Roberto Delgado: "mlean empowers all factory teams to achieve their goals"

mlean was born with the aim of hybridising human skills, technology and sustainability in the factory environment. Its CEO, Roberto Delgado Marcos, explains the projection of this approach in sectors such as the automotive industry.

AutoRevista - What is mlean's track record as a supplier to the automotive industry and what challenges does it help its customers face in operations in full transformation with electrification, digitisation and sustainability?

Roberto Delgado Marcos.- mlean was born in Castilla y León, one of the most important automotive industrial centres in Spain. This has greatly marked our growth as a company and as a benchmark supplier in the sector. Today we have more than 400 factories in 34 countries that use our solutions on a daily basis. 

The key for us lies in understanding our customers' problems. Global uncertainty is here to stay, and if we add to that the fact that vehicles are becoming more and more customised and that we have fewer financial and human resources, the need to get it right the first time is the common goal we have with our customers. 

This makes our factories economically sustainable and also respectful of the world we live in, using only the right and necessary resources.

AR.- How does mlean work to hybridise digital tools with the commitment and talent of people to improve process efficiency?

R.D.M.- Our vision has always been clear: to transform factories into sustainable environments where people can develop their capabilities. 

People in factories are the key to improvement. A factory without people is a factory without the capacity to innovate and improve. 

Faced with the complexity described above, we can only survive if we are able to get each and every person in the organisation to put their efforts in the right direction. 

However, defining a strategy is the "easy" part. The hard part is executing it. Workers need to be as autonomous as possible to make the right decisions at the right time to achieve safety, quality, cost and schedule objectives. 

mlean, with its standardisation tools, action plans, problem solving, daily meetings and audits (among others), empowers all factory teams to achieve their goals, fostering collaboration between departments and avoiding non-value-added tasks derived from the traditional "paper" implementation of a production system.

AR.- What steps should a company take to deploy a continuous improvement tool and what challenges are involved in the transition from analogue to digital?

R.D.M.- I believe that there are a series of prior steps before implementing any continuous improvement tool or initiative. The first is to define a medium/long-term strategic plan and to know where we want to get to. This will allow us to set demanding, realistic and, above all, measurable objectives.

In addition, the type of leadership is key. The leadership/management must be committed from minute one; they must set an example and contribute to generating an environment that fosters collaboration between people. 

Finally, there must be an assumption of responsibility by each and every person in the organisation. From there, prioritise which digital improvement tool best suits the needs of your organisation and start an incremental roll-out at all levels.

AR.- What are the strategic objectives that mlean sets itself when it comes to responding to the needs of automotive companies in terms of continuous improvement and appropriate decision-making?

R.D.M.- During these almost 9 years, we have been developing tools that in one way or another have replicated the improvement processes that, in a traditional way, have been implemented using paper, spreadsheets and physical communication panels.

All this information that has been generated, which is the know-how of all the people in the organisation, has been underused because it has never been organised and there were no tools to process and analyse it. 

Thanks to our software, which is the most complete on the market, all this information at factory or group level is available in a single place. And developing the full potential of all this knowledge is mlean's new challenge. 

We are applying artificial intelligence to make the most of this information and help people make more accurate, faster and even more autonomous decisions.

Lea esta entrevista en castellano 

Interview published in AutoRevista 2.385