Michel Baudin is an engineer, author, and consultant who graduated from Mines-ParisTech, in France, in 1977. His career has taken him to Japan, Germany, and finally to the US, where he lives in Palo Alto, California with his wife. He has consulted for numerous leading companies all over the world. In his practice, he supplements direct observation on the shop floor and stakeholder interviews with data mining on clients' information systems, often identifying previously unknown patterns in product demand or manufacturing operations, leading to specific advice on both management and technology.

In addition to in-house courses for clients, Michel has taught in continuing education for UC Berkeley, the University of Dayton, the Hong Kong Productivity Council, the University of Buckingham, and training companies in multiple countries. He is also a prolific writer and has authored four books for manufacturing practitioners: Manufacturing Systems Analysis (1990), Lean Assembly (2002), Lean Logistics (2005), and Working with Machines (2007). He blogs at [...]

Torbjørn Netland is Chair of Production and Operations Management at ETH Zurich in Switzerland ([...] and a cofounder of EthonAI, a startup that develops AI solutions for quality management in manufacturing. He graduated from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway, in 2006, and holds a doctorate from the same institution (2013). He has been a Fulbright visiting research fellow at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, a visiting scholar at Cambridge University's Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), and a Research Manager in SINTEF.

Torbjørn is currently a Member of the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Advanced Manufacturing and Value Chains, and a Fellow of the European Academy for Industrial Management (AIM). He has published papers in Management Science, Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, International Journal of Production Research, and MIT Sloan Management Review, among others. He is the recipient of two Shingo Research Awards and numerous teaching awards. He blogs at [...]

A Guided Tour

Getting to Know Manufacturing

1. About Manufacturing

2. Manufacturing Strategy

3. Serving Market Demand

Engineering the Factory

4. Process Design

5. Assembly

6. Automation

7. Layout

Making Information Flow

8. IT and OT in Manufacturing

9. Planning and Control

10. Master Data Management

Managing Flows of Materials

11. Internal Logistics

12. External Logistics

13. Warehouse Management

14. Supply Chain Management

Enhancing Performance

15. Managing Performance

16. Improving Performance

17. Improving Quality

18. Maintenance