Sep 17, 2026
Smart Manufacturing Mindset™: Unlock Efficiency with Digital Lean
This month’s discussion focuses on Digital Lean, where our panelists share how digitizing Smart Manufacturing data can accelerate efficiencies and process improvements.
Top 5 Takeaways
- Lean is focused on increasing value by reducing waste. Digital Lean accelerates optimization at the point of which traditional Lean principles intersect with IoT and digital technologies.
- Data digitization is only one step in the process of driving efficiency. Organizational culture and behaviors will need to change in order to capture bigger, better improvements.
- All good things come with challenges. Get the right teams involved early in the process to define what success looks like and identify what needs to be done. Stay the course and communicate early and often.
- Digital Lean metrics play a huge role in driving behaviors. Work backwards from your business strategy and goals to find meaningful, customer-centric attributes to report on.
- A key to success is building your roadmap. If you need help, take a look at the toolset from CESMII to get you started on your Smart Manufacturing journey.
Our panelists:
- Tim Stuart, President @ Visual Decisions Inc
- Anthony Kanoff, Process Excellence Manager @ Phoenix Contact
- Conrad Leiva, VP of Workforce & Ecosystem @ CESMII
- Mike Yost, Host
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About CESMII
CESMII – the Smart Manufacturing Institute – has a total current investment commitment of $201M from Department of Energy funding and public/private partnership contributions, with a mandate to create a more competitive manufacturing environment in the US through advanced sensing, analytics, modeling, control, and platforms. CESMII is one of 17 Manufacturing USA institutes on this mission to increase manufacturing productivity, global competitiveness, and reinvestment by increasing energy productivity, improving economic performance and raising workforce capacity. University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) is the program and administrative home of CESMII. For more information about CESMII, its history and Smart Manufacturing, visit cesmii.org.
