GA 280 | The Values and Principles of Agile with Samuel Parra

Responding to a change is difficult, takes forever, you know, and that's where I O comes into. So if you don't have this type of methodology, how do you think that companies like, you know, Apple or Samsung can play this race.

Today? I'm excited to welcome Samuel Parra to the show. Now, Samuel and I first interacted over LinkedIn, I believe, and had some nice communication before the podcast on his interest in the agile movement. Now, as you'll hear, Samuel is a lean and kind of continuous improvement, traditional guy, you know, manufacturing and this and that. And he eventually got introduced to agile and now he's been really interested in what we lean practitioners can learn from Agile and what agile practitioners can learn from Lean and where the two intersect with what Samuel and many in the world are talking about these days, which is industry 4.0, which kind of the digitization of manufacturing called smart factories and things like that. So really interesting podcast. It was a little bit longer than normal. I looked up and we were at like 45 minutes. But Samuel's got a ton of energy, a lot of passion, and he was really fun to chat with. I think you're going to enjoy the show. So show notes, which will have links to everything Samuel and I talk about, can be found over@gembapodcast.com and this is going to be episode 280280 again, gembapodcast.com and yeah, look for episode 280. Finally, if you want to get a sneak peek at everything Gemba Academy has to offer, head over to gembacademy.com, scroll to the bottom, and there's a button to allow you to sign up for a free trial. And there's no strings attached. We're not going to overwhelm you with spam or anything like that, so just, just go and check us out and if you have any questions, reach out to us and we'd love to, to help you on your continuous improvement journey to do that just normal website, which is gembaacademy.com okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Samuel, welcome to the show. How's it going?

It's going good. It's going good.

All right. So, hey, where are you calling in from?

I'm calling from Macon, Georgia.

Macon, Georgia. All right, all right. It's beautiful. Part of the. Of the country. So nice and nice and hot and sticky for you right now.

Shiny and humid.

Exactly, exactly. All right. Well, hey, Samuel, I'm excited to have you on. We were chatting a little bit before the Record button. I think this topic is interesting for a lot of folks and I think it's going to become even more interesting in the coming years here as the world turns, as they say. Right. So as you know, Samuel, we like to kind of begin our shows with our guests sharing a quote. Do you have one?

Yes, I do. And actually, I don't know who said this. I mean, who invented this quote? But I remember I used to have a manager back in my early days as an engineer and he used to say this in Spanish. Right. So I kind of translated and then I found that the quote actually exists in English. So something about this, it is not what you know, it is what you do with what you know. So I'm going to explain a little bit. So in this era of digitalization and data analysis and all that, you find people that manage a lot of tools that manage a lot of data. Right. And can show this data. So impressive. But what are you doing with that? What's the value that you're adding to the organization with that? Sometimes I approach folks that are new, they're coming with all this technology and all that, and hey, I can do this, this and that. And why are you not showing this to the management? Why are you not doing something else with this? For me, it's not what you know, it's what you do, what you know.

I like it. I like it. All right, well, Samuel, so today we're going to kind of talk about, I think we're going to call this show Combining Lean and Agile and the new Industry 4.0 or something like that. I think that sounds pretty good. That was your recommendation, so thank you for that. Before we jump right into that topic, lean, Agile, Industry 4.0 and all that, let's level set a little bit. Tell everybody about who Samuel is. Tell us about your background, how you first got introduced to continuous improvement, and then tell us what you're up to these days.

Yes. So I started my career back in Venezuela. I'm from Venezuela, so I started with Goodyear Tyrone Rubber Company back in my country. And I started as my bachelor is in electrical engineering. Okay. So I started an internship there as an electrical engineer in the facilities department. And then it came up a opening and it was a quality. It was for a quality engineer position. And this is a kind of funny story because I was just graduating from electrical engineering. I was excited about, you know, telecommunications, automation, programming and all that. And then when I had an interview, my manager at the time said, you know, that you're not going to Apply anything of what, what you know, when this job, right? And I was like, what? Yeah, because this is quality tire quality, you know. So I was like, well, so you take it. I mean, take it or leave it. So leave it, take it. So I was like, well, I'll take it, you know. And from there I started my career, you know, as a quality engineer, production engineer, and always related with, you know, Lean Six Sigma because in the automotive industry everybody knows that it's embedded there, right? So even though I wasn't a practitioner, I had to do things like, you know, total quality management, you know, ISO and all those type of things from the very basic level. So you know that I spent almost eight years there and at the end of my tenure there, I was the senior just a year and is when I started doing and getting into this, you know, doing kaizen events 5s's. I used to manage the OPEX portfolio, savings and all that. So my boss at the time helped me out to understand all these tools and that. I kind of was aware of it, but I was now the practitioner of that. And then after that I did a master's degree in system engineering in Illinois and I had great time there with my, with a couple of professors. I, I helped them to develop a green belt program for the university and I got the certification towards them because they wanted someone to kind of help them to, you know, do the, all the programming of, you know, develop the program about this and had the chance to, to work as a co op in Caterpillar back there in Illinois. Yeah, they have a very good program, email, black belt program definitely in at the time. And it's at the time I spent good time there in one of the manufacturing facilities there in Illinois. And finally right now I am the quality and continuous improvement manager at basf, the largest chemical company in the world here in Macon, Georgia. Nice.

Now, you didn't get in any trouble down in Chicago or anything like that, did you on Saturday night or anything like that?

No, I tried to stay away even though I lived at the seat of. I tried to stay away. Yeah.

You know, it was funny when you're talking about how in your first job there you weren't kind of like, I guess formally trained, if you will, in continuous improvement, but just how you did your job. And this is exactly my experience. I actually worked at Motorola right out of school and I didn't Motorola Six Sigma. Right. And all this, but I never went through their, at that time, their formal Six Sigma training, but it was like I was just a Young, naive engineer and we're running around, you know, SPC design of experiments, see all this kind of stuff. And I just thought this is how everybody works, you know, and this is just normal, you know. And then I did, I got another new job at another place after that and yeah, I realized, oh yeah, this is not how everybody works. Yeah. So that's a good experience, right? When you're, if you're lucky enough, you know, to land in a company who's really practicing, practicing these things.

And at the end is, is because I come in from the automotive industry. I spend, you know, I spend, you know, almost 10 years at Goodyear. Then I did this co op in Gutterpiller. Then I was, I work as a consultant in a automotive company called Elgin Industries in Illinois. So they, they, they all have kind of the same culture. So that is already embedded to you. So wherever you move you kind of see the same things, right. And same, same needs, you know, because the lean and the six SEMA comes with you because kind of born in this company, you know, automotive industry, aerospace industry. So.

Exactly.

Cool.

All right, awesome. Well, let's jump right in. So yeah, we're going to explore just a really cool topic, Lean, how it intersects with Agile and how that intersects, how both of them intersect with what we are going to call Industry 4.0, which isn't a new term. I guess it's been around for a while. For a while. But what I want to do is not assume anything. I don't want to jump into. Just like everybody knows what. Wow. I guess most of the listeners here understand what lean is, so we probably don't need to go into that. But let's talk a little bit about just kind of definitions and just high level. What are we talking about when we talk about Agile and then Industry 4.0? Let's take them both separately. So let's start with Agile. What's your elevator pitch for. For Agile? And we'll get into how you discovered it. But just right now, just so people know what we're talking about, what is it?

So I.O. is a methodology, right? It's a methodology for the software industry that was born in software industry that helps you to develop projects, right? To manage projects, complex projects with a set of tools already and that it makes these tools to get faster to the customer. They have four values and 12 principles that were developed by a group of software engineers in the 90s and it's what we know today as the Agile methodology. But long story short, it's just a set of methodologies that helps to manage a project.

And I think it's, I think it's safe to say maybe the agile guys don't want to hear this, but I think it's safe to say Lean had a very strong influence on these, on these folks. Is that true?

It does. And that is why I'm so interested in these, in this topic. Because even though there are still. There are already authors and books out there that are combining both and they call it legile, I prefer to call it legal with N because it sounds better. But there is already some, some textbooks out, some material. But I think that for us as a lean practitioners, it's not still in our radar. Okay. And my intention with this was to study why is it not in our radar. How can I apply this in my environment and how cool it is? Because actually it makes you being agile, which is what we need sometimes.

Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. So what about this industry 4.0? What's this all about?

Well, this is a new buzzword I will call it where it's all about digitalization, data analysis, AI. So there are so many things like machine learning and there are some companies that want to combine all that new software for the industry and new opportunities for the manufacturing industry, for any other industry. So we need to be careful with this because. Yeah, I mean this is coming is here. Right. It was supposed to help everybody automatization, the cloud and all of that. So all these terms are for me are embedded in this industry 4.0. But we need to careful. It depends on, on what industry are you working to and what are you getting out of this. Right, yeah. For example, some people wants to put, you know, tablets for everybody, you know, to, to do your work safe permits there and, and, and things like that. So are they really able to do that? So that's what kind of Industry 4.0 means, you know, is the digitalization of everything.

Yeah. If you. I actually pulled it up on Wikipedia because, you know, Wikipedia knows everything.

Right.

But they got an interesting definition. Oh, there's a lot here. I won't read it all, but Industry 4.0 refers to the concept of factories in which machines are augmented with wireless connectivity and sensors connected to a system that can visualize the entire production line control and make decisions on its own. Oh, okay. Right. So yeah, intelligent manufacturing, Right. Or smart manufacturing is another word, I think. Or smart factory some people are calling it.

Yeah, yeah. So it is a lot and we need to be careful to be on the way, on the new wave. But Also understanding what do you actually need because.

Exactly.

I mean, you can see manufacturing facilities that they don't even have money to get or to reach their production capacity, but they wanted to start this digitization program. Well, wait a minute. I mean, you know.

Well, I just talked to a guy recently, I think on the podcast. I don't know, I talked to so many people, sometimes it all runs together. But, you know, talking about, oh, automate this and that and digitize this and that, but in a way it was kind of like, yeah, but you got a lot of waste. Let's get rid of that waste before you automate the waste. Right. You know, there's no sense in automating waste. This is pointless.

You're correct. If your basics are not covered, you know, your lean, your, Your mission, visions and goals of the company or that site, your, Your structure, your management system, you're going to put this. And it will be a nightmare to manage all these.

Yeah.

And we're forgetting something more important, which is the adaption of your workforce to all this. So whoever has been in manufacturing knows that every time you, you put a new, so an SPC software or, you know, a new quality software or whatever, it takes time. Right. New PLC or something like that. So don't forget about that.

Right.

So it's something that is here, but we need to be careful.

Yeah. Me and the guy were joking. I was like, yeah, you know, in 20 years, what's going to happen is people are going to be like, you know what? It's amazing if you take a person, you know, a person, and you just have them stand right there and then to just have them watch, they can find all these areas that, all these opportunities for improvement and tell me, no, a person to stand there and watch. Yeah, you know, I say, you know, you know, it's kind of how bell bottoms come back in style, you know, or whatever it is. You know, it's like maybe, maybe 20 years from now, people will come back in style and our brains and whatnot and realize that our computers in our head are pretty powerful as well.

So they are. And I'm pretty sure there's going to be helpful. And we're doing, I'm doing a little bit of that. I'm trying to digitalize some of the things that I have in my company now. But, you know, but my point is, don't get stressed about this. You know, it will come, we'll adapt it. But, you know, just wait for the right tool for your. For the right solution.

Yep, yep, Exactly. Kind of back to your quote at the beginning, right?

Yeah, yeah, I love that quote, man. I really love it. Yeah.

So, all right, well let's go back into Agile a little bit. So how did you first discover it? Like what would you book or conference or what? What's your origin story with Agile?

Well, it's kind of funny because I've been hearing this buzzword for a couple of years now, you know, Agile Ill and I wasn't paying attention because it's not kind of adopted in the manufacturing community. I am in different pages, forums and communities and you don't see that much. You see it a little bit, but not as much. A couple of months ago I started to investigate a little bit just because I like to read and things like that. I found that this Agile methodology is actually embedded with Lean. And I was like, wait a minute, if this is related with Lean, I want know everything about it, right? And at the same time I started a online certification from Econnell University about project management. I wanted to refresh my, my, my concepts there and they, they were actually teaching about Agile. I was like, wait a minute, okay, this is the thing, right? So when I went over that, you know, I found that, you know, they even use Kanban, they even use their seven type of ways. So okay, there's a lot of similarities on these and I want to know everything about it. And then the CEO of my company started, is starting a new strategy for the company, all that. So he's repeating a lot this I o work. So I was like, okay, this is here, this is now, you know, and I want to know everything about it. So I've been reading a lot about it, I've been applying a lot about this and I'm kind of in the journey now to kind of push this out to the world and to the people that I know say, hey, this is cool and we can embed this with whatever we know about Lean and Six Sigma to evolve. We were talking about this at the beginning because Lean and Six Sigma, they're great tools. Everybody knows about that is the standard. But like anything else, why not evolve, right? So that's what I'm behind with.

Okay, so tell me a little bit more about Agile and as far as values, principles. You know, we talk about a lot of the values and principles of Lean, respect for people, continuous improvement, that sort of thing. Talk about the values and principles of Agile.

Yeah, that's very interesting because you know that I use a methodology, right, that will help you to solve your problems a little bit faster. And manage products a little bit faster. They come out with four values. I'm going to read it and I'm going to read it and say it and explain a little bit what that means for us, the lean and practitioners. The first value is individuals and interactions over processes and tools. This is powerful because for lean predictionnaires we know that we can have a very good set of tools. 5s, gamba, kanban, all that, we're always looking ways to apply these in different environments. It's not just to have the tools. How do you actually make this happen? However, we forget a key element here, which is the individuals and the interactions. Sometimes we come with our tools and we don't know how to get that into the people. So that is why you now are looking into, you know, people that you don't. You just not need Lean six Sigma now. You need to be a chain agent, you know, chain management. Because yeah, you can have all that, but you're not maybe a good people person. You don't know how to, you know, deploy this in the shop floor. So this is powerful for me because it's individuals and interactions over processing tool. That's what it means for me. That's the first value of it and it's very powerful. The second one, it says working software over comprehensive documentation. When you said software, you can put whatever you want, working project, working product, working processes, whatever. The value is the same working product, let's say over comprehensive documentation. That doesn't mean that documentation is not important. But sometimes engineers like me in the automotive industry are more focused on documentation than over the processes to be robust, right? Especially people in the automobile industry with, you know, PPAPs and you know, all these AP EQP, you know, processes that you need to develop. So that's a lot of documentation, right? To take a product out of the door. But is that product actually working? You know, are you gonna have a recall about that? Right? So what has more value? So I'm not saying that you don't need to do the documentation and it's not important though, right?

But.

Focus more in what you're doing, your product. Be a most product before going out of the door.

Well, even at just at a BAS lean perspective, we talk a lot about standard work within the community. And so it's like, well, you got to figure out, like look at TWI and job instruction, things like that. You got to figure out the one best way and then you document it, right? You don't document the one best way and then figure it out because you don't know, Right? You got to figure it out. But standards are meant to be improved, right? And so when you do figure out, three months later, oh, this isn't actually the best way anymore, this is a better way. Okay, well, let's change the documentation then. But, yeah, cart before the horse.

And sometimes we even sit down at our desk to do these papers and documentation, and when we put it out there, nobody understands that because you are the one creating this. You know, how it's supposed to work, but actually it doesn't work. So we go back again to the first value, which is people and interactions, right? Yeah. How are they going to read this? You know, So I always think, take a look into the people perspective of this. The third value is customer collaboration over contract negotiation. I like this one because you can apply this to your internal customers and to your external customers. Let's give an example. You need to be close to your customers. Customer collaboration. When you work in quality, you see that you have internal customers and external customer. You need to understand your internal customer. In my case right now, for example, I work in one of the plants that is the raw material for some other plants. I need to understand how my product actually affect them. It's not about, hey, I'm in spec and that's it, or, hey, I did my thing and that's it. No, if I'm doing wrong, how that is going to affect you. And same thing with external customers. So sometimes we focus on the negotiation. So how much money are we going to make? Where's the profit? Where's the legal relationship that we're going to have over the collaboration? Okay, what is the value of the product that you are delivering? So this is very important for me as well. And I apply that every day in my job. And more importantly, I tell my people, hey, guys, we need to understand our customer. Yeah, they complain, they complain, but let's understand our internal customers, see what they want, and how do I affect them. The fourth value is responding to change or following a plan. And I think this is where Agile comes together because we need to move fast these days. In the past, all these big companies with all these many layers, it's difficult to move, and still it's difficult to move. In some industries and companies because of this, you got so many approvals, so many people that responding to a change is difficult, takes forever, and that's where IO comes into. So if you don't have this type of methodology, how do you think that companies like, you know, Apple or Samsung can play these Rates, you know, you know, where every six to a year, every six to 12 months, they're launching a new product. Right. So you need to be agile to do that. So responding to chain has to be more important than following that plan. Right. So I'm not saying that you're not going to follow a plan, but if in the middle somebody, your customer, because you're collaborating with that customer, comes say, hey, I think we need to do it this way. Okay, let's do it. You know, don't hold it, don't push back. We used to push back a lot in manufacturing, you know.

Well yeah, Samuel, even when you think about, you know, we talk a lot within the lean community about making a plan. And so if you're looking at that kind of PDCA or whatever plan do you check out like we make this plan at the bottom of the totem pole, if you will. It's just a maximum point of uncertainty. Right. Like we have no idea how to get to this big goal that we have way out in the so but traditional even mentioned project management and this is the flaw in my opinion of traditional project management is you create this big gantt chart, you know, but you don't even really know the things you're gonna have to do four months from now. Right. So why even waste any energy on that? So it's like, well what's your where can we be in a month or in a couple weeks or whatever it is? And then you start iterating towards that, you know. And I think this is very similar to what you're talking about.

Now that you mentioned that. And that's great. I think you need to have a basic plan and that comes another framework of agile which is Scrum and we'll talk about a little bit later, but it's about that it's actually adapt to the changes while you're doing this. And we don't have that. And we don't have that. Sometimes we develop something demeg or something and once you pass it defined phase, you don't want to go back. Yeah, I already defined that. Right?

Yeah.

But it might be wrong.

Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you said that. This is why we have a hard time when our six content sometimes because we don't teach it to make is not linear. I'm sorry if you're XYZ black belt or whatever and you think that oh I just passed M and I can't go back, it's nonsense. So it's not linear. When you realize your management system's disaster. Guess what? You're defined. You got to do it over because you don't even know what the, the problem is, you know? You know.

Yeah. And the key of all these projects is like, like I learned one time ago is, is the definition of the problem.

Yeah.

You know, if that is not right. Yep. Nothing will be right.

Yeah.

So. So after those four values, you know, they come with 12 principles. And I'm not going to go over all that. I'm just going to highlight the ones that I think are more impactful for me. And then. And one of these principles. Principles is welcome changing requirements, even in lay development. And that comes back again, what we're talking. Right. You know, welcome changing requirements. Sometimes you're developing a project and the sponsor or stakeholder come say, hey, we need to change that because we don't have money for that. Right. What are we going to do? Well, we'll decide to make it with less money then, you know, but still we need to find a solution. So I'm not afraid of pushback. I don't push back. I try to find the best way. Until I understand, well, there's no best way. Okay, let's push back. So welcome. Change your requirements. I love that one. Close daily cooperation between businesses, people and developers. And this is important, if you're working with people, you need to be close to them, have daily cooperation. There are so many softwares to help you to do that. You got Microsoft Teams, you got SharePoint, you got all these tools that can help you to cooperate with people. And this one is powerful. Ron. Probably projects are built around motivated individuals who should be trusted. We need, man, we need to trust more people if they want to make a mistake, made a mistake, right. You will learn from that mistake and stop the approval. Stop. I mean, because that's not benign, right? So, hey, trust in your people. Motivate your people. Let them do it. Let them fail and keep going.

That's so hard. That's so hard. You know, I mean, I myself as a business owner, right. It's like we trust our people. We have amazing people here at Gamba Academy. But still there's times where you're like, oh, you know, what about this, what about that? And you know, and you know, you worry, right? It's natural, right? Especially if you, if you're the owner of a company or something, it ultimately, you know, it's your, it's your company, you know, and you have to make sure it's successful. So it's super, super hard to, to trust even Though you do trust. But it's, it's, it's tough, right?

And I get that. But you know, you need to have some, some level of leverage for these people, you know, some, some leeway. And, and it's not that you're gonna, you know, give them your checkbook and start signing checks to everybody, but hey, you start to, you know, start to, you know, give them some little pieces of respons, you fail. Let's sit down, talk about it. It's because you don't know. Yeah, it's because I didn't tell you. And, and sometimes the communication part, Ron, because I always put this example. I mean, sometimes you. Communication is key, right? You might be talking with someone and this person might not be understanding you what you're saying, or you are not, you know, saying what you're thinking, you know, and, and, and then when you come back, say, well, but you didn't tell me that. Yeah, I did. Yeah. No, you did not. You know, so, so it is a communication thing. So I think if you revisited that, you will find opportunities to improve and see if this person can take that responsibility. And the other principle is, and I love this one because I'm a lover of design, continuous attention to technical excellence and good design. That's another principle. And the other one to finish this is simplicity. Let's be simple.

You know, I just read this amazing article. My James Clear, I don't know if you guys. You know, James Clear wrote the book Atomic Habits. So he has this, you know, he's on Twitter, like everyone. And, and he, he had a Twitter post the other day and he asked people to link to their favorite articles. And oh my gosh, there's hundreds of articles. And so me and my business partners were flowing through them and I found this one and oh, I can't even remember all the details of it, but it was talking about the various ladders of expertise. Like the bottom is like, you're smart. I can't remember the exact thing, but it's like, then you're intelligent or then you're. But then at the very top, it was like, you're a genius. But then there was one even above it, and it was simplicity. Simplicity was above genius because it says like, if you can, if you could, if you can say something in a simple manner, you're above a genius and people can understand you. And because, you know, a lot of times geniuses talk and you can't understand them, right? Like, what do you.

And it's, hey, that's powerful because a Fan of Steve Jobs and all his, you know, methodology, I will say, and how simple he was, you know, how simple and powerful their designs were, you know, and it's exactly what you say, you know, they, they were making some simple stuff that they were so much powerful. So it's even above genius, you know.

Yeah, it's.

And to get there you need a lot, you need to kind of pass all those levels that you just mentioned to get to that part. It's absolutely true what you're saying.

Beautiful, beautiful. So that's a lot about Agile and talk a little bit about. We've already talked a little bit about how Lean has influenced it, but what about which Lean concepts are applied directly in Agile?

Right. That's where I started to get into this. Agile has different development methods now. They got so many practitioners and these things have evolved like crazy now they have different frameworks, I will say the one important to us are, for example, they have one called Lean Software Development. It's literally a translation of the Toyota production system to the software industry. So they literally took the TPS and they kind of change it or modify it to lead to software, to software industry. Right. So with the idea of eliminating waste, you know, waste of time, waste of resources, they even have their own definition of the seven type of way. So is literally tps, you know, they use value stream map pool systems and things like that. So that's kind of a framework inside of the IELTS methodology. And then they have one they call Kanban, which is the same Kanban that we use. Right. But in this particular case, what they do is use a Kanban board to kind of classify and organize the huge amount of work that they have to do. So they kind of divide this Kanban board in depending, if you're in software engineering will be like a backlog, ready, coding, testing and approval. And so these little modules of this or parts of this big project can be moved. Towards the end of the project you might have a team working on coding, another team might be already testing. So you need to organize that. And they're very into these Kanban boards and I found that, I mean, it's simple, you know, it could be a table with three or four columns, you know.

Yeah.

But I, I found something powerful that I'm applying right now, you know, because I'm not a friend of action plans. I hate action plans, you know, but the typical, you know, Excel square action plan, we tied in responsible.

The old Kaizen newspaper, right? Yeah, yeah.

Comment? Oh my God, that's so lame. Boring. So what I'm being putting into my quality juicer room and meetings is, you know, this Kanban board. And I just said, okay, this is done, this is to do. I mean the levels of, I put on top the levels of criticality, you know, low, medium and high. And when I, when in the column where I have high priority, I put just the actions in a box and then I put just the action. Name the responsible and if it's done or not. Simple as that, no words. Everybody knows what it needs to do, but it's simple, which is what I like. It's low, medium, high in columns. And you're starting moving this. It's like affinity diagram, something like that. You're not using sticky notes. You can use sticky notes, but I'm putting this in a presentation. So you move these boxes, okay, and you show that you did that already, you know, or I mean you can do it different ways, but it's a different way to show things and people like that. Being fresh, being a little more simple, be more lean.

Yeah, yeah. A tool that we use a lot here internally at Gamba Academy is Trello T R E L L O. There's a free version, in fact, I think we even use a free version. But we have everything. Like our whole content development engine, if you will, is all in just Trello. So it's, it's very similar to these Kanban boards of, you know, moving it from this box to this box and who's doing what and, and yeah, it really helps, you know, when we're, we're virtual. I know we were gonna maybe talk about that a little bit, but that's a powerful way to, to communicate when you're not always in the same place. And even if you are in the same place, put it up on a board, you know, so people, it brings visibility, right, to who's doing what.

And that's exactly what they do. And then you know that in the software industry or in the industry, right now you got a team working in India and the other team is working, you guys are here. So how do we organize all that? How do we. So the idea is how are we more agile and eliminate the waste. Waste of emails, waste of calls, wake up conferences. That's the idea, all this.

Got it, got it. Hey, so last question. I'm going to kind of combine a couple questions that I wanted to ask you. So talk about agile and just, just in manufacturing, but then also talk about, you know, us Lean practitioners that are listening to this, you know, what can we do? What can we learn from Agile and you know, how can we be aware of this industry 4.0 and just kind of just moving in that direction?

Well, see, the first thing you need to know is understand what Agile does and what is the difference between Agile, Lean and Six Sigma and understand how to combine these things together. One of the things that I like from Agile is a framework called Scrum. You will see this term a lot in the industry. Scrum, Scrum Master. What Scrum is, it's part of the framework that helps you to break down pieces of work in a short period of time, right? So let's say, hey, we're gonna do this and we're gonna do this in two weeks, right? And you get people, you know, developing that or working on that. And it's very similar to Kaizen event. And people who works in the Kaizen event, however, they have a, a figure that. That's what I wanted to tell people that are listening to that. We need to get this more into our daily work. Life is the Scrum Master. What the Scrum Master does is to facilitate to people in the team the tools and whatever they need and remove the impediments and constraints that they have. So you have a team working on that. It's not just the manager. In the Scrum methodology, you have got the product owner, which is kind of like the leader of the team, and you got the team itself. And then you have this Scrum Master, which is someone that helps you to get the constraints out of the way. And we need that more in manufacturing. And that's why they make this methodology Agile and get to the next level. So I'll give you an example. In manufacturing, right? So you got the production and the quality guys, it's been production and maintenance, right? You got all these guys fighting all the time, fighting all the time, not getting things done, not getting things done. And we usually, we don't have someone in the middle to understand these two teams, right? Someone that can take the roadblocks out of the way and say, hey guys, no, this is the way to do it. I already review this, let's do it. Sometimes, as a matter of fact, we put CI practitioners to do that, but they don't have the authority to tell them, hey, no, you're wrong, this is the way to do it, this is the way to go, you know, or hey, you're not wrong. The problem that we have is money. I mean, we need this. So, you know, escalate that so that person to take the constraints out of the way. For the teams. That's what we need more in manufacturing. That's what we're applying. We got right now a product manager that is working with the two plants and he's kind of doing that, you know, taking the, the constraints out of the way and getting us into the next level. So that's what we need into manufacturing.

Got it, Samuel. If folks want to learn more about Agile, you know, Gemba Academy, we do have some content on it and we're going to be developing more in the next year or so. But what's the best book in your opinion? Or maybe there's a few books or some other resources that might be good for folks to learn about Agile.

I haven't found a book, a reference book about Agile, I mean, and Lean with Agile together. There is a lot of content in the web. There is a lot. Again, I'm still trying to look who's the best, I will say, but so far I don't have an author that I can guide you guys. Hey, this is the best one because what I'm behind is to try to pull together my own concepts, you know, of what I know what I can use because I'm a lean practitioner. Right. And I guess it's a Sigma methodology. And I'm not going to forget about this. You know, I just want to get the best out of Bolt work because if you get into Agile is another world as well. Right. So take it little by little, by pieces, I'll say, understand what's the methodology and try to see how you can embed that into what you know already.

Yeah, I know. You know, Ever heard of Tom and Mary Poppendick? Have you ever heard of those folks?

No.

Yeah, so they actually did a podcast with them back at episode 190. Gosh, it was in 2017. And, and they're really committed to, to software development and, and Lean and, and definitely tapping into the, the, to the Agile community as well. That might be someone to, to put. I think they've written some books, but yeah, folks can go back if they're interested, go back to episode 190 and check that out. But, but yeah, I think there's, I think there's a lot of opportunity obviously to, to continue building on this, on this body of knowledge and, and, and seeing what we can all learn from it.

Yeah, there, and there are many, many books, to be honest. I mean, there are many, many books. And I will say that there is the same amount that you can found in, in, you can find in Lean and Six Sigma. Yeah, I Just haven't found like the key ones like we have for sort of, I mean, TPS or things like that, you know.

Well, you need to write one, Samuel, come on.

Hey, hey, I'm on it. I mean to be honest, I'm on it. I'm putting a paper out there because I'm very interested on this because it's not new, don't get me wrong. Yeah, we're not, we're not discovering the hot water here, but it's not, it's not being developed.

Yeah, I hear you. You know, well, it's pretty, it's very, it's maybe more niche than, than Lean, you know, Lean is really applicable anywhere and, and so maybe feel people feel like Agile, you know, only for software developers, which you know, I don't think is exactly true.

So yeah, I think we are with agile in the moment where the healthcare industry discovered that hey, we can use Lean and Six Sigma as well.

Exactly.

So I think we are in that moment with Agile but you know, going back to either manufacturing, healthcare or whatever, any other industry you want.

Yeah. Beautiful. Samuel, what's the best way for folks to connect with you?

Hey, go to my LinkedIn. My name Samuel Parra. My email, if you want to know a little bit more about these, my email is samuelpara06mail.com you want to get part of my paper and my research on this, I can send you some of that. I mean I'm all for getting these out there and hear about people and how they doing and how we can have our own community about this.

Yeah, I'll spell your name in case folks are only listening. And we'll have this in the show notes as well. But it's Samuel S A M U E L and then para is P A R R A. And so his email is samuelpara06gmail.com and yeah, I guess LinkedIn, Twitter. Now be honest, are you on Snapchat? Come on, don't, don't lie to me. Come on. You on Snapchat?

No, I'm on Instagram.

I'm just, I'm just waiting for someone to say they're on Snapchat, you know, so it's like because I'm embarrassed, I don't even know how to use it. My kids are on it. I was like I should be on it monitoring them.

But no, I mean I got it. I downloaded because of all these apps to chain faces and all that. But my kids are playing with that.

Right?

I'm already doing the Instagram but still I'm Kind of cutting social media. Yeah, yeah, I'm. It's too much.

I got you. I got you. All right. All right, well, hey, thanks for coming on, Samuel. It's been great. Hopefully we connect in person. You ever get out to any conferences or anything?

I'm planning to go. I'm planning to go. I'm kind of deciding which one I'm gonna go. I mean, the. With the ice cube, American side of quality. They got good conferences. I've been hearing some of the ones that you. That you promote as well. Some. I'm kind of like, yeah, yeah.

Ame Katakan. All these ones, you can't go wrong, you know, and they're all. They're all great.

Yeah, yeah. Can't go wrong with. Good, good, good.

All right, well, thanks a lot, Samuel. It's great chatting with you and. Yeah, let's stay in touch and we'll see where this. Where this Lead Agile Industry 4.0 movement takes us in the next few years.

All right, thank you. Thank you for your opportunity.

All right, take care. Bye. Bye.

Bye, bye.

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