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
A train of thoughts and writings on development, technology and the economy focusing on the socio-techno-economic-cultural surge of developing economies to regain and partake in leadership of the world. Written by George Easaw, member of the faculty of Business Administration of Allliance University, Bangalore, India. (This is purely an academic site, no commercial use is allowed. Photography rights lie with the respective organisations). Mention credits as needed.
Friday, December 28, 2018
Food wastage across the world ..
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
EPGDM - Links to some good write-ups on Lean Operations
Pl do go through the links given below to understand the concepts better ..
Click here for link 10.
Click here for link 14.
Hope you find these links extremely beneficial..
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 |
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.
Prof. Rangaraj leading the final panel discussion |
With my Supervisors Prof. NR(l) and N Hemachandra (c) |
Yes, guilty of doing OR !! (late realisaton !!) |
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 ..
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 ..
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
SCM Biennial Conference, IIM Bangalore
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.
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 ..
Some sad facts about Indian farmers are1. 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.
Saturday, December 08, 2018
A peep into our future .. (from the Internet)
Thursday, December 06, 2018
Parukutty Nethyaramma - Most able administrator of Kerala ..
Parukutty Nethyaramma |
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.
Monday, December 03, 2018
Sentinelese and the history of humanity
Madhumala with Jarawa tribe in Andaman |
Click here for an interesting video on the Sentinel tribe .. SENTINELESE : World's Most Isolated Tribe:
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 ?
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 ?11. Do they have social systems like marriage etc ?
Yual Noah Harari
Will the Jewish Professor Yual Hariri have to rewrite the history of mankind ?
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 .. |
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.
1. Kneel next to the person.
2 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
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.govIts 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..
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Move out of your comfort zone ..
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 ?
EPGDM project - what is expected from the student project ..
Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Maintenance Metrics ..
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Swedish Academy of Sciences
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
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 ..
https://aqicn.org/city/delhi/
Kochi 30
Bangalore 136
Chennai 160
Hyderabad 162
Mumbai 214
Kolkata 247
Pune 409
Ahmedabad not available
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
A technological marvel - the 55 km Zhuhai - Hong Kong bridge road ..
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 |
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..
Harvard Business School, Boston |
A seminar hall lecture in session at Alliance U |
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 !!
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,
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.- WikipediaIn 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 ..
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Attn : Jeff Bezos .. The extremely high Carbon Footprint of Amazon packaging in India ..
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 ??
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