Black Belts + Machine Learning Can Be a Powerful Combination

Manufacturing organizations learned some hard lessons over the last two years. Prior to the pandemic, digital transformation initiatives were conducted mostly as speculative and experimental. In 2018, $1.3 trillion was spent on digital initiatives globally, yet 70% was wasted. A lesson learned from the pandemic era is that the robustness and resiliency of operations need to be prioritized for digital initiatives. Digital initiatives prior to the pandemic were poorly structured activities, often performed without sufficient operations involvement. These initiatives introduced some machine-learning-based solutions, but they were unfocused, with little payoff. What has become clear is that machine-learning systems cannot be used in isolation from operational teams if we are to solve important labor market and utilization challenges.