Ep 7: 3D Lean/How it Works

00:14 Therese Snow 

Hi, and welcome to our DELMIA podcast, Global Operations on the Go. I'm your host Therese Snow. Today we're discussing 3DLean, how it works, in part two of our series on lean without limits. I'm speaking with Adrian Wood, Director of Strategic Business Development at Dassault Systèmes, DELMIA. Adrian, welcome.

00:34 Adrian Wood 

Alright. Thanks for having me, Therese.

00:37 Therese Snow 

Oh, absolutely, Adrian. So, let's get started. In today's work environment, many teams work separately in their own silo, if you will, leaving a strain. Can you please discuss some of these challenges?

How Lean Helps when Teams are Disconnected

00:51 Adrian Wood 

Sure. So, you know, I think we all agree that teams are the lifeblood of our organizations. It's not about just material and resources and machines. You know, teams are where, you know, really things come to life, and we start to achieve some of those business goals we're aiming for. And I think teams today have a number of challenges that they need to address. And some of those include being psychologically or actually physically disconnected. And I think this has even made more so of a challenge in today's environment with the pandemic that we're all facing. So, sometimes difficult for just teams to connect. And sometimes when teams do connect, there's a lack of structure, and so we are all used to getting on Skype calls or Zoom meetings.

But when we get there, you know, there's actually sometimes a lack of structure and discipline in the way we need to actually address some of the operational challenges that we have or find solutions to the problems and so on. And some of that problem solving behavior is actually related to the third challenge, which is the sort of lack of behavior or wrong behavior in teams, so. We're not all lucky enough to be Six Sigma Black Belts in terms of lean operations, and so on. And so, when teams come together, sometimes they just don't have the learned behaviors, which would benefit them to find operational improvements, and problem solving. And then, of course, there are some other challenges related to the fact that teams today just have to deal with a lot of data and information. There's an overwhelming amount of information coming from our production, manufacturing processes, our operational environments.

And so, sometimes it's challenging just to sort of sift through some of the information and find information out of the data. Also, some environments and teams we see are a part of a, more of a top-down organizational culture. And that's not necessarily a wrong environment to be in, it just doesn't always allow teams to work autonomously if they're always being told what to do, and they have to sort of follow the strict organizational guidelines. And then finally, if we are to provide tools and help to teams, it has to be done very simply. Teams hate complexity. And I know that, for example, you and I are probably in that same boat of dealing with lots of different technology and applications. And if we are to use additional tools, then they have to be really, really simple to use for teams to adopt more effectively. So, lots of different challenges that teams face in terms of trying to help organizations reach their corporate goals, and again, made somewhat worse today by the Coronavirus impact.

03:13 Therese Snow 

Oh, absolutely.

So Adrian, how does 3DLean help organizations overcome these challenges?

Recognizing 3 Core Tenants and how 3D Lean Addresses them

03:28 Adrian Wood 

And looking at the challenges, there were sort of three core tenants that we thought about in terms of how 3DLean helps address some of the challenges, represented by three key words. Engage – how do we engage teams in better ways. Reveal – how do we reveal information and the art of the possible. And then improve – how do we help them improve overall. So, those are the three key sort of architect pieces, foundational elements of 3DLean – engage, reveal and improve.

03:55 Therese Snow 

Alright, so can you expand on these please starting with engage.

The Next Workforce Generation

04:00 Adrian Wood 

So, engage is all about helping the next generation of workforce work better together, regardless of where or how they work. And again, not many teams are sort of able to work in person, we're all working in a distributed virtual world these days. So, regardless of where people work, how they work, engage is all about bringing them together in effective ways, leveraging a usable modern environment and pairing teams to work autonomously together. So again, it's going beyond just a simple Zoom or Skype meeting. It’s providing them an environment where they can come together and truly collaborate effectively by working together in a structured environment.

04:39 Therese Snow 

All right, so what exactly is meant by reveal and how can you visualize this in 3D content?

04:46 Adrian Wood 

Yep. So this goes back to one of the challenges we spoke about just a moment ago in terms of teams having too much data, or you know, excess of data to try and figure out what the solutions to problems are or even being able to uncover problems. And so, reveal is about making sense of the information and surfacing the information in ways that, you know, teams can actually get to grips with. So, in a 3D context, that often helps as well. You know, the famous phrase is a picture's worth 1000 words. And so, teams typically have to solve problems and make decisions very rapidly using lots of information. If we can present some of that information to them in context, if we can present some of that information in terms of, you know, a 3D diagram, or layout of the facility, a picture of the workstation, the material or the assembly that they're working on, that really provides teams, you know, a simpler method to sort of understand what the possible root cause might be, what some of the challenges might be in the environment, the layout, the machinery, or the resources that they're working with, and allow them to make better use of their time and structure the environment to allow them to reveal what the art of the possible is. So, it's not always about three dimensional data. It's about pulling out key performance indicators, metrics, what matters most right at that particular time in that context of the meeting. But certainly three dimensional data provides a way to surface that information. Again, it's about allowing teams to come together, look at information in different ways, look at three dimensional information, reveal what might be the art of the possible, and allow them to take action and guidance from that.

06:14 Therese Snow 

Okay, excellent. And improve. Improve is something every organization continually strives for, I'm sure. What do you mean by improve as it relates to lean?

Improvement and Lean Methodologies

06:25 Adrian Wood 

Yeah, so it's all about improvement and lean methodologies, and lean principles are great tools and philosophies that companies can adopt, in order to make continuous improvement every day. It's about eliminating waste, it's about driving efficiency. I won't be able to get in all the great principles and philosophies of lean in this particular call. But for us, you know, that's part and parcel of the DNA of DELMIA 3DLean. It's about bringing together the team and it's about providing them some of the structure and methods that they can use to implement some of this lean methodology. And it's a bit different from a traditional sort of Big Bang project. So, if you have a Kaizen, you know, a continuous improvement event that's part of an internal project, that's great, it provides a significant impact in terms of a one-time event that might drive some efficiency.

But that's not really, you know, what we're about with DELMIA 3DLean. We're about providing the ability, the tools, the environment for teams to be improving every day in every meeting in incremental ways. And I think that's the big difference in the way we look at improving versus a big third-party consultant event or project that might take a lot of time and effort, and gives them benefit in a one-time event but not be ongoing. We want teams to work together more effectively, we want to provide them a structure that guides some of this lean behavior, lean thinking. And in fact, we want to make lean thinking, you know, a natural behavior teams and make it part of the business culture, because that's where you really start to think at some scale in terms of the benefits from teams all across the organization working just that little bit better each day, being more efficient, reducing waste and driving improvement across the organization.

08:13 Therese Snow 

What industries and departments can benefit from lean?

How Manufacturing and Operations Look at 3D Lean

08:17 Adrian Wood 

I think the use cases for 3DLean are almost unlimited in many ways. So, we look at it first just from an industry point of view. I think there's some sweet spots for DELMIA 3DLean, certainly where lean originated from, for example, in the transportation industry, automotive, aerospace and defense and so on. But really, those philosophies and principles can be applied to almost any industry – every industry has an opportunity to work more efficiently. And so, I think that from an industry point of view, that there's very little from an industry point of view where 3DLean could not be of advantage. And then within those industries, if you look at the departments within an organization, so again, I think there's some core sweet spots for 3DLean, like manufacturing and operations, the principles and philosophies could be applied to every team.

You know, we as a company at Dassault Systèmes and DELMIA use 3DLean every day to help make our business more efficient internally and to drive structure and improvement in the way we hold our meetings. And you know, we are a technology provider. So, from a department point of view, manufacturing operations, certainly, but executive teams, strategy teams, supply chain organization teams and so on. All of these stakeholders and teams could find benefit from 3DLean. So, although manufacturing operations and traditional industries are the sort of sweet spot, I think no one should constrain their thinking by that. And we often find that customers, you know, find different use cases that we never thought of for using DELMIA 3DLean, to help find ways to find, to make team members feel more involved in meetings, to give a positive impact on daily tasks, find additional issues and how to solve them and drive, you know, productivity improvements and time savings across all parts of the organization, across all different sorts of industries.

09:59 Therese Snow 

Alright. So lastly, how can our podcast listeners learn more about lean without limits?

10:05 Adrian Wood 

Well, we've got a lot of different videos and blogs and other content that our listeners could go find out about. You can find those at our website, 3ds.com/DELMIA. You can also join the DELMIA collaborative operations community, you can find that link on our website as well. That's an excellent opportunity for you to join both internal experts that we have, but also peers in industry and across organizations that are talking about lean philosophies, lean principles, and using DELMIA 3DLean as well. So, it's a great way to immerse yourself in an active and growing community. We also invite you to take part in what we call the first experience demo challenge. And that's an opportunity to actually experience and use 3DLean for yourself. So, let us know, we'll invite you to join a 3DEXPERIENCE application. It's something that you can use to experience 3DLean. We'll give you a guided tour and then you can go in and try it for yourself. It's an excellent opportunity to experience 3DLean in a unique and different way. And we also have some webinars and replays that we've done, you can find links to those on our website as well.

11:14 Therese Snow 

Okay, great. Appreciate the information, Adrian, and thank you for listening to Global Operations on the Go.