Ep 3: 3DLean on the Cloud/Vision

00:09 Therese Snow 

Hi, I'm Therese Snow, and I'm your host for Global Operations on the Go. Today I'm speaking with Guillaume Vendroux, Chief Executive Officer at DELMIA. Guillaume joined Dassault Systèmes four years ago. He has an extensive engineering background and a PhD in aeronautics, and is passionate about supporting all industries navigate the digital revolution. Guillaume will share with us the vision and purpose of 3DLean,

00:35 Guillaume Vendroux 

Thank you for having me.

00:37 Therese Snow 

Could you give us a short explanation of what lean is and why that should be a priority for organizations today.

Lean as an Attitude and Philosophy

00:43 Guillaume Vendroux 

Lean is an attitude. Lean is a philosophy that should drive everyone’s professional life. This is an attitude in which you put your customer first – whether that is an external customer or an internal customer. This is this attitude by which you consider that your job is to serve, you know, the downstream customer that you have, and to be able to deliver to him the service that you owe him as well as you can. Customer first is there, one of the four pillars of lean. Second pillar, and to me actually, probably one of the most important, is people. In lean, people are first. People are the most important value in the company, and in the job we have to do. And so with that philosophy of serving our customer, we must empower the people, the teams, to do their job as efficiently as possible. Third, pillar or attitude in lean is the fact of never accepting status quo.

Never consider that we've done the job perfectly. And always try to think of the way we can serve better the customer, and in which we can facilitate better the work of the team. It's a mindset. Again, I was talking about attitude, this is an attitude. We usually translate that or refer to that attitude by the word Kaizen, which is a Japanese word. And sometimes people make the mistake of just translating that by continuous improvement. It's true, that it is continuous improvement. But it's continuous improvement by refusing or accepting the fact that we have found the proper way of working. And finally, lean is about facts. It's about real data. It's about real places and real people. It's fact based, it's anchored in reality. This is what is called the Gemba in Japanese. It's extremely critical, as it forces every one of us always to talk about things we see and know and we can experience to be sure that we're going to draw the good conclusions.

So you see, lean goes just beyond a simple exercise of practice in a professional environment. So you see, lean goes much beyond being just a professional practice. It's an attitude. It's a way of working. And it is the reason why it's so important to organization, because it does define one of the, I would say, philosophy or attitude of a given company, approaching the everyday professional life. If you think about it, and if you think about the context in which we are now evolving around all the focus on sustainability, you will realize that the four attitudes, or the four pillar of lean, actually does really cover exactly what sustainability is all about. It's about people, it's about planet by focusing on the just necessary to totally fulfill the customer, and obviously, as it will relate to efficiency and ability to eliminate all waste, it will also relate to the profit side of sustainability. And so that’s the reason why today lean is very much on the top of the agenda of all companies because at the end of the day, lean is green.

04:20 Therese Snow 

Absolutely, and Guillaume, you had mentioned philosophy. So, what is the philosophy behind DELMIA 3DLean exactly?

The Virtual World Extended the Real One with 3DLean

04:28 Guillaume Vendroux 

In Dassault Systèmes, we believe that the virtual world extends the real one. And using that belief and looking at lean practices, we actually got to the same conclusion, and again, in the lean spirit of challenging the status quo. You know, if you go to shop floors, where lean is in a lot of cases very present, how do you see lean practices on shop floor? Well, I mean, you see the, you know, the tip of the iceberg. You see the visual management, and the results of some of those lean workshops and usually, well, usually it's not quite updated. Usually, it's full of paper everywhere. And even though, you know, the philosophy is really good, sometimes you feel that the way of actually managing lean is really now a little outdated and that the virtual world could indeed help a lot in still and continuing improving those practices. The idea behind 3DLean is to use the virtual world to support a better lean, to extend the scope of lean by reaching, you know, broader audiences, broader locations, broader organizations, and empowering those people by accessing real-world data in a more efficient manner through the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. So 3DLean, by making available a lean environment on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, at least it is our conviction, is extending lean in exactly the Kaizen way that lean is promoting.

06:00 Therese Snow 

What are some of the challenges that prevent organizations from adopting lean?

06:05 Guillaume Vendroux 

Well, you know, in a lot of companies, the boss or the engineers know better, right. And so, sometimes in a lot of companies, we forget the power of the collective intelligence of teams, the agility of teams and their ability to solve and be efficient together. So, this is one of the main problems that lean encounters is to put, again, people and teams at the core of what the company is doing, and trusting those people and teams to be able to answer or to meet whatever challenge come to them. That's the first point. The second thing, and again, which is absolutely critical, is the fact that we have a tendency to take shortcuts and to forget about real-world data and real-world evidence. And therefore, to buy us our answers to the challenge we have, by using rather our emotions that are, I would say, our rational approach. So again, this is at the core of what the 3DEXPERIENCE is doing, by providing us, based on real-world data, real-world evidence, on which we can base our decision. And so, if we can counter those two shortcuts, forgetting about the people and the team and forgetting about the real world, we should be able to convince every normal organization to adopt lean extremely broadly.

07:36 Therese Snow 

How does DELMIA 3DLean overcome these challenges?

The 3DExperience Platform Enhancing Lean Practices

07:41 Guillaume Vendroux 

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform and 3DLean will actually enhance lean practices and make those practices much more available to all types of professional organizations. It will allow to enlarge or make more accessible the Gemba, the shop floor, the real world. Because obviously, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform will be the repository content, where we gather all the contents characterizing what happens in the real world and that real world will therefore be accessible to a broader audience. And again, making the real data available and bringing people to have access to those data, as we discussed just previously, is some of the main showstoppers that we see in adoption of lean. So 3DEXPERIENCE platform, 3DLean as a facilitator of adoption of lean practices all across.

09:02 Therese Snow 

Where do organizations see value and what does best-in-class lean look like?

09:07 Guillaume Vendroux 

Lean and lean practices, and in particular, the usage of 3DLean on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, will first provide a very strong focus. Again, by using lean practice, you put the customer at the center of everything you do. It gives you a purpose, it gives you a focus, it gives you a reason to do everything that you have to do. Second, lean is about team engagement. So, by using lean practices, by using 3DLean with the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, you will guarantee that engagement, you will guarantee the fact that those teams will be empowered to take the decision that they need to take and therefore be more productive than ever before.

Third, you know if your operation is based on a number of teams using lean practices and interacting among, you know, in between themselves using again, lean philosophy, obviously globally, your operations will be way more efficient. And finally, because at the core of lean is the team intelligence and team capitalization, you will grow. You will grow the knowledge of your company, you will grow the know-how of your company, you will capitalize on that knowledge and know-how, and this will be the source, the durable source, of continuous improvement. Team engagement, empowerment and productivity, operation efficiency, capitalization through continuous improvement, and standardization – those are the three key values that 3DLean on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform will provide all our clients.

10:39 Therese Snow 

Where do you see the future of DELMIA 3DLean?

10:44 Guillaume Vendroux 

The future of 3DLean, on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform? This is lean without limits. This is the ability to extend the scope and reach of lean practices all across, to new populations, new organizations, which were not exposed to lean practices and will benefit from the productivity, the efficiency, the value that lean is providing. And extending the lean principles to different areas of the company will also allow all those populations, all those new organizations, to invent new ways of working and find sources of productivity and efficiency in the future. So the 3DEXPERIENCE platform will allow the, I would say, democratic creation of lean practices all across.

11:32 Therese Snow 

What does DELMIA recommend for organizations that are interested in learning more?

DELMIA Communities Provide Additional Support

11:37 Guillaume Vendroux 

Oh, come and see us in our communities. We have several, and in particular the collaborative management communities. Come and visit our website 3ds.com. Check on the internet, because we are doing regular events and information webinars in which we can expose you to what 3DLean, 3DEXPERIENCE platform can provide as value for you. And this is the best way to experience yourself 3DLean and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

12:04 Therese Snow 

Thank you Guillaume. Our listeners can find additional details on our DELMIA YouTube channel where this airs as well as our DELMIA blog. Thank you for listening to Global Operations on the Go.

12:16 Guillaume Vendroux 

Thank you, Therese. And thank you for taking the time to discuss DELMIA 3DLean and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Thank you very much.