Friday, December 28, 2018

Food wastage across the world ..

In the United States, food waste is estimated at between 30-40 percent of the food supply. This estimate, based on estimates from USDA's Economic Research Service of 31 percent food loss at the retail and consumer levels, corresponded to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010. - www.usda.gov

Per capita waste by consumers is between 95-115 kg a year in Europe and North America, while consumers in sub-Saharan Africa, south and south-eastern Asia, each throw away only 6-11 kg a year. - www.fao.org


Who are the chronic food wasters of the world ?

US and Europe are the chronic top food wasters of the world.

At the consumer end, people of Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia are most conservativem they are most responsible and waste the least in the world.

Can the world educate the governments and people of US and Europe to not waste food ? 

EPGDM - Links to some good write-ups on Lean Operations

These are links to some of the writings/readings I have done on Lean related topics over the past many years. You may find them interesting.  You can concentrate on the major tools in Lean Operations which can also be accessed from my lecture audios. (I shall keep adding interesting links soon ..)

Pl do go through the links given below to understand the concepts better ..

Thursday, December 27, 2018

ORSI conf IIT Bombay Dec 2018

Self, (ext L) Sundaravalli PhD-IIMA (centre), Mangesh PhD-IITB 
(2nd from L)
and Jayan PhD-IITB (ext right) with GURU Prof. Narayan Rangaraj 
PhD-Johns Hopkins (red shirt)
- Meeting after 18 years ,...
The student volunteers
Slowly I trekked to the main building in IITB from the Main gate, carrying with me loads of expectations. Memories of 20 years came gushing back.

On the morning of 16 Dec 2018 here I was coming straight from Mumbai airport to IITB classroom for the pre-conference tutorials. Fresh air and great expectations. True as the standards of IITB are and were, the pre-conf tutorials were excellent.  

It was great to be back at my alma mater during 16-19 December 2018 for an ORSI conf. Met my M Tech friends Sundaravally (now faculty in IIMA) and Mangesh with TCS .. Both have completed their PhD too.. Jayan Moorkanat, my 2 years PhD senior has transformed into an entrepreneur and I wish him all the best in his career. 

It was great meeting my thesis Supervisors Prof. Narayan Rangaraj (NR) and Prof. N. Hemachandra. 


 As feedback is an important aspect for growth and development, here is my brief feedback about the conference. 

Prof. Rangaraj leading the final panel discussion
1. The conf was very well managed in terms of high quality content delivery, 
2. Great heavy discussions and 
3. Very effective and proper time management. 
4. Kudos to the students cultural team for a memorable cultural evening too.

Good show by Prof. Jayendran and team for smoothly managing this conference. Wishing Jayendran more applause for future events too. Food quality and variety was great !! 

The student cultural events presentation was a class by itself. Reminded me of my IITB around '98  when we used to run around organising events and cultural evenings for the RSF.. 

With my Supervisors Prof. NR(l) and N Hemachandra (c)
There were interesting topics which I wanted to attend but happened in parallel with other sessions and hence had to miss it. 


Yes, guilty of doing OR !! (late realisaton !!)
Can we think of some strategy whereby participants could benefit from the parallel presentations, which he/she could not attend.? Some brainstorming could be done about it. 

Also one thing IITB really needs to be grateful to its alumni, is the well maintained and managed Victor Menezes Convention Centre (click here for more info on VMCC). 

Very comfortable and a perfect setting for high quality International Conferences.  

Victor Menezes, '70 Electrical engg BTech, after graduating from IITB went to MIT and retired as the Sr. VP for Citibank. He made a generous $3 million, (app INR 20 crores) which made the VMCC facility possible. Were it not for his magnanimity, VMCC would not have come up at all..   
Victor Menezes  (IITB '70) will be remembered forever ..
Thank you Sir !!

One thing that caught my attention as different from earlier times was the stress on reducing wastage. I was specifically asked beforehand through a google doc which all food sessions I will be taking, so that food waste could be minimised. Also our badges after the conference were collected so that we would not throw it around and cause an ecological problem. 

Overall the conference was well managed, had lot of high quality discussions and presentations, talks etc from experts from the field. 

Time well spent.. 

George..



Monday, December 24, 2018

Proposing a solution to the rift in Orthodox church ..

The rift between the Orthodox and Jacobite believers in the Kerala church has caused lot of pain to the practitioners of the faith. Only a consensus will work, that is what a section of the believers say. No force or litigation can solve such issues.

Click here for a pdf copy of my writing on this topic..

Can we bring peace and love back to the church ? Are we running behind material possessions or spiritual possessions ?

My earlier writing on the SC verdict .. Pl click here ..

George..

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

SCM Biennial Conference, IIM Bangalore

The 2 day Biennial Conference on Supply Chain Management at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India on 10,11 December 2018 is one of the very interesting and important conferences in South India in the field of SCM.

The theme of the Conference this year was Building Intelligent Supply Chains.  

The Conference had four keynote talks / expert sessions by industry experts and top academics in the SC field and 48 papers presented by the delegates from across the country and abroad in technical sessions spread over two days.

The expert sessions in the morning on both the days from 9.30 am to 11.30 AM were very beneficial. On the first day we had the IIM Dean Prof. Naik inaugurating the Conference  and speaking on his research and experience in the area of agri-supply chains in India and particularly in Karnataka. It was followed by an interesting talk on agri-supply chain, Rashtriya emarketing services by R Manoj, Jt Secretary to the Govt of Karnataka. Karnataka is one of the only states in the country where information helps in streamlining the agricultural operations, adding value throughout till the final sale of the produce, helping the farmers realise more returns in the long run.

The second session by Prof. Milind Sohoni from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad was interesting. He spoke on the impact of for-profit and not-for-profit philanthropy and how it could be modeled in terms of the visible and tractable outcomes to better manage funding questions of these NGOs. 

After a quick tea, the participants dispersed for six technical sessions happening on the first day, two sessions parallel on supply chains, sc metrics, ecommerce and logistics  .. I presented two papers in the logistics area, case study on Used Shipping Containers - a Maersk case study and another one on the Insolation of Kochi International Airport in sessions 3A and 3B post lunch on day 1.

The second day started with very interesting technical session on core Supply Chain Management issues by Ms. Ushasri TS of Manhattan Associates. She spoke quite eloquently as to what were the challenges the supply chain industry across the world was facing as regards visibility and variability of demand. She was talking of how it was very easy in these days of excess data floating around, to get drowned in digital lakes.

Prof. G Raghuram, Director IIM Bangalore gave a very detailed talk in his usual style with lot of facts and illustrations on improving supply chain logistics performance by incorporating the SWIFT model (Sustainability, Warehousing, ICT, Fragmentation and Transportation Infrastructure). Prof. Raghuram also discussed about the various startups in India that were active in the logistics and delivery area like RIVIGO, Delhivery, Blackbuck, Storeking, AtiMotors etc ..

The technical sessions for the second day were a bit longer from 11 to 2.30 PM and we had a late lunch after which all of us dispersed. The agri-supply chains papers which stressed more on the organic produce supply chain was very interesting, was very informative and interesting too. 

Some sad facts about Indian farmers are

1. unlike the western farmer who gets 66% of the cost of the final price charged to the customers, in the case of the Indian farmer it is just 33% ..

2. There is no support from any government to help farmers cultivate organic produce in the country by way of subsidies etc..

3. Even though it is unfair on the Father on India's Green Revolution Dr MS Swaminathan, the green revolution which he stressed so much in the 60s has now been overtaken by greed and dishonesty. Farmers and middle men are indulging in unfair practices out of greed to increase their final yield in the process, making the produce unhealthy and carcinogenic. At the same time they are unmindful of the damage to mother earth with excess dose of chemical fertilizers which is destroying the precarious ecological balance.

In was quite interesting to note in one of the papers presented how the farmers found supplying to organised retail like Tata Star Bazar, Reliance Retail, More etc was loss making to the farmer due to the exacting requirements on quality, delivery standards etc. I was having the opposite opinion all this time. It is the responsibility of the SC field in general to help farmers acquire this professionalism in such sc operations.

The sessions and discussions were of high quality. There were almost 50 papers presented at the conference and about 70+ delegates. The supporting services were very efficiently managed including lunch, snacks etc. I too got to chair one of the sessions on Logistics (2B).

Overall the conference was a great value-add. It has motivated me to be more active on this learning and presenting circuit across different Institutes in the country and abroad. I wish to thank the organisers and faculty of the Operations area of IIM Bangalore profusely for making this conference happen and making it a great success too.

George..

Saturday, December 08, 2018

A peep into our future .. (from the Internet)

☆  ☆  ☆  ☆  ☆ 
Some Very Interesting Predictions: This is how our is  going to be like .. Let's be prepared for it .. 

1-Auto repair shops will go away. 

2-A gasoline engine has 20,000 individual parts. An electrical motor has 20. Electric cars are sold with lifetime guarantees and are only repaired by dealers. It takes only 10 minutes to remove and replace an electric motor.

3-Faulty electric motors are not repaired in the dealership but are sent to a regional repair shop that repairs them with robots.

4-Your electric motor malfunction light goes on, so you drive up to what looks like a Jiffy-auto wash, and your car is towed through while you have a cup of coffee and out comes your car with a new electric motor!

5-Gas stations will go away.

6-Parking meters will be replaced by meters that dispense electricity.  Companies will install electrical recharging stations; in fact, they've already started.

7-Most (smart) major auto mfgs have already designated money to start building new plants that only build electric cars. 

8-Coal industries will go away. Gasoline/oil companies will go away.  Drilling for oil will stop. So say goodbye to OPEC!

9-Homes will produce and store more electrical energy during the day and then they use and will sell it back to the grid. The grid stores it and dispenses it to industries that are high electricity users. Has anybody seen the Tesla roof?

10-A baby of today will only see personal cars in museums. FUTURE is approaching faster than most of us can handle.

11-In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt. Who would have thought of that ever happening?

12-What happened to Kodak and Polaroid will happen in a lot of industries in the next  5-10 years … and most people don't see it coming.

13-Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later, you would never take pictures on  film again? With today's smart phones, who even has a camera these days?

14-Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. First ones only had  10,000 pixels, but followed Moore's law.  So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a time, before it became way superior and became mainstream in only a few short years.

15-It will now happen again (but much faster) with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs.

16-Forget the book, "Future Shock", welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution.

17-Software has disrupted and will continue to disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

18-UBER is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now  the biggest taxi company in the world! Ask any taxi driver if they saw that coming.

19-Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.   Ask Hilton Hotels if they saw that coming. 

20-Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world.
This year, a computer beat the best Go-player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

21-In the USA, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of  IBM's Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for right now, the basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So, if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future, (what a thought!) only omniscient specialists will remain.

22-Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, its 4 times more accurate than human nurses.

23-Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

24-Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars are already here. In the next 2 years, the entire industry will start to be disrupted. You won't want to own a car anymore as you will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination.

25-You will not need to park it you will only pay for the driven distance and you can be productive while driving. The very young children of today will never get a driver's license and will never own a car.

26-This will change our cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.

27-About 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide including distracted or drunk driving. We now have one accident every 60k miles; with autonomous driving that will drop to 1 accident in 6 million miles. That will save a million lives plus worldwide each year. 

28-Most traditional car companies will doubtless become bankrupt. Traditional car companies will try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels.

29-Look at what Volvo is doing right now; no more internal combustions engines in their vehicles starting this year with the 2019 models, using all electric or hybrid only, with the intent of phasing out hybrid models.

30-Many engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; are completely terrified of Tesla and so they should be. Look at all the companies offering all electric vehicles. That was unheard of, only a few years ago.

31-Insurance companies will have massive trouble because, without accidents, the costs will become cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

32-Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move farther away to live in a more beautiful or affordable neighborhood.

33-Electric cars will become mainstream about 2030. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity.

34-Cities will have much cleaner air as well. (Can we start in Los Angeles, please?)

35-Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean.

36-Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 yrs, but you can now see the burgeoning impact.  And it's just getting ramped up.

37-Fossil energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that simply cannot continue - technology will take care of that strategy.

38-Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies who will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it.  It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any Disease. There are dozens of phone apps out there right now for health purposes.

WELCOME TO TOMORROW – it actually arrived a few years ago.  (From the Internet)

Thursday, December 06, 2018

Parukutty Nethyaramma - Most able administrator of Kerala ..

Parukutty Nethyaramma
Somehow, I had never heard of this courageous lady ruler of Kochi / Thrissur,  Parukutty Nethyarammma, even though I was in Palghat / Thrissur / Kochi area for all of my schooling and initial college  .. 

Great woman !!  Click here for an article on Parukutty Nethyaramma ..

We, the present people of Kerala owe a lot to these great leaders for their ability and smartness around 150 years back ..

The British govt in their rule in India recognised the effots of many individuals (very few Indians, 13 to be precise) and awarded them the honour and medal of Kaiser-i-Hind gold medal. Parukutty Nethyaramma .. 32 Indians have received Kaiser-i-Hind of unknown grade, including the Father of our Nation, Mahatma Gandhi.

Click here for a Malayalam version of a video speech on Parukutty Nethyaaramma by Dr Alexander Jacob, IPS.

My sister also completed her education from the land of such noble women ! Quality speaks !! 

George .. 

Monday, December 03, 2018

Sentinelese and the history of humanity


Madhumala with Jarawa tribe in Andaman 
Are the Sentinelese, who are presently being branded as very violent, reminding us of our ancestors 60,000 years back who migrated out of Africa, the cradle of human civilisation ?? We know of our ancestors not more than 10,000 years back. 

The Sentinelese tribals, their traditions, lifestyle, beliefs and culture must be preserved by all means as they are our sole opportunity along with Jarawa tribe to understand how our ancestors lived and migrated to different parts of the world out of Africa. 
Death of US missionary John Chau has again kindled global interest in knowing our common anthropological history.  

On Jan 4 1991 when a researcher from Archeological Society of India , Madhumala Chattopadhyay was the first woman to establish contact with the Sentinelese in North Sentinelese islands in Andamans located 1200 km from Indian mainland, nobody knew she was making history !!

The outside world would like to know the following facts and much more..
1. what is inside the 60 sqkm island covered with thick vegetation ?
2. Where do the elderly of the sentinelese live ?  
3. How many of them are in total in the island 60 sqkm in area and 111 m above MSL ? 
4. What is their lifestyle ? 
5. Where do they bury their dead ? 
6. What are their customs, beliefs and rituals ?
7. Do they have any records of past events with them ?  
8. How many times have outside race people come there ? 
9. What is the average life span of these people, the diseases if any they suffer from etc
10. Where and how do they stay ? 
Yual Noah Harari
11. Do they have social systems like marriage etc ?
There are thousands and thousands of such questions we would like to know about their style of living ..  Anthropologists the world over would now be interested in knowing more about these tribals to learn more about how humans have evolved over the years ? Will these revelations point to the end of organised religion in the world ?

Will the Jewish Professor Yual Hariri have to rewrite the history of mankind ?

george..

George .

Saturday, December 01, 2018

Lean Six sigma tools ..

Lean: Kaizen, Value Stream Process Mapping, 5s, Kanban, Error Proofing, Productive Maintenance, Set Up Time Reduction, Reduce Lot Sizes, Line Balancing, Schedule Leveling, Standardized work, and Visual Management.

Six Sigma: Recognize, Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control, Standardize, and Integrate.

Lean six sigma organizes lean and six sigma to cut production costs, improve quality, speed up, stay competitive, and save money. From six sigma they gain the reduced variation on parts. Also, lean focuses on saving money for the company by focusing on the types of waste and how to reduce the waste. The two coming into lean six sigma to better each other creating a well balanced and organized solution to save money and produce better parts consistently.

Thursday, November 29, 2018

CPR training at Alliance U by Narayana Hrudayalaya

With Dr. Niharika Duggal from NH ..
On the 28 Nov 2018 in Alliance University, Bangalore, along with other faculty members, staff and students, we were fortunate enough to acquire an additional professional qualification, a qualified cardiac emergency professional certificate from the world's largest cardiac care hospital, Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangalore

It has helped us learn to administer Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), and learn the use of the Automated External Defibrillator (AED) - to manually preserve intact human brain functions and help revive a fibrillating heart in the event of a cardiac arrest.

Once you find a patient unconscious, within 10-15 seconds  you start CPR .. It tells us how important is CPR to regain normal brain functioning and save a life !!

All artery blocks can lead to cardiac arrest while all cardiac arrests may not be due to artery blocks.

In all cardiac arrest the first seven and a half minutes is most crucial and precious. The patient should be given immediate first aid in the first seven and a half minutes else it may result in severe brain damage because of the blockage of oxygen to the brain cells.

It was felt that all faculty should be compulsorily going thru this course. The training involved  working on a human dummy.
Giving chest compressions on the mannequin

Click here for a video on how to carry out a CPR ..

The steps in a CPR cycle are

1. call for help and ask them to get an ambulance to take the patient to the hospital
2. get the patient to lie down on a flat floor
3. check for pulse in the carotid artery (which is in your neck by the side of the windpipe), you need to do this in maximum 5-7 seconds ..
4. Kneel next to the person and give (30 times) chest compressions with both hands at the centre of the chest (two finger width away from the breastbone) to a depth more than 5 cm, not more than 6 cms. (Sometimes rib bones do break, but it is temporary and will naturally heal considering that you are saving the patient from a permanent brain damage or even loss of life, if not treated  on time)
5. raise the chin (to open the air-pipe to take in the exhalations we give)
6. Give two quick breaths exhalations to the patient's mouth, inhaling well (our inhalations of air from our surroundings have roughly 18% Oxygen and our exhalations have approximately 15% Oxygen, which is good enough to preserve the patient's brain functions till professional medical help arrives).

Repeat this cycle (30 compressions + 2 exhalations) as many times till emergency help arrives. If an extra hand is available for help. do the chest compressions and the exhalations alternatively so that no one is tired and the treatment can be fast and effective.

CPR in Adults: Positioning Your Hands for Chest Compressions
1. Kneel next to the person. 
Use your fingers to locate the end of the person's breastbone, where the ribs come together. 
3. Place two fingers at the tip of the breastbone. 
4. Place the heel of the other hand right above your fingers (on the side closest to the person's face). 
5. Use both hands to give chest compressions.  - nih.gov

The Automated External Defibrillator (AED) instrument is used to give shock to a fibrillating heart (a fibrillating heart just vibrates but does not pump blood to the arteries) and get it running and pumping blood. It has got electrodes fitted to the body of the patient on the right chest at the top and below the left breast on the sides. The electric shock pumps in about 200 Joules of energy thru shock to the patients chest to revive the heart and bring back the rhythm.
An automated external defibrillator (AED) is a portable device that checks the heart rhythm. If needed, it can send an electric shock to the heart to try to restore a normal rhythm. AEDs are used to treat sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). SCA is a condition in which the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. - courtesy  nih.gov                                      
Its good to have an AED in the campus or office, costs about Rs 1.5 lakhs. All 108 ambulance in India have got an AED ..

Its a great idea for all faculty members in educational institutions to have this training. It cost us only INR 200/- for this high quality training we got from doctors and staff from Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangalore.

It is a skill one needs to possess to be of help to others in society, either in a bus, train, flight, home, college, supermarket etc,.

One never knows when a cardiac arrest can affect anybody in society, it is always better to be prepared to act.

Click here for another good CPR tutorial ..

George..

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Move out of your comfort zone ..

When my friend sent me this pic this morning, little did I know how valid and worthy it was, till I gave it a second look.

How many of us waste our lives, being only in the comfort zone and enjoying our life ? We are busy making money or securing our future life with bigger and bigger houses or vehicles, forgetting how we impoverish our lives in the process, forgetting how much a burden we become to our family, our children and near and dear and friends in our family and society.

“The comfort zone is a psychological state in which one feels familiar, safe, at ease, and secure. You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone.” ― Roy T. Bennett

Let our aim in life not to be in the comfort zone and accumulate riches, but to go out into the fear zone, overcome the fears, delve into the learning zone, learn new things, concepts, read and acquire knowledge and finally enter the fourth zone of growth.

“Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone.” ― Shannon L. Alder

Looking for comforts in your life is only going to take you backward and spoil you and your immediate family. Take challenges, overcome the fear, learn and grow. In the process, we will find that our lives are more complete, more satisfying and more beneficial to the people around us than to us individually.

george.

Friday, November 16, 2018

What are superbugs and how can we stop getting infected by them ?

Simply speaking Superbugs are bacteria that have over time acquired immunity over prescribed strong antibiotics. As a matter of fact, antibiotics discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 and ever since mankind has used this medical treatment technique to fight infections and cure ourselves. But the old antibiotics have become ineffective over time, meaning microbes in the human body and the environment have acquired resistance against them 


By 2030 almost 10 million people world over would succumb to the Superbug every year. This will turn out to be a worse calamity than cancer.

What concerted effort can global bodies do to stop the scourge of these superbugs ?

regards
George


EPGDM project - what is expected from the student project ..

The directions for Project work in the Lean Operations area in Alliance Uty is this - 

the project should look at any operational issue / problem from the industry area and should demonstrate learned application of Lean Operations principles and tools to achieve improvement in value and reduction of waste. 

The application areas could be from the batch processing area, workplace improvement, effective inventory control and management, waste reduction, application of tools like 5S, FMEA, PDCA cycle, Kaizen, Kanban, Pull type of production, Pokayoke, Jidoka, Keiretsu, Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and Operational Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) etc..

The dissertation should demonstrate the use and application of tools in industrial area problems and make a concerted effort at eliminating wastes and improving value to the end customer.

george..

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Maintenance Metrics ..

Click here for the link 

MTTR - Mean Time to Recovery / Mean Time to Repair

MTBF - Mean Time between Failure

MTTF - Mean Time to Repair 

Bath tub curve ..

Sunday, November 11, 2018

Swedish Academy of Sciences

Press release from the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences - (on awarding Economics Nobel prizes for 2018)

At its heart, economics deals with the management of scarce resources. Nature dictates the main constraints on economic growth and our knowledge determines how well we deal with these constraints. This year's Laureates William Nordhaus and Paul Romer have significantly broadened the scope of economic analysis by constructing models that explain how the market economy interacts with nature and knowledge. 
Technological change – Romer demonstrates how knowledge can function as a driver of long-term economic growth. When annual economic growth of a few per cent accumulates over decades, it transforms people's lives. Previous macroeconomic research had emphasised technological innovation as the primary driver of economic growth, but had not modelled how economic decisions and market conditions determine the creation of new technologies. Paul Romer solved this problem by demonstrating how economic forces govern the willingness of firms to produce new ideas and innovations. 
Romer's solution, which was published in 1990, laid the foundation of what is now called endogenous growth theory. The theory is both conceptual and practical, as it explains how ideas are different to other goods and require specific conditions to thrive in a market. Romer's theory has generated vast amounts of new research into the regulations and policies that encourage new ideas and long-term prosperity. 
Climate change – Nordhaus' findings deal with interactions between society and nature. Nordhaus decided to work on this topic in the 1970s, as scientists had become increasingly worried about the combustion of fossil fuel resulting in a warmer climate. In the mid-1990s, he became the first person to create an integrated assessment model, i.e. a quantitative model that describes the global interplay between the economy and the climate. His model integrates theories and empirical results from physics, chemistry and economics. Nordhaus' model is now widely spread and is used to simulate how the eco- nomy and the climate co-evolve. It is used to examine the consequences of climate policy interventions, for example carbon taxes. 
The contributions of Paul Romer and William Nordhaus are methodological, providing us with fundamental insights into the causes and consequences of technological innovation and climate change. This year's Laureates do not deliver conclusive answers, but their findings have brought us considerably closer to answering the question of how we can achieve sustained and sustainable global economic growth.

From the author :

The economic growth models of yesteryears have turned tipsy turvy with influence of innovation, technology and awareness of sustainability models, post the onset of Industrial revolution from 1700s.

While the contemporary global economic giants, China with single party Communist rule, US with a capitalistic democracy and India with a socialistic democracy try to define global economic change, we need to have more clear models including innovation, technology and sustainability to direct human society's growth and development in the coming years .. 🙏🙏

George ..

Saturday, November 10, 2018

Diwali pollution across India 2018

The people staying in New Delhi, the capital city are very fortunate these days.

They get the cleanest air in the country with an Air Quality Index of average 450 and max 999 when the permissible safety limits are 0-50 ..

Particulate Matter (PM2.5) 2.5 micron size is 534 and PM10 at 686 .. ie. app 10x the safe limits ..

What a lucky group of people the citizens of New Delhi are, great achievers 👍👍👏👏 

Even with the dirtiest air in the world, they are living happily and with good health, though we are really unaware of the harmful effects of PM2.5 on humans .. 

https://aqicn.org/city/delhi/

PM 2.5 levels (micrograms/Cu.m.) other major Indian cities .. (9 Nov 2018, 10 AM for comparison..)

Kochi 30
Bangalore 136
Chennai 160
Hyderabad 162
Mumbai 214
Kolkata 247
Pune 409
Ahmedabad not available

There was a concerted effort from the Supreme court this year  2018 regarding burning of fireworks only on Diwali day from 8 to 10 pm. It is a great start.  Next year there will be more awareness and pollution levels are bound to come down.  

George 

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

A technological marvel - the 55 km Zhuhai - Hong Kong bridge road ..

The longest bridge in the world, the 55 km long bridge connecting the Chinese port city of Zhuhai to Hong Kong opened on Monday to the world.  Xhuhai Hong Kong bridge. Built at a cost of $20 billion, it is said to boost Chinese and HongKong economies by as much as one trillion US$ by 2025. The 7 km long underwater passage at a depth of 44 m enables free passage of ships through the water above. 

This 55 km long, $20 billion bridge reduces travel between mainland China and Hong Kong from 4 to half an hour.

China has taken up this technological marvel and now the need for air travel reduces between the two cities. Can we effectively use such massive projects to ease transportation across islands ? 

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Case Study methodology workshop from IESE


It was really nice to listen to a Marketing Professor from IESE, Barcelona, Spain (2017 Global rank #10) speak and engage the aydience about the Case Study Method and go through a live case study session at The Taj Westend in Bangalore yesterday 20 October 2018 at 4 PM. It was an invited audience, as I got the invite I too attended the session.

IESE Barcelona Spain
The case was about the expansion strategy of an organisation which was going through tough times. The protagonist was an employee who had joined the organisation and was facing tough times as the organisation was getting ready to wind up.  

The students, about 12 of them, had already read the case which was emailed to them. They had their own notings and comments made on the case sheets. Professor was giving the session to potential aspirants to IESE. 

At the start the Professor
1. asked the students broadly what the case was about, the issue behind the case. His strategy was to first get the participants come up with their comments about the case and then issues of the case they find needs urgent attention which needs to be sorted out. The first 30 minutes, the Prof tried to get different facets and perspectives of the case from the participants. He noted all these points on the two white boards kept at the front on both sides of the audience facing them.
2. Then he tried putting issues which he felt were important and elicited their responses.. 
3. When someone gave a slightly interesting twist to the case, he latched onto it and got more clarity and brought in the different perspectives to the discussion.  Next what he brought in was the solution. 
4. The Professor then asked the participants what they thought would be possible solutions and listed them on the board for all to see. 
5. Since the case was written by the same Professor, towards the end of the case, he spoke of how he interacted with the three promoters of the company and told what each of them felt about the organisation and it's future. 

Harvard Business School, Boston
The discussion went on for about 45 minutes when almost all participants took part in it. At the beginning, not all were with the Professor at the same frequency and bandwidth but towards the end, they were all in unison with the different strategies they needed to take to solve the problem.

The data of the organisation which was noted in the appendices to the case, was also used in the case to get the students to know how to arrive at the facts of the case from the data given. The most interesting point for the students the Prof made was regarding the fact that there are no final right and wrong answers to the case. Once the student gets to know the different aspects and perspectives of the case, it is up to them to make the final decision which they feel right. Even though he tried to play a video case, because of some hitches with his laptop, it was not possible. 

Once these students go into the wide world of global business and are faced with such instances of decision making, these out-of-the-box thinking, discussions and classroom training helps them a lot. 

A seminar hall lecture in session at Alliance U
If a student has read the case well, completed some peer discussions, he/she can bring one or two perspectives of the case. Imagine in a class of 60 or 70, imagine the richness of the discussions !! Each of the five IESE classes in a year are 70 strong. A friend of mine on an executive program in Harvard Business School, the leaders of employing the case study pedagogy in business schools, used to say how each of the top executives in her 40 strong class used to bring three to four perspectives of each case, from their vast experience, and how in the classroom discussion it used to be just ideas and ideas and deep interesting discussions in the Harvard classrooms.

Thus it is imperative, binding, mandatory and inescapable that students read the case well and prepare their personal notes before they start the discussion for an enriching, reinforced learning experience !!

Modeled on the lines of Harvard Business School, IESE on an average gets the students to go through almost 400 cases in their 19 month program at Barcelona. In between the 3 month internship after the first year which they get to do in other top bschools of the world adds value to the students' exposure.

This exposure and further discussion with the Professor over tea on further nuances of the case like bringing in discussions about sustainability, global climate change impact on the business, prospects of global manufacturing in China etc has just reinforced my thoughts that case study method is the best way to teach some advanced topics in Management. Overall the case discussion was high quality and the learning from the case study was high quality.

India has excellent student resources but somewhere in our development and rich culture of ten thousand years, we missed the industrial and technology bus and are languishing now in low levels of industrial and societal development. China too faced a similar situation prior to 1979 before it opened its economy to the outside world. Lets be positive that our youngsters are ready and willing to  take humanity to greater levels of growth and development in the coming years. My basic aim is to see the case study pedagogy spread more extensively and effectively in Alliance University School of Business at Bangalore to help raise it to the same league of IESE and otheer top Bschools of the world in the next couple of years.

George

Thursday, October 18, 2018

Why Latex ..

Why Latex ??


Latex is an interesting document preparation system in wide use in the scientific and technological world.


Click here for a Latex Tutorial which I co-authored with Prof. Henri Gavin of UNC.


Latex is the defacto communication software of the scientific and management world.


george ..



Monday, October 15, 2018

Internet and Block Chain - foundational technologies


No recent management article is complete without a mention of the benefits of blockchain that is going to change the field of secure and transparent transactions around the world.

TCP/IP and the Internet added great economic value to society by lowering the cost of connections ..
Block chains are going to add great economic value to society by lowering the cost of transactions 

- Prof. Marco Iansiti and Prof. Karim Lakhani, The truth about Blockchain, HBR Jan'17, 
Everybody who is somebody tries to talk about Blockchain, but when probed deep, nobody knows much regarding Blockchain other than what it can do or what is its potential and how it can change the world of transactions for ever.

Like the Internet as a foundational technology, changed the landscape of connections around the world forever starting with the DARPA Labs experiment in 1973 connecting DARPA labs to major  academic institutions across the US, Blockchain too is giving all promise and has the potential to be a foundational technology which would change the way humans transact forever. As different from disruptive and innovative technologies, these foundational technologies hold the promise of changing the foundations of our economic and social systems, of understanding of how to carry out safe and secure connections, communications and transactions.

What is a Blockchain ?
A blockchain, originally block chain, is a growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. By design, a blockchain is resistant to modification of the data.- Wikipedia
In this world we come across lot of daily transactions, carry out different processes, make numerous payments, sign contracts and so on. When digitised all these processes and steps carry their own digital signature.  

If we could digitally use this signature of different processes and transactions, it becomes easy to transact and store them for future validation. By doing so, we are indeed building one of the world's most trusted and secure transactions processing system.

For an  interesting video on blockchain , click here ..

Saturday, October 13, 2018

Transitioning from old to new technologies ..

Why are new technologies finding it challenging to get accepted or overtake conventional incumbent technologies ?

Why are ecosystems of technologies and it's challenges of great importance, even as much or more than the technology itself, while deciding on the acceptance of new technology or the extension of use of old technology. For example hybrid cars with conventional IC engine cars or magnetic memory with solid-state memory .. 

An Insightful HBR article from professors from Dartmouth Tuck School of Business and Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business .. One of the top 10 HBR articles of 2017-18 .. This free online version link has an excellent explanatory video too .. 


George

Thursday, October 11, 2018

Attn : Jeff Bezos .. The extremely high Carbon Footprint of Amazon packaging in India ..

Most of the people have this strange behaviour of complimenting others and organisations when  they observe them doing good either for the society and environment or for the final customer. Of late the customers of Amazon in India have been floored by the packaging of goods they have been receiving from Amazon India. It is definitely high class, high quality, safe, reliable and durable .. Durability - that is what is troubling them and other quality and environment-conscious customers ..
The extra-strong and sturdy AMAZON packaging, who is paying for it ..
The customer or Amazon ?

How can Amazon India deliver more value to their customers in terms of packaging ? Is the customer delight Amazon India is presently delivering to the customer being misconstrued by the customer as an overkill and an affront to the environment ?

Is there a growing concern at the Carbon footprint of the packaging materials used by Amazon ?

Some useful suggestions to Amazon global. (For Jeff Bezos)

  • Please reduce the heavy packing Amazon uses to deliver products to the customer. Optimising packing quality, dependability and durability to match the value of goods being delivered !!
  • Reduce the mismatch between packing box volume and delivered items, smaller items should be delivered in smaller boxes, particularly in the case of Amazon pantry. Try to reduce the number of shipments too ..
  • Amazon's packing materials are very durable and strong, customers don't feel like disposing them and store it for future use at homes
  • The value add Amazon deliver is not only for the materials they supply, but also in the quality and reliability of the delivery mechanism. This no doubt, brings extreme customer delight !
  • The Indian customers are equally concerned about the "damage Amazon does to the environment" in it's over-obsession to serve the customer, while forgetting the damage it does to the environment. Use optimal packing modes
  • With the fear of having to stock such high quality packing material at home or disposing them safely, the customers are not sure how soon one will find fill the homes filled with packing material and make customers re-think their personal e-commerce strategy and force them to go back to old methods of brick-and-mortar shopping - all for the sake of the environment 
  • Amazon India should develop a reverse logistics strategy (at the delivery time itself) of collecting undamaged packaging material which could be used for future packaging to other customers.
  • Amazon India can consider developing an extra performance metric of Packaging turns, like inventory turns. Try to aim for a value of 3 and more, the value of which signifies the number of times the same packaging could be used to serve goods to customers.  Else Amazon India is  doing a great disservice to the environment. 
  • The Indian customers wish to understand and analyse the cradle-to-grave account of Amazon packaging material to ensure the customers are not damaging the environment by shopping at Amazon.

The typical and time-tested approach of the world's oldest civilization from India to resource consumption and  to all aspects of life has been to have an optimising mind-set. Not of the Jugaad type, but of the useful, reusable, recyclable and environment friendly product type.

Not sure, but will a deviation from this mindset potentially damage the brand image of Amazon in India in the long run ??

George..

Tools in effective teaching.

Here are 10 teaching strategies for effectively teaching MBA students different concepts of Operations: 1. Case Study Analysis:    - Use rea...

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