The conversation in the boardrooms of manufacturing companies is shifting silently but dramatically. Today, the debate is no longer only about the efficiency of production lines on the factory floor, but also, about the necessity of digitizing operations to ensure survival in the market.
The fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) has led to the emergence of the smart factory; a concept where artificial intelligence (AI), the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and real-time integrated data platforms drive core operations. As a result, Industry 4.0 is enhancing efficiency, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness.
Leading the digital transformation in modern factories across the globe is a visionary, Lesia Yanytska. As Chief Product Manager at Luxoft, a global software market leader, Lesia exemplifies the standard of visionary leadership and technical expertise needed to re-imagine the factory of the future.
Her philosophy is rooted in the belief that technology should amplify rather than replace human expertise. Lesia explains,
“There is a quiet shift in modern factories, one driven by data and AI. We are moving to a future where human expertise is augmented by AI systems.”
Lesia is far from the ordinary technical leader in the manufacturing industry as demonstrated by domain expertise and various certifications under her belt.
She is a certified Professional Scrum Product Owner™ and Scaled Agile Framework Product Owner/Product Manager. Currently, Lesia is also deepening her expertise through the Chief Product Officer (CPO) program in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
“These certifications are not just papers. They allow me to lead confidently, bring value to teams, and improve the products we develop.” Lesia says.
Yanytska believes that the transformation of today’s modern smart factory requires leadership that understands the language of the manufacturing industry and the urgency of infusing the capabilities of modern computing.
One of Yanytska’s notable achievements is developing a smart Manufacturing Execution System (MES) suite from scratch for one of the biggest worldwide manufacturers.
“Developing an MES from the ground-up was a massive undertaking requiring forward-thinking visionary leadership, team effort, and deep domain expertise.”
As team leader, Yanytska’s leadership involves overseeing a cross-functional team effort spanning five core products that are now deployed across factories in the U.S., India, Mexico, and Europe.
Each of the dynamic teams focuses on key domains within the MES landscape – core production management, inventory management, quality control, and sophisticated equipment efficiency monitoring including the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).
Lesia describes the team’s vision as digitizing industrial operations by making data actionable, automation intelligent, and decisions instant. To achieve this, she coordinates cross-functional teams comprising engineers, designers, C-suite executives, and factory operators.
The impact of the MES is most visible in its innovative capabilities. First, factory frontline workers, including those without technical expertise in SQL, can use AI co-pilots to query complex manufacturing data from the MES using natural language.
“Imagine asking the system to show you the output in production line 4 and a visual report is generated in seconds.” She says.
The MES also uses machine learning (ML) to track the flow of materials and inventory within the factory with high precision. This has brought about a reduction in production costs up to 15% as ML algorithms identify inefficiencies in real-time.
Intuitive visual dashboards and report builders are the third innovative feature of the MES. Automated report generation using visual dashboards has seen a reduction in manual reporting by approximately 50%, freeing up the frontline workers to focus on strategic initiatives.
The MES is also integrated with data lakes, edge computing, and sensors (IIoT devices) which ensure large-scale data can be processed in real-time and generate significant intelligence capabilities.
The MES innovation by Lesia and her team demonstrates how AI is transforming modern smart factories. Real-time data processing is improving the speed of decision-making and problem resolution.
A global manufacturer reported that the time spent in quality investigations plummeted by 30% after implementing the traceability solutions in Lesia’s MES.
Automated report generation using intuitive dashboards and AI copilots based on natural language processing is also saving time and leading to a culture of continuous improvements.
“Having access to real-time performance data is allowing factories to shift silently from spending time creating and interpreting static reports to more time looking forward to improving processes.”
MES innovation is increasingly ushering us to the factory of the future where operations are autonomous, analytics democratized, and human ingenuity augmented by intelligent systems.
Lesia’s journey from a Business Analyst to a Chief Product Manager is both inspirational and is a testament to the changing face of tech leadership in the modern manufacturing industry.
However, rising as a trailblazer in a sector highly dominated by male leadership was not without its fair share of troubles.
“Earlier in my career, I had to repeatedly prove my expertise in ways male colleagues were not required to because of the skepticism regarding my technical abilities.” She explains.
Lesia’s challenges illuminate the struggles that many women face in the tech industry and the lack of female mentorship in this space.
Beyond her work as a Chief Product Manager at Luxoft, Lesia is a powerful advocate for other women to join the tech leadership and product development spaces.
She is also vocal in encouraging and mentoring the youth in the tech space such as the Technovation Challenge where Lesia is a judge for a girls’ hackathon. Her leadership achievements are an inspiration for other girls and female leaders.
While the dream of the fully autonomous factory is yet to be achieved, the success of the MES lays an important foundation and opens the door for the next wave of innovation.
Lesia’s phenomenal work in building sophisticated MES platforms from the ground up and embedding them with AI co-pilots and intelligence analytics is just one example.
Her work shows what is possible when women are empowered in tech product leadership within the manufacturing industry.