Desi Narayanan - Building Perspective Inc

Summary

Highlights

• Desi explains Lean Six Sigma as a process improvement methodology dedicated to improving processes by transforming inputs to outputs systematically. 📈
• He elaborates on digital transformation as a way to transform information flows within processes from physical to digital forms. 🌐
• Digital transformation in a Lean company involves customizing technology to existing business models for more effective change. 🔧
• Desi warns of the influence of marketing in digital transformation and stresses understanding what tech truly fits your company. 🚦
• He emphasizes digital ergonomics, ensuring tech interfaces suit users like engineers and shop floor employees, enhancing productivity and satisfaction. 👩‍🏭👨‍💻
• Discusses environmental benefits of digital transformation, like reducing material movement through digital info flow. 🌳

Key Takeaways

• Desi Narayanan shares exciting insights into Lean Six Sigma with a sprinkle of digital transformation wizardry! 🌟
• Digital transformation? It's all about turning that physical info virtual for a streamlined tomorrow. 💻
• Customize tech for your biz, don't bend your biz for tech. Be the boss of your processes! 🚀
• Understand your processes deeply before jumping onto the tech bandwagon. It's like wearing socks before shoes! 🧦👟
• Digital changes can save bucks and boost quality, but don't let flashy marketing get ya! 🚫🛍️
• Interop with humans matters! Whether it's a cozy screen or handy tools for workers. 😊💡
• Sustainability alert! Digital flow means fewer cars and less paper. Earth thanks you! 🌍🌿

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Background The chapter introduces Desi, an experienced organizational transformation consultant, who is set to engage with participants in a digital transformation program. Desi has a broad background, having practiced in various industries, and will share insights with the new audience.
• 00:30 - 02:00: Lean Six Sigma and Process Improvement The chapter titled 'Lean Six Sigma and Process Improvement' introduces the concept of Lean Six Sigma, a systematic body of knowledge aimed at process improvement. It provides a basic definition of a process as any set of activities that transforms inputs into outputs. Examples such as baking a pie and handling accounts receivable are mentioned to illustrate processes. The chapter suggests that Lean Six Sigma is a widely recognized and researched methodology that can be looked up for more detailed information.
• 02:00 - 03:30: Digital Transformation Definition This chapter discusses the application of Lean Six Sigma principles in process improvement, particularly in the context of an accounting department. Lean Six Sigma involves breaking down activities into processes to analyze and enhance them. The speaker mentions their long-term experience in this field, highlighting their passion and enjoyment in continuing this work.
• 03:30 - 05:30: Lean Model vs Traditional Approach The chapter discusses digital transformation, emphasizing its importance in today's digital era. It begins by breaking down the term 'digital transformation,' noting that transformation generally involves taking something from its current state to a new one, akin to a process transformation.
• 07:00 - 10:00: Example of Digital Transformation Project The chapter titled 'Example of Digital Transformation Project' introduces the concept of digital transformation, emphasizing the transition towards an improved future state as compared to the current one. It clarifies that the term 'digital' pertains to the informational aspects of processes, particularly in the years 2021 and 2022. Thus, 'digital transformation' refers to altering the flow of information within a process where information and material flow collaboratively, setting the stage for discussing a specific example of such a project.
• 10:00 - 12:30: Main Challenges in Digital Transformation The chapter discusses the dual aspects of digital transformation: process and information. Using the analogy of driving a car, it highlights how digital transformation involves moving from one point to another (process) and making informed decisions based on available data (information). It emphasizes the shift from analog or physical information to electronic or virtual formats as a critical component of digital transformation.
• 15:00 - 18:00: Human Aspect of Digital Transformation This chapter delves into the 'Human Aspect of Digital Transformation,' emphasizing how digital transformation involves converting physical information into digital or virtual formats. It highlights the role of methodologies like lean six sigma in introducing efficient operations, thereby enhancing the advantages of a digitally transformed environment. Lean operations are underscored as crucial to maximizing the benefits provided by digital transformation, bridging the gap between physical and virtual realities.
• 19:00 - 22:00: Impact on Engineers The chapter discusses the impact of digital transformation on engineers, especially in organizations implementing lean models. It explores how digital transformation should be applied differently in lean organizations compared to traditional settings. Lean principles involve structuring, designing, and improving processes to achieve particular outcomes, and digital transformation in this context must align with those well-defined processes.
• 22:00 - 25:00: Impact on Shop-floor Employees The chapter discusses the impact of digital transformation on shop-floor employees. It highlights the interaction between employees and vendors, particularly those providing specialized information systems and information robots. The text explains that various technologies are available, and companies may need to adapt their processes to align with these technologies. The chapter also emphasizes the importance of applying lean process management to maintain a robust business model and process structure during such transformations.
• 26:00 - 31:00: Environmental Impact The chapter titled 'Environmental Impact' delves into the importance of adapting technology to fit existing processes rather than the other way around. It emphasizes the value of applying lean principles to enhance efficiency and reduce waste. Companies experienced in lean manufacturing understand their processes better and thus have an advantage in integrating new technologies effectively. This approach ensures that technology serves the process, leading to better outcomes and lower environmental impact.
• 31:00 - 39:00: Final Advice for Engineers The chapter discusses the importance of engineers understanding the strengths and weaknesses of their processes. Modern engineering practices involve leveraging technologies to improve processes, whereas more traditional companies that haven't adopted lean methodologies often try to transform their processes to fit their technologies. This approach may lead to inconsistent outcomes. The importance of consistency and appropriateness in process management is emphasized.

Desi Narayanan - Building Perspective Inc Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 desi thank you for taking the time to talk to me today and the people who will be participating in our digital transformation program um you're an experienced organizational transformation consultant uh you've practiced in many industries could you describe your background and what you do now for the people who will be watching
• 00:30 - 01:00 yeah i uh we practice i practice a body of knowledge called lean six sigma um a lot of people have heard about it you can do a web search on it and lean six sigma is a is a systematic body of knowledge dedicated to the improvement of processes so just a quick definition of process a process is basically any set of activities that you use to you know transform a set of inputs into output so baking a pie is a process you know doing your accounts receivable
• 01:00 - 01:30 in an accounting department is a process and building a wall is a process so as process improvement people we take lean six sigma principles and concepts and break down activities into processes so that we can analyze them and and hopefully improve them so that's what i've been doing for the last 20 25 years and it's it's still fun so i keep doing it and that's a good thing especially uh that it's still fun um so you're practicing lean six sigma
• 01:30 - 02:00 uh but you're also uh involved in organizations that are pursuing digital transformation uh so what does digital transformation mean to you and why do you think it's important today yeah digital transformation we can we can break that term up into digital and transformation so transformation like any transformation like a process transformation or any kind of transformation is taking something from its current state to its
• 02:00 - 02:30 future state um you know with the basic understanding that we think the future state is somehow better than that current state so that takes care of the word transformation when we use the word digital at least in 2021 2022 digital just refers to the informational side of of of processes so what we're saying by digital transformation is transforming the the informational component or the flow of information uh within a process because information and material actually flow together so as an example
• 02:30 - 03:00 if you're driving a car of course you're moving your car from one point to another point you know maybe to a set of roadways and highways so that's the process piece that's the material moving but you have to make decisions based on you know your your speed and the the maps that you're looking at and so that's the informational side um information can be in the form of analog or paper or physical things or as we tried to do today we try to move things um into an electronic or virtual
• 03:00 - 03:30 sort of environment for the advantages that they offer so put that together a digital transformation is basically taking the physicality of information and making it digital or virtual that's basically what a digital transformation is all about very clear and uh as you practice lean six sigma uh and you focus on the introduction of wing uh operations uh
• 03:30 - 04:00 how does that impact what you do with digital transformation uh you know how should digital transformation be applied in an organization that is using a lean model and how might you see that as being different from a more traditional approach well a company that's um applied lean principles they've already structured design and improve their process to processes to look in a particular way
• 04:00 - 04:30 so when they go through a digital transformation they start to interact with vendors you know they could be companies that are offering specialized information systems or information robots there's a variety of technologies out there sometimes they might work with these companies and be expected to sort of transform their processes into how those technologies work so if you've applied lean process management to your company you'll take a stronger stand for how your business model and how your process
• 04:30 - 05:00 works and you'll make sure to customize technology technology to fit your processes whereas if you haven't taken a hard look at your processes if you haven't applied you know lean principles you think you tend to adapt your process with the technologies that are being presented to you which is not necessarily a good thing and that's where lean companies are companies that have been exposed to lean manufacturing have a bit of a head start because they have a handle on how their processes are
• 05:00 - 05:30 they understand why their processes are good or why they're not good and so they're looking to leverage technologies to make their processes better rather than a traditional company that hasn't applied lean they're looking to transform their processes to support their technologies and then in that particular situation you get a mixed bag of results so so what you seem to be saying is that uh having consistency and uh you know appropriateness
• 05:30 - 06:00 of what you do with the technology with the processes that the organization uses is very important you seem to be saying with that that if there isn't that consistency then you could you would end up with a number of different changes in the organization that may or may not complement each other and in some cases may conflict with each other is that a correct understanding of what you're saying
• 06:00 - 06:30 yeah absolutely uh a good sort of um a visual to way to understand that is let's say your objective is to uh put the snail into a piece of uh wood right so you want to hammer a nail into a piece of wood so that's the process the process is to get the nail into the wood there's a bunch of different ways you can do that you can use a hammer or you can use some sort of automatic automated piece of equipment to do it and get it done very quickly now if you're if you're just finishing your basement or putting in the room in your
• 06:30 - 07:00 basement a hammer is sufficient to get the job done you know if you work for a builder and you're building a hundred different houses a hammer might be too slow you may need something more automated to get the same job done so if you have no sense of the process and the frequency of what you're doing you might just pick up an automated system to do that and use it once or twice and that's the wrong decision right so that's where understanding your process allows you to select the tool but at the end of the day it's still the same thing the process is to try to get
• 07:00 - 07:30 the hammer into the piece of wood but you're going to select a different technology based on you know based on context wonderful and so you've been involved in a number of digital transformation projects could you provide some examples uh of projects that you might have been involved in and the performance impact that they had yeah give an example so uh recently we finished a project with that with an
• 07:30 - 08:00 engineering company basically they they design and manufacture molds for the injection molding industry so there's a heavy engineering upfront component to it and of course there's expensive equipment that are required to actually make the molds so now they try to they would try to spend a lot of time in the engineering side of things to make sure that no mistakes happen in production but at the same time the more time that they spend in engineering
• 08:00 - 08:30 the more engineering labor is associated with that project and their margins go down so they need to really spend the right amount of time in engineering to ensure that production occurs properly without without any errors and they're not over engineering or under engineering any particular project so we have them select the right engineering tools the engineering design software tools to ensure that they could engineer their products with with reliability with with uh ease of use as well as um you know confidence that that
• 08:30 - 09:00 whatever engineering ideas that they had would come to fruition and so that reduced the amount of engineering time but improve the amount of quality and reduce the amount of defects and errors that are happening in production so that's an example where uh you know a digital transformation in the terms of in terms of software selection really made it an improvement to the overall company wonderful and that improvement as you described both reduced cost and improved quality
• 09:00 - 09:30 which if i'm not mistaken would be consistent with a lean approach to the application of technology absolutely in fact in fact even though we were invited into that project to select a a piece of software uh we put that aside the fir the first thing we did is to is to capture document to understand their processes where the defects were happening and then work our way backwards to what technology would support an improvement in those particular processes and you know when
• 09:30 - 10:00 you map out the process and talk to people then you start to see oh i get it the weak point is between uh engineering and production that's where that weak point is coming these are the root causes that are that are making that happen and then you can select software that actually you know works and yeah that's a great example where you know we improved the lives of engineers in particular um to make the company more efficient wonderful and so uh what do you see as the main challenges
• 10:00 - 10:30 that organizations face uh in their digital transformation and and and you know how might they uh address those uh i do you think sometimes the challenges that organizations face in digital transformation are maybe sometimes underestimated uh yeah i would say the biggest challenges is marketing i mean one of the things i've said in the past is marketing is the is the last ending religion you know so um
• 10:30 - 11:00 it's difficult for customers you know when you're in a particular industry you're part of a company you're running a company that's your expertise you're not necessarily a process expert or a technology expert you're an expert in your particular domain and many suppliers will come to you and say hey this is the best solution that's the best solution and everybody including myself needs to knows how to use the words of the day to sell you on things so i find even for myself the biggest challenge challenge
• 11:00 - 11:30 is to get past the salesperson the brochures and the marketing and to get to the core of what value that particular technology provides um and is that value useful for my company at this time that's the i i find that challenging i i i feel every supplier these days uh talks very similar whether you're selling an accounting software or consulting we seem to market ourselves like we're all changing the world well i looked
• 11:30 - 12:00 outside this morning and the world looked the same as yesterday so i i think that marketing layer is one of the most difficult challenges and that's why i encourage most people whether you use an external company or not to really take a deep look at your own processes to say like how does product actually flow how does value flow from my suppliers through my organization to my customers and you don't need to take a course and lean six sigma to do that i i always
• 12:00 - 12:30 encourage people to just try it out in their own particular ways and see what it looks like you'll get a lot of value from that so uh understanding the uh uh the use of the technology uh as being consistent with your own processes and making your selection based on that rather than on the marketing messages that you might hear is uh i think very good advice and absolutely
• 12:30 - 13:00 okay so for those who are involved in the operational activities of their organization whether as an engineer or as a manager of operations what do you see as their concerns about digitally based change and what do you think organizations should do to overcome those yeah that's a good that's a really good question so what happens is when you when a company goes through a digital transformation of of course we're looking at different
• 13:00 - 13:30 processes different databases different you know silos and buckets of information but there's a certain um it sometimes gets overlooked there's the interface where these technologies actually sort of interface with the operator with the engineer with the production worker with the operations manager and you know i there isn't a perfect term for that but i call that the digital ergonomics so digital ergonomics or uh if you're an engineer are you are you using a cad system do you use a mouse how do you have one
• 13:30 - 14:00 monitor or two monitors so there's a there's a digital interface by which you work and if you go through a digital transformation um you're gonna see that interface change uh maybe you're an operations manager in your tip and you're used to scheduling production uh with a schedule board that looks like a white board with cards and and and whiteboard markers that's a very typical situation in the manufacturing company and now you go through a digital um transformation you might be doing a very similar activity but it might happen on
• 14:00 - 14:30 a on your computer it might or it might happen on a on a screen somewhere so though it's the same activity um because you're the interface has changed quite a bit um it changes your psychology and comfort with it so what i always suggest is is to put those tools out um where they're meant to be used and also spend some time in an iterative way to kind of change what they look and feel like some people like to you know do everything on their laptop
• 14:30 - 15:00 some people like to do things in the open on a bigger on a bigger screen so allow some time and budget to customize how that digital uh interface looks like for people so that they can whatever they were doing really effectively and comfortably before they can do just as well if not better in the in the new digital future state that's that's what i would suggest so what what you are emphasizing there is the need for the technology uh to be uh suited to the individual and their
• 15:00 - 15:30 needs and concerns to be taken into account as part of the technology uh i guess the whole process of selecting the technology itself and then uh in the way that you introduce that uh that that you're taking these concerns into account 100 probably one of the most common examples is implementing like a field service solution where you're giving some technology or software to someone who's always out in
• 15:30 - 16:00 the field like in canada and in the four seasons that we have and imagine you have someone on a construction site and they need to enter information in the system and they got a smartphone and they got gloves on and a hat and they're trying to punch things into their tiny screen on their smartphone um so it may work from a powerpoint from a sort of perspective but you know in you know where the work is getting done that's that's not a good interface for that particular individual who's either in his car or on a site he's not in a
• 16:00 - 16:30 heated or enclosed workspace in his office or anything like that right so that's a that's an example where you got to design the interface that works for that person you know we're all human beings at the end of the day so yeah and and i assume that particularly in an industrial environment this is especially important it's important in an office environment uh certainly you know not not important there but in an industrial environment you have particular conditions
• 16:30 - 17:00 that you'll have to deal with uh on a regular basis absolutely absolutely and and also not force everyone if someone if someone is uh you know later on in their years they've gotten really proficient with a set of you know perhaps older technologies and sometimes you just gotta you know weigh the factors do i want to force everyone to go this technology and lose the interest of someone that's that talented or do i want to make some exceptions as well right
• 17:00 - 17:30 people think digital is a good thing digital isn't a good or bad thing it's just a tool that makes certain things more efficient sometimes and even efficiency is not necessarily a good thing i i used to live in a uh in a house a few years ago where i had a communal mailbox and that mailbox was a 15-minute walk and i used to drive home from work park my car and then walk 15 minutes in my mailbox and someone once told me why don't you just pick the pick up the mail on route and then you wouldn't have to do that walk and so i like the walk i like to see all the kids
• 17:30 - 18:00 and pet all the dogs and talk to my neighbors i i like that 15 minutes there and 15 minutes back so that's an example where i i want that part of my day to be not so efficient because it makes life better for me so there there's sort of a notion that making things efficient is a good thing i think efficiency and effectiveness uh need to be uh handled and controlled and tweaked to make life better for everyone and everyone in the company rather than you know applying a sort of morality to it like it's good or bad and this is
• 18:00 - 18:30 someone that's you know coming from an efficiency background so and but what you're describing is the need to effectively combine the technology with the human uh uh aspects and uh and of course you know if you do that that's going to be much more successful yeah there's there's nothing worse there's nothing more efficient than happy people so absolutely so um
• 18:30 - 19:00 talking about those people and considering uh particularly engineers uh how do you see their role being impacted by digital transformation you know what does it change the contribution they make to the organization uh and if it does what should they be doing to prepare for that yeah so i'm an engineer by background a mechanical engineer as well so um typically as an engineer we think in terms of you know specifications and standards and designs so we're using a
• 19:00 - 19:30 lot of information a lot of important technical information and most time most of the times we're thinking about um the value of that information so for example i might be preparing a layout drawing for a warehouse so in my mind as an engineer what's important is the actual layout but as we move into a digital era as we evolve in a digital era not only do we need to think about the actual layout but also the format that the layout is in so is
• 19:30 - 20:00 it on a piece of paper is it on plotter size paper is it in autocad what's the file format so in addition to the information that we're thinking about producing and working with we have to think about the format that it's presented in because formatting information also has an impact on how it gets transmitted and received so if i produce information on paper it can get received and transmitted in one way but if it's in a
• 20:00 - 20:30 digital form it can be received and transmitted in a different way so my recommendation for any engineers starting or working through their career is to understand the tools that they're currently using but also understand the digital counterparts of those same tools so if you're if you're a cad designer that works on paper start to get familiar with the digital tools that complement that um that that would be my recommendation is just to get familiar with the digital tools that are complementing your existing work
• 20:30 - 21:00 because you know like it or not they're going to come into your career at some point anyway so it's good to get familiar with them so what so the advice you're providing is that engineers should think first about the technology that is especially relevant to the role that they have today and learn more about it absolutely and you don't have to be an expert in every in every single technology but um if you understand their basic functions
• 21:00 - 21:30 and how they work in your particular industry i call that awareness level knowledge that awareness level knowledge goes a long way and then depending on where you work and what you do you may you may get deeper into a particular technology but having a framework of what those technologies are it's important understand spreadsheets databases different kinds of input tools that engineers typically use these are the things to become aware of and digital change and
• 21:30 - 22:00 shop floor employees uh people in non-managerial roles or non-professional roles in the organization uh can you talk about the impact that digital change has on them and and what organizations should be thinking about to manage that effectively yeah so what happens on the shop floor um digital transformation can have a positive and a negative impact for those on the floor one of the things it does is
• 22:00 - 22:30 a digital tool that gets introduced to them could be very very different than the tools that they're used to so if you're a person that has a lot of muscle memory around using your hands and building things and suddenly you're required to use a digital tool a piece of software that has a lot of bells and whistles that you're not used to using it kind of slows you down and what i have what i see happens to people is when they get slowed down they feel professionally compromised they feel that the quality and the efficiency of their work has gone down and depending
• 22:30 - 23:00 on who you are you may want to they may communicate it or what happens more often is um they hide that particular aspect because they see it as a weakness so what i what we typically do in digital transformations is um really give people the opportunity to and i use the word failure in a particular way but give everyone on the shop shop for an opportunity to fail so when when we introduce the technology onto the floor we don't tell them hey this is how this
• 23:00 - 23:30 works learn how to use this we tell them listen this technology does not work well we need your user input to make it work better so that puts them in charge it gives them the feeling that they're contributing to the to the system and they actually believe it or not it gives them really fantastic advice you know make this button bigger this should be in the top right not in the middle they they give you a fantastic advice right lots of things about the user interface so i wouldn't make the people on the floor
• 23:30 - 24:00 a problem but i would i would um use them as a as an opportunity to improve the ergonomic the ergonomic interface of the solution really and uh because those production stuff they're really the strength of the company right absolutely i know that you're committed to improving the environment that's an important part of this of your life so how do you think digital transformation can contribute to that
• 24:00 - 24:30 well digital transformation allows number one information to flow uh through so many different people without having material to flow so you don't have to send a letter on a guy on horseback to uh to another city you can send them an email you can send them a text so this kind of digital movement of information just puts less cars on the road simply that's number one right so there's a lot of work there's a lot of savings to the environment from from just moving of material around so
• 24:30 - 25:00 that's one big that's one big benefit and of course we're kind of i'm hoping that we're not printing off the things that we see in our screen and there's less use of paper and less use of you know um paper products in in the course of a digital transformation one thing people may not know is um as we start to move through as digital solutions many of those solutions are hosted in servers around the world right we call them cloud service and and so the number of servers that are being built and hosted around the world
• 25:00 - 25:30 is increasing those servers those servers consume electricity they create heat they need to be cooled down so as we move towards the digital world it is important to recognize the impact of you know hundreds of thousands if not millions of servers that are you know we call them server farms that are growing around the world in the impact that they have on the environment and there is an opportunity to you know to make that uh that technology more environmentally friendly as well so um yeah i'm always
• 25:30 - 26:00 looking for ways to see how we can be kinder to the earth i suppose uh as we should um so i i just have one final question and and it's a catch-all question if you like uh it's any further advice that you'd like to give uh engineers on successful uh digital transformation yeah i would i would definitely tell engineer any engineer i mean i'm going to say as an engineer if you're an
• 26:00 - 26:30 engineer you're already smart you know that's the that's the one thing i know about engineers so if you're smart you know that really work gets done through a process and no matter what anyone tells you and it doesn't matter which company or supplier or marketing brand tells you first understand the process how does this get once you understand how this gets done it's already going to point to the technology that you need to use and if you start with the technologies first
• 26:30 - 27:00 without a without a firm grasp of how the work gets done then what happens is you just fall into the same bucket as everybody else and as my father used to tell me when i was young if you see everybody going to the left you better go to the right because they're probably all wrong so you know forget the common message and and uh engineers can do this better than other others use your brain if it doesn't make logical sense you know if you can't deduce it from first principles if
• 27:00 - 27:30 someone tells you you're over your head then that's the wrong answer there are a few things in in life that are pretty difficult to understand quantum physics might be one of them but everything else in this world is subject to the laws of mathematics and physics to the laws of physics so if you're an engineer and you can't understand it something's wrong with it so i would i would advise engineers to to remember their training which is based on logic and you know systematic thinking and begin
• 27:30 - 28:00 with the process understand deeply how things get done and then select technologies if they're required to add to that process that would be my number one advice which i think is really great advice because i see way too often uh people looking at technology feeling an urgency to adopt new technologies and but not fully understanding their impact and making bad decisions as a result of that but feeling compelled to make those
• 28:00 - 28:30 decisions because they feel if they don't they'll be left behind or they will be damaged in some way and i i think uh you know your advice that people should take the time to understand things properly and not make decisions that they do not fully understand the consequences of uh is uh i think extremely important advice today and so a great note to end on uh thank thank you for doing this desi i
• 28:30 - 29:00 really appreciate it and i i know it will be valuable to the people who watch it peter was my pleasure and it's uh i'm always happy to work with you with the university uh folks and especially with engineers