now is they send electronic drawings. You can validate. You can verify the source is correct. You can just keep building in the virtual environment, and you can run simulations and tests. I can go on and on, but that is completely disrupted and changed forever.

Manufacturing as we know it is moving to...some call it lights-out manufacturing. But this whole remote capability being able to...business continuity, people at the shop floor being able to remotely operate, manage and monitor your assets, get predictions on them, actually have predictions visibility into your suppliers and be connected to their environment. Digital twins and digital threads are actually huge enablers from that perspective. So this whole kind of lights-out manufacturing conversation can happen. Again, technology is capable of delivering it. You have to optimize or rationalize for your own enterprise. Supply chains, completely moving to an autonomous and sustainable fashion.

And then finally, at the highest level, what we're seeing perhaps the largest opportunity is go from your...even your own enterprise was siloed. Let alone your enterprise, go and reinvent the whole value chain that you operate in. We tend to think about industries, but actually, value chains are made up of multiple adjacent industries. Look at food; it starts with perhaps the farmer, but the farm equipment manufacturer, the likes of John Deere, Mahindra, et cetera, do play a huge role. There's a lot of data there.

Then you look at warehouses, then you look at mills, and processors, and packagers, and shippers, and then you go all the way to retail. I've talked about seven different industries. The notion of I call it lead with opportunity as opposed to leading with risks. Share your data for the greater good. New value creation at the value chain level we haven't even begun starting that journey, really. And so, just some of the examples of how everything we know is already disrupted. Again, do all the leaders know, the world leaders know how to deal with it or where to take their enterprises, their people, their cultures, their businesses? And so that's kind of the conversation.

TROND: Indeed it is. Disruption at the value chain level that seems to be at the core. And then I guess my last question for you really is to take this back to the human being because I know you think that fundamentally, this is not really about the technologies or even just the various industries at the center, and maintaining and constructing is the human being.

The augmented human capabilities that these new structures and technologies enable, what does that look like? I mean, if you think augmented reality and mixed reality, HoloLens is like a beginning of that vision. But it seems like we're arguably going from a day where the idea was automate, but you have a vision of more augmenting, meaning you're supplementing the human as opposed to replacing them. How do you see the human being in this picture? What is going to be the role of the human worker?

ÇAĞLAYAN: Well, it's going to be a combination of vision and maybe aspiration. But I'll say augmented society first because of diversity and inclusion. Let's start there. Let's bring everyone along. Let's not leave one person behind, wherever they may be, whatever background. Let's bring everyone along. And as a society, let's elevate everyone. Let's make everything accessible, technology, and data, and education, and health, and water, and safe food, all of that accessible to everyone.

The new set of paradigms actually might create value at such a level in which we can give people more free time, more fulfillment, provide better work-life balance, provide other means of seeking reason and purpose in life and communicate and work together at very, very different levels. And so all of that is just, again, I think this whole kind of leader, art of possible, and what technology is capable of today. If we put the people in the center and go from there, I think we can remember these days as some of the best kind of inflection points in history.

TROND: Wow, that's a great way to end. I thank you so much. This was a whirlwind of observations. [laughs] Thank you very much.

ÇAĞLAYAN: Thank you.

TROND: You have just listened to Episode 21 of the Augmented Podcast with host Trond Arne Undheim. The topic was The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, and our guest was Çağlayan Arkan, VP of Manufacturing Industry at Microsoft. In this conversation, we talked about where manufacturing has been in the past, workforce transformation, democratizing operational technology, and the future of industrial innovation.

My takeaway is that the future of digital in manufacturing is enormously impactful, yet even deep digitalization will not make workers obsolete. Rather, the challenge seems to be achieving a dramatic workforce transformation which also entails empowerment, upskilling, and autonomy through augmentation of frontline operations.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player. View our YouTube channel and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode 9: The Fourth Industrial Revolution, post-COVID-19, Episode 4: A Renaissance in Manufacturing, or Episode 20: The Digitalization of Körber.

Augmented - upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.

Special Guest: Çağlayan Arkan.

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn and how to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), and presented by Tulip Interfaces (@tulipinterfaces), the frontline operations platform.

In Season 2 we honed in, covering a specific topics relevant to manufacturing, such as marketing, frontline operations, reshoring, digital lean, startups, supply chains, pricing strategies, the manufacturing software market workers, the low code/no- code issue, diagnostic manufacturing, operational data, life science manufacturing systems, the industrial tech transformation outlook, the future factory, the evolution of lean, and industrial interoperability. As you can see, these ranged from technical topics to HR to investing to management principles--all of which go into operating and innovating in manufacturing and industrial tech.

Guests featured in this episode:

Joe Sullivan (@sullivan_joe), host of The Manufacturing Executive podcast and founder of Gorilla 76 (@gorilla76)
Lydia M. Di Liello (@LydiaDiLiello), CEO and founder of Capital Pricing Consultants, and co-host of The WAM Podcast: Empowering Women in Manufacturing and Business. (@wam_podcast)
Yossi Sheffi (@YossiSheffi), Director, MIT Center for Transporation and Logistics (@MITSupplyChain)
Harry C. Moser (@reshorenow) founder and President of the Reshoring Initiative
Dr. Gunter Beitinger (@beitgugb) (@Siemens) SVP of Manufacturing at Siemens AG, Head of Factory Digitalization and Head of Product Carbon Footprint/SiGreen

Thanks for listening. If you like the show subscribe to augmentedpodcast. co or on your preferred podcast player. And rate us with 5 stars. If so, let us know by messaging us your thoughts. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in this show or in other episodes. Please, if you do, let us know by messaging us. We would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.

The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guests: Dr. Gunter Beitinger, Harry C. Moser, Joe Sullivan, Lydia M. Di Liello, and Yossi Sheffi.

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers, and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), and presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform (@tulipinterfaces).

Trond's takeaway: Business process intelligence is the "why" of technology. Because smoother operations are where the value of technology is realized. The future outlook for low code in industrial operations is bright because it has the potential to streamline workflows in manufacturing and logistics. However, it is important to keep in mind that to leverage automation to do better decisions, and not just to squeeze out more with less--that starts with keeping in mind what the real problem is and steering with that in mind. If you don't know, figure out the problem and then invest in the process and if technology gets you there, invest.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmented podcast.co or in your preferred podcast player and rate us with five stars. And if you liked this episode, you might also like episode 73 The Challenge of Front Line Operations. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or in other episodes.

And if so, do let us know by messaging us because we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Prabhjot Singh.

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. Technology is changing rapidly. What’s next in the digital factory? Who is leading the change? What are the key skills to learn? How to stay up to date on manufacturing and industry 4.0? Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), and presented by Tulip (@tulipinterfaces), the frontline operations platform.

In this conversation, we talked about manufacturing leadership, how to achieve digital manufacturing success, and fighting the skills and perception gap. We also touched on the activities of Chicago-based manufacturing institute MxD, and the future outlook of the industry.

Trond's takeaway: Manufacturing leadership is in good hands with Chicago-based manufacturing institute MxD. Digital manufacturing success takes constant R&D, experimentation, and learning from failure and success. If MxD’s approach took hold, the skills and perception gaps that persist would start to dissipate. As long as idea exchange continues to accelerate, the future outlook of the industry is bright.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 30, Rethinking Workforce Learning, 17, Smart Manufacturing for All, or 7, Work of the Future. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.

The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, the connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industrial tech is heading.

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Chandra Brown.

In this conversation, we talk about the following: What is frontline operations? What are the specific needs industrial companies have when they want to digitize their operations? What are some key Tulip use cases? What will industrial operations look like over the next decade?

Trond's takeaway: Frontline operations is an increasingly crucial business function whereby a function that previously was considered back office or lower priority, that of the industrial worker, receives increased attention. When the frontline gets digitally augmented and managerially supported, workers feel empowered just like white collar knowledge workers with desks. Connecting machines to serve people, simplifying technology implementation, operators can carry the key task of uniting industrial production with consumption needs. Over time, this might eradicate inefficiencies in the supply chain. This development will not only shape industrial operations over the next decade, in some companies, it is already in place.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 50, The Last Mile of Productivity, episode 49, Lean manufacturing in the USA, and episode 41, Scaling Software Movements. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners.

The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co.

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. See you next time.

Special Guest: Jason Dietrich.

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. See you next time. 

Special Guest: Andy Burton.

Trond's takeaway:

The Medical Device Industry is not the easiest industry to innovate within. Regulatory constraints, the complexity of managing software and hardware together, and staying on top of the logistical intricacies of the health care market, all of that complicates things. No Digital Lean journey is easy, but the fact that Outset Medical managed to build a greenfield factory in Tijuana, Mexico, with a bottom-up approach to process improvement through no-code apps that empower their workers, is an inspiring story.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 50, The Last Mile of Productivity, episode 33, Sustainable Manufacturing at Scale, or episode 63, Digitizing Medical Device Operations. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. 

The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. 

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. See you next time. 

Special Guest: Marc Nash.

In this conversation, we talk about the complexity of the shop floor and programming a physical-digital environment. What does Digital Lean mean to you? What is augmentation? What's next in industrial tech?

Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip (@tulipinterfaces), the frontline operations platform.

Trond's takeaway:
The physical-digital environment is no joke. When you speak with a real technologist who not only has imagined what the future would look like, but who is involved in building it, integrating software and hardware on the factory floor, you realize how difficult it will be to transform industrial work. It is not just about industrial tech, it is about people. It is not just about neat software, or fancy hardware. It all has to work together. And, more importantly, it has to fit into the overall context of what people are already doing.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 44, No-code for IoT in the Cloud, episode 47, Industrial Machine Learning or episode 29, The Automated Microfactory. 

The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. 

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. See you next time. 

Special Guest: Rony Kubat.

• William Bruey (@WillBruey): https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-bruey-8a2b5040/  
• Varda Space Industries (@Vardaspace): https://varda.com/

In this conversation, we talk about: Why build a factory in space? How R&D from the International Space Station facilitated this new development. What space manufacturing will entail in the short term. What the benefits are likely to be in terms of manipulating the terrestrial physical constraints of crystallization and sedimentation. We discuss what the near immediate use cases are, such as better semiconductors and fiber optics. We cover the futuristic use cases including 3D printing human organs without scaffolding.

Augmented (@Augmentedpod) is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. 

Trond's takeaway: Factories in space are closer than we think, and the reason is that NASA and others have spent 20 years doing R&D at the International Space Station. All that work can now come to fruition, but not as within the constraints of that remote vessel, but autonomously by deriving the results and building an independent rocket, lab and reentry capability. How exciting is that? Will it expand industrial performance on earth in this decade? What will it mean for further space exploration in the next? Change is afoot, but science, and space, are still endless frontiers. That might be a good thing, or we might get cocky.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 29, The Automated Microfactory, episode 33, Sustainable Manufacturing at Scale, or episode 13, Get Manufacturing Superpowers. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes.

The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. 

To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. 

Special Guest: William Bruey.

In this conversation, we talk about what the Internet of Things (IoT) means for industrial business models. We discuss the impact of connected devices and the subscription based economy on industries as distant from the initial IT waves as agriculture.

Augmented is a podcast for industrial leaders, process engineers and shop floor operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.

Trond's takeaway: The Internet of Things (IoT) is about to complete its hype cycle. We might finally see the smart cities we were promised in the nineties. With IoT, digital benefits comes to infrastructure, the last mile of sunk assets, long timelines, and nearly forgotten, but hard-earned public goods.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 29, The Automated Microfactory, episode 33, Sustainable Manufacturing at Scale, or episode 23, Digital Manufacturing in the Cloud. Hopefully, you'll find something awesome in these or other episodes. If so, do let us know by messaging us, we would love to share your thoughts with other listeners. 

The Augmented podcast is created in association with Tulip, connected frontline operations platform that connects the people, machines, devices, and the systems used in a production or logistics process in a physical location. Tulip is democratizing technology and empowering those closest to operations to solve problems. Tulip is also hiring. You can find Tulip at Tulip.co. 

Please share this show with colleagues who care about where industry and especially industrial tech is heading. To find us on social media is easy, we are Augmented Pod on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Augmented Podcast on Facebook and YouTube:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/augmentedpod
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AugmentedPodcast/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AugmentedPod
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5Y1gz66LxYvjJAMnN_f6PQ

See you next time. Augmented--industrial conversations that matter. 

Special Guest: Rob Rastovich.

In episode 53 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Manufacturing Millennials. Our guest is Jake Hall, podcaster, The Manufacturing Millennial and Business Development Manager at Feyen Zylstra, a Grand Rapids, Michigan, US-based systems integrator.

In this conversation, we talk about The future generation in manufacturing, how we convince young people as well as how companies can make themselves attractive to this generation, and even more importantly, empowering the existing workforce.

Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.

After listening to this episode, check out:

• The Manufacturing Millennial: https://www.themanufacturingmillennial.com/ 
• Feyen-Zylstre (@feyenzylstra): https://www.feyenzylstra.com/
• Jake Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobrhall/ 

Trond's takeaway: Millennials are the key to the future of manufacturing, not just because they are a talent pool needed in the workforce but because they have the right mindset for change which is so beneficial to a manufacturing industry faced with the challenges and opportunities of industry 4.0 or smart manufacturing using digital solutions. 

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 11, Empowering Workers to Innovate, episode 3, Reimagine Training, or episode 12, Enterprise Wide Quality of Manufacturing. 

Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.

Special Guest: Jake Hall.

In episode 47 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Industrial Machine Learning. Our guest is Roy Shilkrot, Lead Scientist, Tulip (@tulipinterfaces).

In this conversation, we talk about Machine Learning in Manufacturing. Emerging applications using Tulip and beyond, we discuss emerging use cases, the impact of a future with MES ML, that is, machine learning built into the manufacturing execution system.

Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.

After listening to this episode, check out:

• Tulip: https://tulip.co/
• Roy Shilkrot: https://www.linkedin.com/in/royshilkrot/

**Trond's takeaway**: Industrial tech is not what it used to be and will never again be a bulky, legacy, inflexible instrument. Rather, we are entering an age with immediate feedback, rapid adjustments and a combination of human and machine monitoring.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 29, The Automated Microfactory, episode 22, Freedman's Factory: What is nocode?, or episode 19, Machine Learning in Manufacturing. 

Augmented--industrial conversations that matter.

Special Guest: Roy Shilkrot.

In episode 36 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Digital Lean. Our guest is Edward Atkins, Head of Customer Success, Tulip (@tulipinterfaces).

In this conversation, we talk about achieving customer success with classic Lean Operations and beyond. We explore performance transparency, how operators can produce parts tracking procedures digitally, creating quality gates through inspection applications and being conscious about quality measurement. What am I making? At what quality? We also go into more complex things like work material flow, Kanban loops and taking inventory and how no-code is an exponential uplift since you no longer are burdened by logging and can collect as much information as you want.

After listening to this episode, check out Tulip's and Edward Atkins' profile on social media:

• Tulip (@tulipinterfaces): Tulip.co. 
• Edward Atkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-atkins-77022213/ 

Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.

**Trond's takeaway**: Implementing digital lean on a client site especially enabling improvements to be done near 100 percent by the clients themselves is now possible with the leading frontline operations software and is game changing for industrial performance. 

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode **22, Freedman's Factory: What is nocode?, episode 24, Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation, and episode 14, Bottom up and Deep Digitization of Operations. 

Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.

Augmented reveals the stories behind the new era of industrial operations, where technology will restore the agility of frontline workers. 

In episode 36 of the podcast , the topic is: Digital Lean. Our guest is Edward Atkins, Head of Customer Success, Tulip

In this conversation, we talk about achieving customer success with classic Lean Operations and beyond. We explore performance transparency, how operators can produce parts tracking procedures digitally, creating quality gates through inspection applications and being conscious about quality measurement. What am I making? At what quality? We also go into more complex things like work material flow, Kanban loops and taking inventory and how no-code is an exponential uplift since you no longer are burdened by logging and can collect as much information as you want.

After listening to this episode, check out Tulip's and Edward Atkins' profile on social media:

• Tulip (@tulipinterfaces): Tulip.co 
• Edward Atkins: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-atkins-77022213/ 

Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.

**Trond's takeaway**: Implementing digital lean on a client site especially enabling improvements to be done near 100 percent by the clients themselves is now possible with the leading frontline operations software and is game changing for industrial performance. 

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode **22, Freedman's Factory: What is nocode?, episode 24, Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation, and episode 14, Bottom up and Deep Digitization of Operations. 

Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.

Special Guest: Eddy Atkins.

In episode 23 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Digital Manufacturing in the Cloud. Our guest is Jon Hirschtick, Head of SaaS, Onshape and Atlas Platform, PTC.

In this conversation, we talk about the story of SolidWorks, using agile methods, listening to the market, charting the evolution of CAD into SaaS, and its emerging and future iterations in the open source cloud and beyond.

Augmented is a podcast for industry leaders and operators, hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim (@trondau), presented by Tulip.co, the frontline operations platform, and associated with MFG.works, the industrial upskilling community launched at the World Economic Forum. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast--industrial conversations that matter.

After listening to this episode, check out PTC, Solidworks, as well as Jon Hirschtick's social media profiles:

• PTC (@ptc): https://www.ptc.com/en
• Solidworks (@solidworks): https://www.solidworks.com/ 
• Jon Hirschtick (@jhirschtick): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonhirschtick/

Trond's takeaway: Digital manufacturing is moving to the cloud and that means a whole lot more than office software moving to the cloud. In fact, establishing a real-time digital thread, through next generation low-code and no-code systems, will reshape industry. The notion of factory production, distributed teams, product development, will all evolve significantly, and will enable personalization across industry and across any and eventually all of manufactured goods. The ramifications will be huge, but they won't automatically happen tomorrow, and the benefits will spread unevenly depending on who--be it corporations, nations, startups, or small- and medium enterprises--grabs the gauntlet first.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 43, Digitized Supply Chain, episode 24, Emerging Interfaces for Human Augmentation, or episode 21, The Future of Digital in Manufacturing.

Augmented--industrial conversations that matter to everyone.

Special Guest: Jon Hirschtick.

In episode 43 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Digitized Supply Chain. Our guest is Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba, Head of Global Manufacturing IT, Johnson & Johnson.

In this conversation, we talk about why J&J puts operators at the center of its strategy, the empowerment effect of frontline operations apps, the evolution of personalized production, and how supply chain becomes an integral part of product development.

After listening to this episode, check out J&J as well as Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba's social medial profile:

•  J&J (@JNJNews): https://www.jnj.com/ 
• Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaskarababa/

Trond's takeaway: "Operators are the key to the next phase of industrial evolution, that which involves the deep digitalization of manufacturing, its supply chain, production capacity, personalization, and with that the reinvention of factory production itself.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 21, The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools or episode 10, A Brief History of Manufacturing Software

Augmented--conversations on industrial tech.

Special Guest: Arun Kumar Bhaskara-Baba.

In episode 39 of the podcast @AugmentedPod, the topic is: Covering Industrial Innovation. Our guest is Amy Feldman, Senior Editor at Forbes @amyfeldman.

In this conversation, we talk about whether manufacturing's image problem is going away, the future of industrial innovation post-COVID-19, and when will we see the next $50B ARR industrial scale-up? We also discuss the Future of tech journalism and the art of narrating innovation.

After listening to this episode, check out Amy Feldman's social profile as well as her Forbes column:

• Forbes column:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/
• Amy Feldman:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-feldman-a360861/

Trond's takeaway: Industrial innovation is hard to narrate but the masters, such as Amy Feldman, make it seems exactly as compelling as it is. Tech journalists get to not only cover, but also uncover and explain industrial trends for a wider audience. There's much to love in industry 4.0 technology adoption and many interesting players in the surrounding ecosystem. It helps not to think just in terms of individual companies but consider what they are connected to and what adjacent fields will be impacted.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 21, The Future of Digital in Manufacturing, episode 18, Transforming Foundational Industries or episode 7, Work of the Future. 

Augmented--industrial conversations.

Special Guest: Amy Feldman .

After listening to this episode, check out  Microsoft's manufacturing approach as well as Çağlayan Arkan's social media profile:

• Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/manufacturing/microsoft-cloud-for-manufacturing 
• Çağlayan Arkan: LinkedIn,
• Blog: https://aka.ms/CaglayanArkanBlog

Trond's takeaway: The future of digital in manufacturing is enormously impactful. Yet, even deep digitalization will not make workers obsolete. Rather, the challenge seems to be achieving a dramatic workforce transformation which also entails empowerment, upskilling, and autonomy through augmentation of frontline operations.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 9, The Fourth Industrial Revolution post-COVID-19, episode 4, A Renaissance in Manufacturing or Episode 20, The Digitalization of Körber.

Augmented--industrial conversations.

Special Guest: Çağlayan Arkan.

In episode 32 of the podcast (@AugmentedPod), the topic is: Visualizing Factories. Our guest is Lior Zadicareo, Chief Revenue Officer at Visual Factories

In this conversation, we talk about The complex reality of industry 4.0, how the future is a product of the past, and what will change in the life of an operations manager of a manufacturing company over the next few years.

After listening to this episode, check out Visual Factories: http://www.visual-factories.com/ as well as Lior Zadicareo's profile on social media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lior-zadicareo-905572/

You may want to also be aware of the 'Israel meets New England' smart manufacturing event on June 9 and its organizers, the Israeli Trade Mission and Amhub New England:

• The New England Advanced Manufacturing Hub (AMHUB NE): https://mfg.works/amhub/amhub-new-england/
• The Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to North America: https://embassies.gov.il/washington/AboutTheEmbassy/Pages/Economic-Mission.aspx#:
• ISRAEL meets NEW ENGLAND: Advanced Manufacturing in Factories and Workplace: https://mfg.works/israel-meets-new-england/

Trond's takeaway: Visualizing manufacturing means making what machines do visible. More than that, it means starting to understand what humans do on the shop floor. Even more ambitiously, we have to figure out how humans and machines can work better together.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 19, Machine Learning in Manufacturing, episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools or episode 25, Industrial Tracking: Drones, Warehouses and Theme Parks. Augmented--industrial conversations.

Special Guest: Lior Zadicareo.

In this conversation, we talk about where we are with machine learning and AI for manufacturing. What are the main techniques? What is possible now? What will be possible soon?

After listening to this episode, check out Razor Labs: http://www.razor-labs.com/ as well as Michael Zolotov's profile on social media: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-zolotov-33a2b26b/

You may want to also be aware of the 'Israel meets New England' smart manufacturing event on June 9 and its organizers, the Israeli Trade Mission and Amhub New England:

• The New England Advanced Manufacturing Hub (AMHUB NE): https://mfg.works/amhub/amhub-new-england/
• The Government of Israel’s Economic Mission to North America: https://embassies.gov.il/washington/AboutTheEmbassy/Pages/Economic-Mission.aspx#:
• ISRAEL meets NEW ENGLAND: Advanced Manufacturing in Factories and Workplace: https://mfg.works/israel-meets-new-england/

Trond's takeaway: Machine learning is definitely entering manufacturing over the next few years. Already, interesting experiments are underway to do simpler things such as prevent future downtime using sensor data already being captured by advanced machinery. Pure machine optimization can only get us so far, though. The real potential lies in complex business process optimization and simplification with augmented frontline operations. Technology plays a part, but clever workers, operators, and engineers will have to make intelligent use of the technologies available, they cannot just blindly implement. For that, we need reskilling--always learn.

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like episode 27, Industry 4.0 Tools, episode 13, Get Manufacturing Superpowers, and episode 14, Bottom up and Deep Digitization of Operations. 

Augmented--upskilling the workforce for industry 4.0 frontline operations.

Special Guest: Michael Zolotov.

In this conversation, we talk about the Consumerization of Industry, high-mix manufacturers, shorter product life cycle, and end-to-end approaches. Etienne shares best practices for industrial workflows with 10x speeds to design, automate, order, deploy, comments on the appification of manufacturing software platforms, the legoification library of modular parts and factory equipment, and how it ties into empowering agile manufacturing. We discuss remaining complexities and briefly touch on the future.

After listening to this episode, check out the Vention  well as Etienne Lacroix's social profile. 

• Vention https://vention.io/
• Etienne Lacroix https://www.linkedin.com/in/etiennelacroix/

Trond's takeaway: Industrial tech is indeed becoming plug-and-play. We may be at the cusp of a lowcode and approaching a nocode environment, but that doesn't mean zero cognitive skills required, quite the contrary, at least if you want to shape the future development or lead the manufacturing process. Vention's Cloud-CAD makes use of engineering grade 3D in the web browser and is a big step forward. Many more exciting applications are to come, as we map out the use cases, get feedback from previously not sought-out parts of the shopfloor, and integrate those findings. Is a zero bottleneck future in the line of vision? Not now, but we are getting closer.

Augmented is a podcast for leaders in the manufacturing industry hosted by futurist Trond Arne Undheim, presented by Tulip.co (@tulipinterfaces), the manufacturing app platform, and associated with MFG.works, the open learning community launched at the World Economic Forum.Our intro and outro music is The Arrival by Evgeny Bardyuzha (@evgenybardyuzha), licensed by Artlist (@Art_list_io). The show can be found at http://www.augmentedpodcast.co/

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, subscribe at Augmentedpodcast.co or in your preferred podcast player, and rate us with five stars. If you liked this episode, you might also like Episode #1 From Automation to Augmentation, Episode #4 A Renaissance of Manufacturing, or Episode #5 Plug-and-play Industrial Tech. Each episode dives deep into a contemporary topic of concern across the industry and airs at 9 am US Eastern Time every Wednesday. Augmented--the industry 4.0 podcast.

Special Guest: Etienne Lacroix.