Melisa Buie on Lean Culture, Scientific Thinking, and Empowering Engineers

My guest for Episode #531 of the Lean Blog Interviews Podcast is Dr. Melisa Buie, a seasoned operations and engineering leader with decades of experience in high-tech manufacturing.

Episode page with video, transcript, and more

Melisa has held senior roles at companies like Lam Research, Applied Materials, and Coherent, where she led large-scale Lean transformations and helped drive cultural change across global operations. With a PhD in nuclear engineering and plasma physics, Melisa brings a rare combination of technical depth and people-centered leadership to her work.

In this episode, we explore Melisa’s Lean journey — from her early days in Six Sigma to becoming a global Lean leader at Coherent. She shares how her perspective shifted from project-based improvement to empowering teams with daily problem-solving skills. Melisa discusses the critical role of psychological safety in building a continuous improvement culture, and how giving people "permission to improve" must be backed by leadership behavior and support. We also touch on the challenges of applying Lean principles in complex, low-volume/high-mix manufacturing environments and why principles still matter more than tools.

We also discuss Melisa’s book Problem Solving for New Engineers, written to bridge the gap between academic preparation and the real-world challenges engineers face in industry. She previews her upcoming book, Faceplant: Free Yourself from Failure’s Funk, which tackles the emotional side of failure and how we can grow through it. Whether you're a Lean leader, a coach, or an engineer just starting out, this episode is packed with valuable insights on leadership, learning, and making improvement accessible for everyone.

Questions, Notes, and Highlights:

• How did you first get involved with Lean or Six Sigma?
• Which books influenced you early in your Lean journey?
• How did your company shift from project-based Six Sigma to a Lean culture?
• Where did the push for culture change come from—top-down or grassroots?
• What role did you play in leading Lean at Coherent?
• What does it mean to “give people permission to improve,” and why is that necessary?
• How do leaders create psychological safety to support continuous improvement?
• How did your background in nuclear engineering and plasma physics lead to a career in semiconductors and lasers?
• How do Lean principles apply in low-volume, high-mix environments?
• What inspired you to write Problem Solving for New Engineers?
• How does the book help bridge the gap between university labs and industry problem solving?
• Why is experimentation and scientific thinking often missing in workplace culture?
• How do you explain the value of iterative cycles like PDSA to new engineers?
• What is design of experiments (DOE), and how does it improve problem solving?
• When is it helpful to let people run experiments with predictable outcomes?
• How did your second book, Faceplant: Free Yourself from Failure’s Funk, come about?
• Why do people fear failure in personal life but accept it in professional settings?
• How can we reframe failure as a learning opportunity rather than something to avoid?
• How do you personally deal with failure and setbacks, like learning a foreign language?

This podcast is part of the #LeanCommunicators network.