Neon Genesis Evangelion. If there’s any piece of media that I absolutely love but would not recommend to anyone then that is Evangelion. Please understand that this is not a breakdown, review or analysis of the show. This is just how I feel about the show and what it means to me.

When I first watched the show in my childhood I was a happy kid running around school and I thought it was just another anime show that’s famous. And that’s mostly why I watched it back then, because it was famous. It was a show that had giant robots with kids piloting them fighting monsters and as soon as the show entered its darker episodes I stopped watching it because frankly, I did not understand it.

But things changed when I entered watched the show again in my late teens. I was a sad, angry teenager who was constantly feeling like the world around him was crumbling down. I constantly cried about people not caring enough and being left alone fighting imaginary battles with expectations set by others. The most minuscule movements of my body used to feel like I was lifting something thousand times heavier than me and the most basic tasks felt like a burden. I felt like a burden. Existing was difficult. And I had difficulty expressing this feeling to others because I was always told to keep my head down, work hard and not bother about feelings because its futile. And then I watched the show.

For the first time ever, I was seeing my own pain in someone else. I could truly resonate with the protagonists feelings and watching him navigate through it all gave me a sense that I was not alone. Don’t get me wrong, it was still mostly a robots fighting monsters show for me. I will not pretend that I managed to understand all the themes discussed in the show, but I could somehow relate to the sensitive dialogue between the characters and connect that to the personal issues I had back then. Evangelion felt like it gets me. As the show slowly starts to grow from its beginning about a lonely kid suddenly burdened with a huge responsibility into a meta analysis about humanity’s existence I started to understand that most things around me are more nuanced and complex than I thought. Each character’s complex back story with harrowing depictions of humanity’s both good and evil, the complete disconnected nature of the show so far away from anything I have ever seen before and the haunting yet really poetic description of individual’s struggles with past trauma exposed my past vulnerable teenage self to a complex story that both worked as a fun escape from reality and also a complicated psycho analysis of deeply flawed individuals. It is also a look into the humanity and society that I was really afraid of. End of Evangelion and its surreal montage is often criticized to be pretentious and incoherent jargon, but it made sense to me. Given that the thing happening during the montage in the show was quite literally the apocalypse of existence, each characters mind goes through a whirlwind of emotions and it was something I could relate to.

While it is important to understand and interpret the show in your own unique way, it is also important to understand the situation in which the show was released and also Hideoki Anno’s state of mind while making the show. The studio Gainax was on the verge of bankruptcy before Evangelion despite partnerships with Bandai and Mayazaki. And Evangelion was their last Hail Mary attempt to save the company. And it did more than saving the company, it pushed the studio into limelight and became a behemoth. Although currently its now a shell of its past self. By now it is public knowledge that Anno was battling crippling depression and had a breakdown while making the show. As we watch the episodes, it becomes clearly evident exactly at which point it began and the show immediately starts deviating from its mecha-anime origins to something much darker. In a way Anno was using his characters to voice his struggles. Anyone who has ever battled depression will immediately recognize Anno’s cry for help. And that is what exactly the show is. Throughout the series with the help of characters and their trauma, we get a direct look into the his state. And this special view is unique to Eva.

The pandemic pushed many of us in corner and forced us to do new things and pick up new hobbies. I started consuming more content in multiple forms. Books, shows, games etc. And when Netflix recommended Eva again in the pandemic, I watched the whole show in a day. And watching this time felt somehow different from all times I’ve watched it earlier. It felt like I was watching my past self who was stuck in pain and agony; and very different from my present self. I understood the religious, philosophical themes better this time. I understood the nuance. But I realized its not me anymore. Watching it again told me that how much I’ve changed and grown over the past few years. The relationships and friends I made taught me a lot and pulled me out of darkness. I’m thankful and grateful for it.

I think I finally moved on from Eva. Thank you for everything. I hope I don’t have to go through all that again, but I know you’re there.

Lean Management, also known as the Toyota Management, is an ideology emphasizing the value of waste reduction and also standardization of parts. It is a relatively simple concept but it has proven to show significant impact both production capacity and also production speed. It has five key principles which elaborate on this method further.

Five Principles

1. Value: Identify and define the value of the product you’re trying to manufacture. Create a certain value to what the customer is willing to pay.
2. Value Stream: Create a stream through the company with emphasis on value generating departments. This way it gets easier to identify which systems to improve upon and which systems to appraise.
3. Flow: Development of a workflow for each product will make the production run smoother and also helps in identification of problems. This also helps during the product development phase to identify hindrances for the future production run.
4. Pull: “Pull” in this context means the action to take up any production job. Creating an effective pull mechanism ensures that only necessary products with sufficient demand are taken up and this optimizes the resources of the company.
5. Perfection: This is the most important step. Even though a lean management framework optimizes and increases the efficiency of the company, it’s not perfect. This step helps in identification of known issues and solving them. This step is used to make the production more dynamic in nature.

Advantages of Lean Management

1. Improves efficiency of the company
2. Reduces waste
3. Deployment of a better pull system
4. Identification issues becomes easier

Criticisms of Lean Management

Even though there are known benefits of lean management, it’s not free from criticism. Because of its scope and also its broad nature, Lean Management is considered more as an ideology than a standard procedure. And also because of lack of any consideration of the workforce, it is not considered to be a labor friendly methodology. Better ideologies such as Kanban, 5S and Six Sigma have emerged in the later part of 20th century and have taken the principles of Lean Management and made them better with today’s standards.

Covid-19 and Manufacturing Industry

To understand the importance of lean management during the pandemic we first need to analyze the situation in the current world. Due to Covid-19 thousands of employees have lost their jobs and factories around the world are shut down. But this pandemic has put another challenge in front of the manufacturing industry too and that is increasing the production of essential goods. Food Processing industry has seen significant growth and the medical equipment such as ventilators and face shields have shown a rise in demand.

Demand forecasts were revised around the world in almost every sector when the pandemic hit us in February. Consumer goods have seen a drop in demand and clinical devices such as blood pressure and heart rate monitors have seen a surge in demand. This has reset the priorities of firms around the world and Lean Management rose to the occasion to help companies cope up with erratic demands.

Lean Management during Pandemic

In Lean management more time is spent during the product development phase than actual production because if the production team can optimize the run for one batch, then it’s just a matter of volume equation. This means that the team has to reorganize and go back to the drawing board and make decisions over and over again about issues that were thought to be easy. Because of the restrictions around the world it’s not exactly easy for a firm to obtain raw material and new equipment as easily as before, let alone development for new developing projects. So existing materials and tools have to be repurposed. This is exactly where lean management is useful. It helps in identification of all the values and creates a value stream so the management already has an idea about the systems which will help the manufacturing during these troubled times. These new but technically existing tools can now be repurposed.

Due to advanced prototyping techniques and manufacturing methods such as additive manufacturing and virtual analysis of the product even before it is actually obtained in a physical form, wastage of both raw materials and also human resources is reduced. Manufacturing of rudimentary components with these techniques and raw assembly of them helps in further understanding of the final product the team is hoping for. Manufacturing giant General Electric calls this method “Moonshining” as a nod to the Prohibition era in the US. This helps in further reduction of the product development phase and more importantly reduces the already piling up stress in the workforce.

Back to Normalcy

As restrictions are being eased and the workforce is returning to the industries, people are bracing themselves for a return to normalcy. Which, for the manufacturing industry, means a sudden surge in demand again and attempts have to be made to reach the levels of efficiency of the past. Lean Manufacturing helps in reduction of waste all around the factory from human resources to material optimization. Digital technologies of today have paved a path to better optimization of factories to increase both quality and quantity of production. A virtual and digital twin, as Siemens defines it, “is a virtual representation of a physical product or process, used to understand and predict the physical counterpart’s performance characteristics.” By considering various data analytics and also with the help of new computational capabilities available today, digital twins help in analysis of the product under various scenarios previously not imagined and not thought of. These procedures help in improving the quality of the product, reduce the need for physical prototypes in a few instances and, in contrast to previous technologies, reduces the product development time significantly.

Relationships and Problem-Solving

Lean Management and in turn Lean Thinking relies mainly on two things. Relationships and problem-solving habits. A company can optimize its production line and keep producing at maximum efficiency but no company knows the future and no company can be ready for a crisis like Covid-19. But due to lean thinking and digital technologies, even small manufacturers can find solutions to new problems. Because of the nature of humans, the first response to a crisis like this is either to ignore it and try to move on after this ends or to overreact, panic and cause a managerial disaster. Lean thinking helps to clear the clutter up and identify one problem at a time and helps us to solve them quickly. Since identification of value streams is in the nature of lean manufacturing, this helps in making each team’s responsibilities clear and to the point and reduces load off of the workforce. A constantly evolving workflow increases productivity during the development phase and due to availability of information including data analytics of the firm and also external market analysis, development time is reduced significantly. An important and fascinating case study of lean management is the 1997 Aisin Seiki factory fire accident. In this accident a key factory which supplies components, proportioning valves used in automobile brakes to be specific, to Toyota burned to ashes. Due to this incident critics thought that there would be a significant drop in Toyota’s production because of its lean nature and maintenance of low inventory. But to everyone’s surprise Toyota showed little to no drop in production because of its long-term supply chain relations. Because of Aisin’s Just-In-Time production commitment the production rose to normal within 2–3 days. A study published in MIT Sloan Management Review found that this was possible because of the Japanese model of long term collaborative partnerships between approximately 150 firms. The study also found that there was no central command in this operation but just an “obeya” which is a term which loosely translates to a war room.

Conclusion

Covid-19 has shown that a crisis big enough can bring a company of any scale to its knees. This crisis has proven the importance of lean manufacturing ideologies and has shown how it can be useful especially in situations where supply chain relations are in shambles. In spite of the obvious advantages with lean management and lean thinking, firms and institutions still use obsolete systems such as spreadsheets and whiteboards to solve problems. Because of their rigid nature they tend to be in an endless routine of revising deadlines and restructuring teams instead of actual product development. This crisis has given a chance for companies to adapt to situations. The dynamic nature of lean thinking has increased transparency and reduced the need for briefings for every meeting. It is important to understand that digital manufacturing is not a stand-alone project but goes hand in hand with lean thinking. Covid-19 has shown the importance of supply chain relations, innovation and also crisis management. This is the time to rethink development strategies, learn lessons and grow out of the crisis and build on these ideologies.