GA 401 | Continuous Improvement and the Future of Industry 4.0 with Juan Gomez

Because we don't understand the technology behind it. We are a bit left behind. And I think that we must hurry to stay up to speed with this so we don't become the next generation of irrelevant professionals.

Today I'm excited to welcome Juan Gomez to the show. Now Juan and I have known each other for many years. In fact, Gemba Academy's had a long relationship with Juan and company that he's worked at. And in fact we're currently collaborating on a new course together with Juan and his team. So yeah, he's really, really good guy and he's very, very knowledgeable as it relates to many things, but in particular, continuous improvement. Now Juan is very passionate about this topic that we call industry 4.0. And so what we do in today's episode was we sort of walk through the various sort of so called industrial revolutions and talk about how we've gotten to call Industry 4.0. Now we also get into things like this, the so called metaverse and all the rest of it. And I kind of told Juan before we hit record that, man, I'm not so sure about all this stuff. It's freaking me out a little bit, you know, like, you know, one day we're putting on these glasses and are we really even talking to anybody or to the person in front of us, or are we looking through Google Glasses and I'm watching the game when I should be talking to my wife, you know. And so we had some really frank, honest conversations back and forth on this whole idea of, you know, the virtual world growing more and more prevalent around us. So, and then we obviously transition into continuous improvement and the role that those of us who practice continuous improvement play in this. And we play a really important role because Juan actually explains that I think there's something like 70% of all sort of digital transformations fail. And he theorizes that some of it might be because we're automating waste and we're not involving people who have a continuous improvement background in this process to improve a process before automating it. So really, really interesting conversation. I think you're going to like it. Juan has also launched a course and he's giving a 25% bonus for or a discount if you will, for Gemba Academy customers. So listen towards the end of the podcast and we'll have that in the show notes as well. So this is episode four. 01. So go to gembapodcast.com, look for episode 401. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the Show. Juan, welcome to the show. How are you, my friend?

It is my pleasure, Ron. Thank you so much for having me on.

Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on today. So, Juan, I know you've listened to the show and we do like to begin with our guest sharing a quote. So do you have one?

That's a great question, Rona. I want to share a quote from my late father, Leon Gomez. He often said to me, juan, knowledge does not occupy space. He have a very good work ethic, also compassionate person, but also he had such a hunger for knowledge. He told me when I was nine years old, he taught me my first employable skill. And as an apprentice in a printing press shop where he worked most of his life. And I applied myself to that skill set and continue to develop it throughout high school and college. It was that skill that served me to graduate from college without any student debt.

Wow.

That's why knowledge does not occupy space is my favorite quote. But you see, the knowledge without application is not very helpful. I will have to add another quote that I recently found from a religious leader in the Middle Ages, Abu Bakr. He said, without knowledge, action is useless and knowledge without action is futile. And that's the reason why we have to strike a balance between the knowledge we acquire and how we put it into action. For me, that knowledge was my father's, transmitting the knowledge of how to do that particular skill which paid for my college degree, but only because I continued to perfect it throughout the years and generated income with it to pay for college. So knowledge and application need to work hand in hand.

Oh, I love that. I love them both. But the second one in particular, you know, yesterday I, one of our Gemba Academy customers, they were doing a big launch of a new sort of training initiative and using, you know, Gemba Academy videos and all that. And they asked me if I would be willing to record just a little one, two minute, you know, welcome message. Like literally just standing at my desk, you know, turn my webcam on and, and so I did, and, and you know, hey, thank you for Gamba Academy, yada, yada, yada, all that kind of stuff. But then, and it just sort of came to me that I, I wanted to give them some advice, you know, and, and the advice was that, yeah, you know, Gemba Academy, we, we got a lot of videos, podcasts, you know, blog articles, all this kind, a lot of information, a lot of potential knowledge. And it's good, it's, it'. However, to your point, if you don't do something with what you just learned. You know, first of all, you won't really learn it because you won't have practiced it deliberately. Right. So you won't really learn it. But it's so important, especially in this age of knowledge. You can just open your eyes and turn on the Internet or open a book or the TV or whatever, and there's knowledge coming at you. But if you don't do something with it, what's the point, you know? So I really like that.

Become a waste.

Yeah, exactly.

It become wasted effort.

Exactly. I love it. I love it. All right, well, so, Juan, obviously you and I have known each other for many years, and it's been a pleasure to work with you in a number of different settings. You know, I won't name companies or anything. I'll let you do that. Well, before we do that, go ahead and tell us a little bit about your background. And then that way, you know, we can sort of step into how we know each other.

Well, definitely. I've been in the continuous improvement CI for many years over almost getting ready to 20 now. I've been very, very fortunate to work with the Gemba Academy and collaborate with you guys since 2020 when we set up the Lean Six Sigma curriculum for global consumer packaged good company. And in addition, we had used as a speaker, keynote speaker at the same organization when you kick off the training program. So thank you for that, I think. We also recently collaborated with one of your partners, John Miller, co creating a training module on visual management systems applied to the current virtual work environment. The whole staff of Get Back. Color Me. You know, you guys rock. You really embody what customer service is all about. So I'm very grateful for having you as a partner.

Well, thank you. Now it's been fun working with you and all of your colleagues. And yeah, I just watched some videos this morning that we just finished sort of our final quality control, if you will, on this visual and virtual management system kind of a course. And it's really exciting, you know, and how to. Because even, you know, pre Covid people were still working virtually. Right. I mean, not everybody worked in the same facility, you know, and so how do you communicate with one another? And yeah, it's a really exciting course. So thank you for your. For your help and your company's help on that because that's how we really get our best content again by Academy is partnering up with. With our customers, you know, so.

That is correct. That is correct. It's my pleasure helping you guys and being part of that project.

Yeah. So Juan, I know that you have many, many passions as it relates to continuous improvement, but one that I know that recently you've been spending a lot of energy on is what we call industry 4.0 or 4.0, however you want to say it in particular, as it applies to continuous improvement and operational excellence. And so we hear this term. First of all, do you say 4.0 or 4.0? What's your preferred way to call it?

I prefer 4.0 because it flows better.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just because my accent, my Hispanic accent.

Helped me say that way. Okay, well, I'll go. I like 4.0 as well, but I actually recently heard somebody saying 4.0. I was like, whoa, maybe I should be calling it zero. But anyhow. Well, let's just begin at the beginning. Well, actually, before we talk about 4.0, how about you give us a quick history lesson. One on the various industrial revolutions that we've experienced as a society.

Well, that's a great question. Historically, there's only one industrial revolution that existed starting in England in the upper half of the 1700s. But in these days, many people talk about the different waves of technologies that we have experienced worldwide as if we have had different additional industrial revolutions. Those history buffs out there, please don't kill me when I say additional industrial revolutions. Yep. I am saying this in the context of the newest waves of adoption of technology. So in that context, we can identify three past industrial revolutions. We can say the steam power revolution of the upper half of the 1700s, the electrical energy and mass production revolution during the 1800s, and the computer and Internet revolutions during the upper half of the 20th century. Now that we are in the 21st century, 21 years into it, I would say, and we enter into the fourth industrial revolution of what many people call Industry 4.0.

Got it. Okay. So how would you define or explain what Industry 4.0 is?

Well, there are many ways of explaining and differentiating what Industry 4.0 is from the previous industrial revolution. I would like to mention at least one or two. First of all is the massive digitalization of the business processes, the business processes themselves and the manufacturing processes themselves that we CI professionals are meant to help redesign and improve. Alongside with the SMEs and the business people, those processes are changing and they are become more and more digitalized. These processes are moving into what I like to call phygital world, whether we.

Like it or not, like physical and digital coming together. Okay, I've never heard that.

That's a term coining in the marketing world by the and FEGTA is the application of technology to bridge the digital world with the physical world to provide a very unique interactive experience for the user. It's the best example of what that change of direction is in Facebook into meta. The concept of the Metaverse is in itself fascinating. The Metaverse is a highly immersive virtual world where people gather to socialize, place and work. It is a computer generated universe, so to speak. So imagine how that metaverse applied to business environments. How can that change the processes that we are meant to improve? So it has the potential of revolutionizing the way we even conceptualize case and events and even Gemba walks.

Okay, so I want to dig in on this a little bit. So the whole, I'm not an expert on the metaverse or anything like that, this, but I, I, I want to, how, how I say this, Juan, it freaks me out a little bit. I don't know how else to say it. It freaks me out a little bit. Okay. And one of the things that, that freaks me out about it is I think about today, you know, like we could, we are already inundated with, you know, AI and augmented reality and, and, and various forms of it. And you know, this, this, this connection to the, to the digital world. I mean, everybody's carrying a phone, right? And my biggest problem with these phones and I'm, I'm as guilty as anybody here. So I'm looking myself in the mirror is I'm staring at my phone more than when my kid comes in and says, my son, hey, dad wouldn't go play football. Hold on. You know, I'm too busy on Twitter or whatever. You know, it's like, it's a huge distraction for me. In fact, there's, there's three months out of every year, me and some friends, we do this thing called Exodus 90. It's a spiritual exercise and we actually, we only use our electronics for work related reasons. And that's it. You're not allowed to use it for anything else. And it's, it's, it's wild. Like you just don't know how attached you are to them. So my guess, my question to you, Juan, is like, when we think about the Metaverse and I don't, I just imagine like you putting on glasses and you're just looking around and ads are appearing on buildings or whatever. Like, is it gonna, how do we make sure that we don't lose connection with real people? You know what I'm saying?

Yes, yes, that's a very valid concern. I will tell you that that's also applicable to not only just the Metaverse, but almost all types of technologies out there that has been in place for many decades and even recent ones. For example, we are surrounded by technology and robots, whether we realize it or not. Pay attention. The next time you go to your favorite retail chain grocery store, pay close attention to the soda vending machines, the lottery ticket dispensing machines, the key duplicating machines, DVD rental machines, dog tag engraving booths, even cell phone recycling machines. I found the other day, the classical one was back in the 1960s and 70s, the ATM machines. They had a very rocky start. Not a lot of people were very fond of trusting their money and their transactions to a lifeless machine. Back in the day, going to the bank was a prestigious task for the day. People had relationships with people. So if you now go and look at your smartphone, now you have an ATM in the palm of your hand using an app from your bank. So just to give you a glimpse of. We have been evolving alongside with all these technologies and we have been adapting to it. And we have been as a species of human species, discerning what works and what doesn't work. And we've been as a group of individuals doing sometimes making good decisions, sometimes making very poor decisions. And the news are full of different news about technology companies not using the technology in a way that helps the human being. So I think that we have to accept the responsibility to be conscious users of it and put the right limits to it.

Yeah, no, I think, I think that's fair. And like you said, it's coming whether, I mean, you know, unless you're just a hermit and you go live in the somewhere and grow your own food and all the rest of it, you know, I mean, you're not. You're going to be, you know, in this world. So I totally get it. So, okay, so industry 4.0 as it relates to the business world, or maybe the labor force, something like that. Talk a little bit about how you see it playing out over this next five to say, 10 years if, if.

We have learned from history, Ron and I love history, love the History Channel. Companies and entire professions that resisted the wave of change became obsolete or irrelevant at the time. Innovation and early adopters made massive fortunes and stayed ahead. For example, train conductors and railroad machinists, technicians were substituted. They substituted the horse and carriage drivers and the stable support personnel. Later, automobiles, buses and airplanes were invented, leading to entirely new industries and professions such as automobile mechanics, mechanical engineering, and even aerospace engineering. I like to follow Dr. Marshall Goldsmith in the Internet. He's a world renowned business educator and coach. He said what got you here won't get you there. Change has to accelerate for us to continue to succeed.

Got it. Okay, so give me some examples. And so I mean the, I would say the, the most common concern or argument against Industry 4.0 is that robots are going to take over the world. We're going to live in the matrix and there's not going to be any, you know, any. There's. We will struggle differentiating between reality and, and non reality. So talk about that.

Imagine what happened when the first automobiles were introduced. That was very, very difficult for people to relate to these machines. Automobiles that were introduced back then were not as sophisticated as the ones that we have today. They were very noisy, they were very unreliable and they will let you stranded sometimes in the middle of the road. It wasn't until there was a race, I think it was in the 1800s that occurred in England. They call it the 1000 mile trial. It wasn't until that time in which they put to compete horses and different types of cars. Automobiles back in the day in which it was evident that the automobile was a superior way of transportation. So there's a lot of change management in the introduction of all these technologies. And just to give you a recent example of how Industry 4.0 technologies are displacing some current ways of working, Domino speaks up. They partner with a startup company named Nuro and launch a robotic delivery service in certain cities in the U.S. i think in Texas too already. And customers can opt for that option when they order the pizza and they get text messages to track the vehicle and a PIN number to retrieve their pizza box from the storage compartment of the vehicle. Other competitors such as Tesla and Waymo are also working on similar applications of self driving technology. Another startup company named PLUS is now launching autonomous trucking technology applications. It is not a stretch of the imagination, Ron, to see how these technologies will displace truck drivers and pizza delivery personnel in the years to come. I would say that's coming. So if history serves us well, only those who adopted the new technologies and adopted the new ways of working will remain relevant. Unfortunately, those who cannot learn from history are done to repeat it.

Yeah, what do you think it'll do as far as like what will unemployment be do you think in 20 years do you think it'll be higher or lower or maybe the same? I mean I'm genuinely curious because yeah, there might not be truck drivers, but maybe those folks who were driving trucks are now they're obviously doing something else because they need to earn a living. Right. So what do you think it'll do as far as that?

According to previous industrial revolutions, the knowledge gap is the biggest concern because each industrial revolution brings or reveals a knowledge gap from the previous workforce. Therefore, there is a huge opportunity for people to upskill and reskill. Upskill to different areas of skill and reskill, meaning improving the ones that they already have. So those truck drivers could become mechanics or technicians of those high tech, probably electrical driven vehicles of the future. They could upskill themselves into a new level of need for that new industry that is opening up for them. So at the end of the day, those that resist the change and say, no, I'm going to stay being what I am right now, I'm not going to move with the change, I'm not going to change, I'm not going to learn, I'm not going to apply this new knowledge. Fortunately, there's not much future for those people that decide to take that attitude.

Yeah, what about continuous improvement? Where do you, what's, what's going to happen to, you know, our movement of Lean and Six Sigma and project management and all these types of things that, that we're all passionate about.

That's one. One of my favorite questions, Ron. Because of the body of knowledge that were created or that created the modern lean Six Sigma theory and practice was compiled during the last century. The realities of the processes back then were very different from the needs and challenges of today's manufacturing operations and especially business transactional processes. If the nature of the processes themselves are changing, it is then logical to conclude that the tools and approaches to optimize and improve those processes must also change. Let me give you an example. According to McKinsey Consulting I read the other day, the rate of success of digital transformation is around 30%.

What does that mean?

Which means that the failure rate is about 70%. Yeah, that is enormous. My hypothesis for explaining this abysmal success rate, I believe, is because we CI professionals are not at the forefront of this digital transformation. These digital transformations are often driven by it. And senior leaders often see technology and automation as silver bullets to fix everything and everything that they feel as a pain point. But the reality is that their processes are inefficient and waste ridden. Therefore they expect immediate results without a fundamental transformation of the processes which, and without upskilling and reskilling their workforce to adapt to the new ways of working. And I think, Ron, that that lack of holistic intervention that is why these digital transformations are not as successful as they should be.

So are they trying to, do you think the, I mean, not to pick on IT professionals, but. You're probably right. But like is an IT professional or a leadership person, are they trying to automate waste, you think? Is that what they're really trying to do?

Well, you will be amazed how many times I've been with conversation with professionals in the CI world that complains exactly on that. They are perplexed when leaders ask them to implement a technology without even understanding the process, leaning that process, process and getting the waste out of it before. So I am a proponent of you must eliminate anything that is not value added, simplify the process, then standardize it. And then, and only then, you automate.

Yeah. So when will, do you think robots or just intelligence in general will be able to improve itself without humans?

That is a very difficult question, which I don't have an answer for. I can only wish that we put in place the controls in their, so to speak, ways to avoid that artificial intelligence, machine learning and all these new technologies get out of hand and we avoid injustices made because of those decisions that are biased in those algorithms. Right now there is a huge movement in Europe right now to set up controls and there are going to be mandated controls in anything that is related to artificial intelligence decision making. And we better be up to speed on that because they are going to be enforced by law.

Yeah, well, and you just said it, it's bias. And that's the problem in the world, right? We are all biased, right? Do our personal beliefs, our politics or whatever it might be, and you know, one side is worried that the other side is going to unfairly build in their bias into these technologies. You know, and everybody's guilty, right? No one's perfect, no one's innocent here in this, in these scenarios, because everybody, everyone is biased. So that's probably the biggest maybe concern with these, this is an intelligence, if you will, is that the intelligence is being slanted in one bias or another. You know what I'm saying?

Yes. And I am pleased to see that there is will in at least in the European Union to start working around that problem. The possibility that loan approvals or anything related to employability of a person might be negatively biased by your background, by your race, by your upbringing, by even your credit history, that's already here, as you know. But all those complex decisions may be biased and they are now putting in place legislation and a framework to avoid that in the future or to at least have a mechanism to audit those systems and they need to be approved as compliant to those rules.

Yeah. So most of the people listening right now, Juan, are continuous improvement practitioners. Not everybody, but most of them are. And so maybe as we wrap things up, like what advice do you have for the lean thinker, for the Six Sigma practitioner, for the project manager out there as it relates to Industry 4.0, should we be getting more information? Should we be learning about it? What do you think?

I believe that we need to upskill ourselves. We need to stay up to speed in what Industry 4.0 is all about and how it's going to affect our industries, whatever industries we're working with, working on. And I think that as CI professionals, we have duty to ensure that we become relevant to the digital transformation journeys of the organizations that we work with. Because right now those organizations are trying their best with the wrong approach. And we have the answer. We know we understand systems, we understand processes, we understand the interconnection between the people, the processes and the systems. And we have abilities and skills that could be useful. But because we don't understand the technology behind it, we are a bit left behind. And I think that we must hurry to stay up to speed with this so we don't become the next generation of irrelevant professionals.

Yeah, it's almost like we have to force our way in whether they like it or not. Right.

Well, we need to prove ourselves that we can help. And at this moment, because most of the CI community is not on board, it's not aware, it's not even a practitioner using these technologies in their day to day way of doing things, we are not perceived as a resource that could help them bridge that gap of 30% success rate. And I believe that we have an obligation, obligation to become better professionals in order to help them. So we have created workshop for CIA professionals to help them in that journey.

Tell us more about that.

Well, this workshop will help CIA professionals to understand and effectively apply Industry 4.0 to the practice of CI. And we have limited seats because this is delivered in a hybrid format, live, online. And there is a limit to the number of people that we can effectively teach each cohort. And if people want to know more about it, they can go visit digitalciworkshop.com and we have a treat to your audience. A unique opportunity for the Gemba Academy audience. You can use the promo code GEMBA and you will have a 25% discount of the enrollment.

Nice. And what's the website again?

Digitalciworkshop.com promo code Gemba got it.

And we're gonna we'll link to that in the in the show notes. This is episode 401 so go to gembapodcast.com look for episode four. 01. Juan, what's the best way folks want to connect with you? LinkedIn what's the best way?

Definitely LinkedIn. I'm sure that too that we will put the link in the in the show notes but detailciworkshop.com is your first stop to see what is out there to upskill your person, you personally as professional and ensure that you don't become a statistic.

Got it. Awesome. Juan. Thank you for coming on my friend. It was fun. Fun.

I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation with you, Ron.

All right, you take care.

Okay, bye bye.

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