It’s all about data, it’s all about lean!
Technology enlivens our otherwise mundane lives! With everyday advancements in technology, there are infinite number of things to learn about. With technical websites and journals publishing so much about all the new things going around, it is hard to figure out what to focus on. I thought of summoning up buzzwords that aspirants of technology never fail to use today. Here are 2 things that have been with us since a long time. However, according to me, at this point of time, they are transforming themselves into pivotal shapers of the modern world. We can definitely add an endless number of components to this list; however, I think these stand at the forefront of revolutionizing the modern world.
Data
Data is like oxygen. We need oxygen to keep us alive. In a similar fashion, technology runs on data. I thought of a dialogue ‘I am everywhere’ from the French-American science fiction film Lucy. Similarly, Data is literally everywhere! Data on a personal level, data for a segment of a society, geographical data, data generated by population affected by a pandemic like COVID 19, data generated by non-living things (machines, factory floor equipment, air crafts, automobiles) and so on! A smart watch counting the number of steps that we ran, our preference of products at a grocery store, medical records at our family-physician, academic history of a graduate student, performance record of a University, our credit card payment history, literally everything from A to Z is data! If we were to make a list of everything that generates data, the list might have a potential to outnumber the words in an English dictionary!
We all experienced how data is shaping the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. It became the need of the hour to track the number people who were affected, the number of newly emerging cases, number of deaths, number of people who recovered, etc. I think, this pandemic that caused a downfall as it came sliding down like an avalanche was also responsible for attracting more individuals to the world of data analysis. With work from home policies and job hunt on the go, people resorted to online learning. People became keen on tracking the status of the pandemic and were unknowingly introduced to the world of data. I personally got pulled to the big world of big data and my interest in data analysis and visualization engendered. (Check out my first attempt at data visualization here: https://public.tableau.com/profile/radhika.date)
With that said, today, the world expects us to get ourselves familiarized with these buzzwords: Industry 4.0 (comprises of not only Internet of things but also connected enterprise, smart manufacturing and smart factories), descriptive data analysis (understanding the what, when, why and how of data), predictive data analysis (extrapolating the content that we don’t have from what we have), prescriptive data analysis (suggesting a course of action to remedy problems that have surfaced from the earlier two types of analysis), data cleaning (removing wrong and incomplete data), data mining/exploration (finding interesting elements from data), data presentation (includes data visualization), big data (literally means enormous amounts of data generated from everything), data science, digital transformation (applied and generalized artificial intelligence and machine learning)
Indeed, modern times are witnessing innumerable digital footprints/digital trails as people are performing digital actions. This is truly a digital era.
Lean
Like Windows and Linux, Lean is an operating system that is adopted by companies all large and small. The best part about lean is that it equally suits a common man with common everyday activities as it suits factory floors and production lines! There is abundant literature and information on the Internet clarifying what lean is and explaining the difference between lean manufacturing and lean startup. Even though there is an overwhelming amount of data on lean, I would define lean to a common man with the following set of words: Lean is a method of performing activities (literally anything from using a pin to building a plane) better than what one is currently doing. (After all, there is always a chance for ‘better’)
Lean is a cluster of these action verbs: reduction of waste, unevenness and overburden, use of visual tools, continuous improvement, continuous self-development, personal involvement in problem solving by going at the source of the problem and innovation. Tracing the roots of lean take us back to Toyota’s magic spell (Toyota Production System)and how the world of production and manufacturing was set on the path of transformation due to it. Back then, lean was only used with respect to manufacturing. Eventually, lean found its way not only on factory floors and production plants, but in the service sector(healthcare and hospitals) and as an operating system for companies all large and small.
At a first glance, data and lean appear to be two polarities. However, along with ‘data’, ‘lean’ was my second choice as the shaper of the modern world because with such huge amounts of data we need lean methods to analyze it. Quintillion bytes of data is generated every day. Without proper analytical techniques and without a procedure to present data to the world, it is practically of no use. I believe that lean is applicable to everyday chores from breakfast to big data, from cleaning the house to computing, from planning a party to programming and so on. I think by adopting lean in data analysis and data presentation, big data will help us scale bigger heights!
