Circular economy - benefits and challenges

Frequently we hear of circular economy whenever there is a talk or discussion on sustainability.  

What exactly is circular economy?

A circular economy (often referred to simply as "circularity") is an economic system aimed at eliminating waste and the continual use of resources. Circular systems employ reuse, sharing, repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing and recycling to create a closed-loop system, minimising the use of resource inputs and the creation of waste, pollution and carbon emissions - 

Geissdoerfer, Martin; Savaget, Paulo; Bocken, Nancy M. P.; Hultink, Erik Jan (2017-02-01). "The Circular Economy – A new sustainability paradigm?". Journal of Cleaner Production. 143: 757–768.

The most striking aspects of a circular economy are the following points

• less resource consuming and less taxing on the environment
  
• eliminating waste, resulting in lower costs, more environment friendly
  
• continual use of resources to the best extent possible

Circular economy helps achieve this by 

• reducing
• reusing
• recycling 
• sharing
• repairing
• refurbishment
• remanufacturing

There is another way of aiding the circular economy, be refusing usage of products or processes, called REFUSE. 

In other words,

the 6 Rs of environmental sustainability are 

• Refuse
• Reduce
• Reform
  
• Reuse 
• Re-engineer and 
• Recycle. 

What is the role played by improved design (reform) in the circular economy ? Improved design of process, materials, machines etc ensures there is optimal use of resources, less energy spent on conversion and less waste as output.  Development of new materials and technology can aid in lesser use of critical, precious and perishable natural resources.

 

While researching on how businesses are accepting and progreessing in meeting  the circular economy challenges, I chanced upon this paper .Click here for a 2016 HBR document.

 

The three ways by which businesses can benefit from the circular economy is by 

• practicing more closed loop recycling
• renting products and services instead of selling (called servitization)
  
• exploring ways to lengthen and widen use of products 

Major organisations around the world are taking the lead deploying these steps and are also in turn encouraging and preferring other organisations that support these circular economy measures. Renault is a great organisation that is standing for circular economy measures. Toyota by practicing lean, is aiding circular economy by reducing waste, of materials, of effort, of time and so on. 

Click here for a good youtube video on the circular economy ..

George..

Why do western countries want to hide their Covid Case Fatality Ratios ?

Case Fatality Ratio, (CFR), especially in the case of a world wide pandemic, is the ratio of number of deaths to the total numbers infected.

Covid 19 CFR of continents (from worldometer data, 28 August, 2020)

 

Europe               5.9%

North America   3.7%

South America   3.2%

Africa                  2.4%

Australia             2.3%

Asia                     2%.

US has Covid CFR of 3.1% while for India it is 1.8%. 

 

It is surprising to find the developed countries of Europe and US are suffering maximum casualties. But why ??  Shameful on the medical community of these countries ..

Why are western governments and pharma companies downplaying these crucial data ? Is it out of shame and fear of reprisal from their own people? Or the fact that other countries of the world would look down on these countries for hiding their fatality data during Covid ?

President Trump was saying that he was going to reduce the testing, to bring down these numbers and classify some of the Covid deaths as normal deaths, but eventually the pressure would rise and untruths will be uncovered. 

Why is it that ancient eastern cultures and civilizations have taken the lead in critical healthcare and left the economically developed western countries suffer the ignominy of poor healthcare and gasping for breath?

There is another argument that democracies will suffer more deaths than dictatorships or oligarchies .. But why ?

 

The coming days will expose more of these truths. 

George 

How a blockchain transaction happens ..

In this small example given below, involving the retailer, supplier an the bank providing the finance, it is clear to understand how a simple transaction between retailer, supplier and bank which does not get captured and is lost in conventional systems is safely and securely captured in digital domain and stored for future retrieval in the case of blockchain. 

In the example Blockchain transaction given below, we find it results in almost 10 individual transactions which would otherwise have got lost or not stored and accessed, frequently leading to rither erroneous interpretation, recording or retrieval.

When we work with a blockchain ledger application, each of the transaction is recorded and interpreted correctly by the different parties to give the correct output, irrespective of the volume or the time span of the transactions, often leading to improved accuracy, trust and understanding between partners, facilitated by technology.

The security given by the immutability of transactional records, besides enabling faster, invisible traceable transactions is what leads to the success of Blockchain based transactions in the future. 

 

Crypto currency as one Blockchain application, is efficient, fast and secure  often leading to illegal transactions that beats the regulator's eyes. This is also one of the reasons why Crypto currencies are yet to be legal tender in India and other nations of the world. The author tried to procure some cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but because of the fact that it is illegal in India to dabble in cryptocurrency, some caution is being exercised. 

 

The other advantages the world is going to enjoy are the lack of regulations, absence of bureaucracy and elimination of middle men. Governments will become non-entities. The politicians who live off people's emotions and feelings, will suddenly find they are replaceable and mortal.

If I am interested in buying a vehicle, I can straightaway contact the manufacturer, convey my specifications, transfer the money. The manufacturer would get in touch with transporters and logistics people who would ensure the vehicle reaches the customer premises in as short time as possible, all the time ensuring the integrity and sanctity of financial and material transactions.

The amount of data safely processed is bound to be huge, but the availability of faster processors and high capacity data storage systems would make this task very manageable and tracta ble.

In the example of a healthcare application, the vital records of the patient who visits the doctor,  the medicines prescribed,  the dosages, the pharmacy records of expiry date of medicine, batch no., if admitted  the ward no, procedures undergone, details of nurses who attended on the patient, date of release from hospital etc are recorded. Since the transactional records from other patients are also getting recorded and updated in real-time, it is difficult to tamper with individual records, thereby improving the transactional integrity of the process as a whole. 

George..

How Reverse Innovation is helping the Western world to combat Covid ..

In one of the startling facts of the Covid infections around the developed worlds of Europe and North America, records from www.worldometer.com, in comparison to the world, it is found that 40 % of global Covid infections, 10.5 million of 24.4 million globally were from Europe and North America, while Europe and North America constitute just 1.3 billion (17%) of the global population of 7.8 billion. 

17% of global population accounting for 40% of Covid infections and the rest 83 % of global population accounting for the other 60% of Covid infections, conveys a strong point that, the West has failed, though not miserably, but to a great extent in containing the global pandemic.

This must be what is a clear expression of a successful Covid containment strategy for the rest of the world as compared to Europe and North America. What could have been the reasons for major Covid spread in Europe and North America while it was within manageable limits for the rest 83% of the world population.

The author while researching this found an HBR article (click here) on this topic which stated that some of the Reverse Innovation concepts have been applied by the hospital in Europe and North America in containing Covid. The pressurised Covid testing booth innovation from Yangji hospital in South Korea, negative pressure sanitised booths for the patients while the medical professional without PPE equipment are able to test on the patients, keeping costs low and ensuring high turnover, with this process taking barely few minutes compared to the earlier procedure of sanitising rooms and replacement of PPE, leading to lot of lost time and high costs for testing in  Europe and North America.

The successful ways by which African countries were able to contain the spread of the virus by contact tracing and exercising control over these contacts, asking them to go for institutional or home quarantine, helped them use manpower to contain the spread effectively. Europe and North America were in the dark on how to effectively prevent the virus spread. 

These were two techniques used effectively by the eastern world to contain the deaths and the spread of the virus which the western world can learn from, that leads us to the concept of Reverse Innovation.  

Reverse Innovation, as propounded by Prof. Vijay Govindarajan of the Tuck School of Business, is the origin and spread of low cost, effective innovation from the eastern world to the western world, instead of the other way around, as had been happening over the past couple of centuries starting with the Industrial Revolution from the seventeenth century.

Hope many more reverse innovations will happen this time in the case of the Covid infection and benefit the world as a whole.

Picture courtesy Berger-helmchen.com

George..

How to work on Linux from a USB ?

How to work on Gnu/Linux on USB ?

Some of us may not have had the opportunity to work on Gnu/Linux, irrespective of the fact that Android OS on our smartphones (74% of all global smartphones) is Gnu/Linux based OS. Almost 99% of all Fortune 500 companies use Gnu/Linux in their daily operations like data processing, Internet web server software etc. 

If you use Google, Facebook, Youtube, Whatapp or LinkedIn, you are already a hardcore Linux fan !! This tutorial is to help you start working on Gnu/Linux on a desktop or laptop to enjoy it's ease of use and simplicity...

Gnu/Linux OS can be set up on your ordinary windows based desktop PC or laptop using a USB of at least 8 GB capacity. This 8 GB USB is your Solid State Drive (SSD) secondary memory. The computer RAM will continue as your RAM, you will continue using all desktop hardware resources except the hard disk. If you use a 32 GB USB as bootable USB, it will give you 30 GB secondary SSD memory.

1. Making your bootable USB - First you have to make your empty USB bootable with the particular LInux OS distribution you choose. There are thousands of Linux distributions with different desktops available on the Internet but the most famous ones are Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, Elementary  and so on.  

1. Download the interested linux distro ISO file from the concerned website into your windows Downloads folder. I love the latest June ‘20 release Linux Mint 20 Ulyana iso file. It is 2 GB, 64 bit file with Cinnamon desktop. Click here .. 

2. Under Windows accessories you have a software option for creating a bootable USB disc. Click on it and and mention the source .iso file in the downloads directory and the destination USB drive. Click on start and after asking your permission to over write on the USB, after a couple of minutes it would have finished the formatting of your USB with your favourite Linux ISO file. The whole USB will be taken up as the Linux secondary memory by your desktop, so copy all important files on your USB to a safe location before you start making it a Linux bootable USB.

2. Once you create the Linux boot USB, the next thing is to switch off your desktop and switch it on with the bootable Linux boot USB in the USB drive. Make sure to boot using your Linux boot USB as the first boot device. (if it is not factory set to boot using USB, press ESC during the initial boot sequence, the boot sequence edit screen will then appear, select USB as first boot device by working on the screen, press SAVE and EXIT)

3. With USB as your first boot device on startup, you see your Windows desktop do a metamorphosis into a Linux machine with a secondary memory of 8 - 2 GB = 6 GB. 

4. Configure the network using the wi-fi logo at the bottom right of your screen to access the Internet. Whatever you save locally on your machine during the session is erased when you log out. So make it a habit to work on Google or other cloud applications for all your word processing,  spreadsheet and  presentation applications as it is highly secure and virus-free. Your free Gmail account gets you 15 GB free storage on the Google cloud.

5. Click on bottom left extreme button, the whole menu is available as in windows system. Explore. There are 5 text login terminals (ctrl+ alt + f2 ….f6) + 1 GUI terminal (ctrl+ alt+ f7).

6. Being an avid Google cloud user, all my word processing, spreadsheet and presentation work is carried out and stored in the Google cloud and can be sent across to others, which can be accessed from anywhere, anytime from any machine. You too can do it. It's not just only exciting and fascinating, it opens for you limitless, safe and secure opportunities into the future..

Good Luck and Good wishes..

Copyleft 2020 

Pavaguda Solar park, Tumkur, Karnataka, India, second largest in the world ..

World's largest solar park is the 2245 MW (2.9x Idukki) Bhadla solar Park in Rajasthan  India. 

Second largest is 2050 MW Pavaguda solar park in Tumkur, Karnataka (2.5x Idukki).

Third largest is the 1800 MW  Golmud desert solar park in Qinghai China.

Here is an interesting 5 min video on Pavaguda solar park which is built on 13,000 acre drought prone land in Tumkur district at Pavaguda, 180 km rom Bangalore city at a cost of $2.5 billion and commissioned in Dec '19, helping power 1 million households and preventing 20 million T CO2 entering the atmosphere annually ... 🙏🙏

Click here for video ..

 

There are 5 nos. 50 MW plants in each section and 8 nos .of such sections (of 250 MW each) to make a total of 2000 MW capacity.  Power from each 50 MW section goes to a 220 KV substation through 66 KV/33KV underground cables. It is stepped up to 440 KV/220 KV and connected to the 765KV/440KV line at Tumkur and 400 KV /220 KV line at Gooty. 

 

The problem most o the solar plants face is the deposit of dust over months of open exposure to the sun and dust. In Kochi airport, the water used to clean the panels resulted in weeds  growth under the panels which frequently led to overgrowth which covered the panels and brought down the generation. In Pavaguda water-free autonomous panel cleaning is done by circular brushes which move over the panels. This reduces water consumption and prevents growth of weeds.  

Among the major power producers at the site are Azure power 100 MW, SB energy 200 MW, Fortune Power 250 MW and Tata Power RE 250 MW.

Karnataka State Power Development Corporation Ltd (KSPDCL) has taken 13,000 a res of drought prone land covering 5 villages in Tumkur Taluk on a 25 year lease from the farmers who are compensated at the rate of Rs 21,000 per acre per year for the first two years and are given 5% increase every two years.

The thin film PV modules are of 100 W each, though higher capacity modules are available in the market.

Kiribati Is., S Pacific - perils of climate change ..

https://youtu.be/TZ0j6kr4ZJ0

Future of the aircaft industry .. ..

Of the around 24,000 commercial aircrafts of global airlines as of end '19, approx. 16,400 aircrafts are parked now (66%) waiting for the Covid pandemic to end .. 

Pictured here is the Victor Bill parking area, Calif., US. Source : CNBC

One of the most distressing aspect of global travel and trade due to the Covid pandemic is the fact that the global airline industry is passing through a very trying moment in it's history of 101 years.

Global international commercial passenger flight is going to be 101 yeas old on the 25th of August. This was the day 101 yeas back that the first international flight flew from London to Paris with passengers. 

Why is parking planes very expensive ?

It costs in millions of dollars for airlines around the world to buy planes. The bare minimum or a Boeing 737 or Airbus 320, the most popular medium haul and meium capacity (around 170-190) aircrafts of the world could be anywhere around $100 - 110 million, with all other long haul and large capacity planes costing more.

With Airbus and Boeing controlling 91% of the global airline fleet, Airbus having 11,535 planes in it's running fleet and Boeing having more than 10,000 planes in it's surviving fleet now, it is a major crisis or airlines to park these planes at the right location at the right time and with proper maintenance so that once the pandemic is over, resumption of aircraft services occurs smoothly. The present Covid pandemic has resulted in 16,400 of the 24,00 planes with airlines around the world being grounded, around 66%.

What are the main points to be considered while parking a plane ?

1. how to park the plane

2. where to park the plane

3. how long to park the plane

4. how much maintenance will be needed for the parked plane

5. how to prepare the plane when it comes out of parking to resume flights and service customers 

Operationally running the engine every three four days, (or once in a week) for proper recycling of fluids and moving tyres to ensure the load is evenly distributed along the circumference by moving the plane a few feet every three or our days are some of the basic maintenance tips undertaking by airlines on parked aircrafts around the world.

Another aspect of parking is to decide whether the parking is short term or long term. Like we move food to the freezer if we plan to preserve food for long time, in the case of aircrafts for long term parking, the airplanes are taken to the deserts with dry climate that helps prevent corrosion.

With huge orders backlog for the aircraft manufacturers, what was supposedly excellent future has suddenly tuned sour and uncertain due to Covid. The aircraft manuafctuers are facing a bleak future with smaller ones or more energy eficient lighter airplanes like Boeing 787.

The about 6000 aircrafts of age 15 years and older and 4000 of age 20 years or older, the wide bodied, inefficient, older planes are bound to never come out of these parking lots in the future. Major decisions for airlines would be to decide what aircrafts to keep around, to reduce the running costs of the airlines in the long run.

It is too ealy to decide the time span in which the aircrats will start flying again, some of the older less efficient ones may not fly again. 

Click here for an interesting 45 min CNA documentary on this ..

Questions to ponder..

1. Do low cost airlines have a strong future in the coming yeas ?

2. Will large and inefficient or smaller efficient passenger planes be the norm of the future ?

3. How can airlines think of phasing out older large aircraft without much pain or financial loss to the airlines ?

4. Will the Covid pandemic be a reminder for airlines around the world to go for the leasing model than the ownership model ?

Performance cost analysis of solar installations over the years ..

This is an excellent performance cost analysis of a solar installation in NY state in US, twelve years back. For this unit, the pay back time is 25 years, almost the same as the life of the panel. No battery costs as the panel is grid connected, excess power during a hot sunny day is fed to the grid and shortage power needed at night or during winter months is taken from the grid.  Click here.. The panel is manually tilted by removing screws to face the sun, two times a year  on March 21 and Sept 21.

Panel material technology has changed, equipments have became modern, here is the cost performance analysis of a modern installation. Kochi airport, the world's first and only 100% solar powered international airport  technical consulting and installation by Bosch Germany   has costs recovered in 5 years and an extra life of an additional 20 years.

The panels though they have a long life, more than 50 years, due to microscopic sand corrosion on the glass surface of the panel, the effective light incident and converted to solar power decreases by approximately 1% every year, ultimately bringing down the efficiency. 

I am looking for a video on a modern solar panel system that gives a cost performance analysis helping us do a comparison. 

Effectiveness of the new Covid vaccine ..

With Russia having announced this week that they are ready with a new Covid vaccine, how is this vaccine and other competitors going to benefit humanity across the world ? 

The world it is said on an average loses almost $250 billion worth of productive value for each week of Corona virus impact. From mid March '20, when different parts of the world went into lockdown, we have lost about four trillion dollars of economic productive value around the world already. As per World Bank figures  global GDP for 2019 was $88 trillion. Given that the big impact may continue even to this December,  the economic loss could be another four trillion dollars, at the least.

Economist magazine healthcare and economics correspondents have through their vast exposure given to the world some facts about the vaccine.  Click here for video. 

Given that world vaccine manufacturing capacity is just about 2 billion annually, with some needing multiple doses, by mid 2021, we may cover just a billion of the population of the world which is presently 7.8 billion. This 1 billion would mostly be from the rich world. As per conservative estimates, it means herd immunity for 70% of global community, ie. 5 billion people, cannot come before 2025 AD.. This is scary..

Who should get preference in Covid 19 vaccination ?

First it should be given to the healthcare workers and Covid patients with equal importance.  Next are the social workers, third the vulnerable group, ie. the elderly and chronically ill people and lastly it should be given to the other people of the world.  Nobody can refute the fact that economic bias may result in a distortion in this distribution with the rich economies getting a major share. The developing nations are bound to suffer.

Should rich countries pay more for the vaccine to subsidize the costs to developing world  ? It would be better for governments to take the initiative than allow private philanthropy to gain the upper hand. The Global Alliance for Vaccines (GAVI) should take the global initiative in this direction.

The lead time to develop the vaccine in the first instance and the manufacturing lead time to make billions of doses available for the world is the reason for the economic slowdown of the world now. With information that almost ten variants of the gene  through mutation, is out, it remains to be seen how effective will the vaccine be to these multiple  strains. And that is going to add uncertainty to the effectiveness of the vaccine, if and when it gets successful.  

George 

The leadership challenge, post Covid - pertinent questions to ask ...

The Covid crisis has given us time to sit back and introspect where we earthlings went wrong ..

It seems in the next one month or so most of the organisations will start functioning in full scale even though the severity of the crisis may not abate till December or even next June.

But how do we recalibrate our work life and personal life and document the hard lessons we have learnt during this crisis. It is equally important to bounce back from this crisis as to learn from it the hard lessons too.

More often than not, asking the right questions is more important than knowing the answers to these questions.

What are the most important questions we can ask ourselves and our teams as a fallout of the crisis. 

I am listing some of the most interesting and important ones. These questions can be asked irrespective of organisations, for-profit manufacturing or service, governmental, defense or other not-for-profit organisations across the world.

(colour codes - personal learning, team learning and organisational learning) 

1. What was the point of this crisis? 

2. What will I do if this event / crisis happens again? 

3. What did I learn from this case? 

4. How can I move faster next time? 

5. What did the team learn and how should we change?

6. How did the crisis benefit us ?

7. How did the crisis damage our business / repute ?

8. How long will it take to recover ?

9. Has the crisis given us improved capabilities and strengths ?

10. What are the new challenges of the future ?

11. How can we leverage on our new capabilities and strengths ?

12. Where do we see ourselves in the next 5 years and 20 years ?

It will require a good team exercise to answer all these questions. But getting answers to these pertinent questions at the time of the greatest crisis that hit humanity in this new century, will indeed give great learning and provide a deep vision into the future.

Thanks to the HBR article Leading into the post Covid recovery, by Merrate Weddel Weddelsbog, August '20.

George..

Are we caring enough for the environment ?

What and how do leaders do things differently ..

Leaders have made the world. Great leaders who have led people and countries through conflicts and social problems have helped change the world. Religious leaders have appealed to the common ethic of the society and helped create religions and communities that go according to specific guidelines that have evolved over centuries. 

Leaders of industrial organisations have guided organisations through trying times in their growth. How Henry Ford brought about revolution and change in the automobile industry of the world and how Thomas Edison through his far reaching scientific prowess came up with inventions that changes a generation altogether are great examples of what leadership and scientific insight can do to industrial societies. What is more important is leaders guide people, societies and organisations through difficult times.

The other day I was going through an HBR article on leadership by Allison, Wei and Brianna in the August '20 issue, What's your leadership story . Quite interesting and insightful. The interesting thing I found about HBR articles is that these  articles do give cutting edge research on people and organisations across the world, helping further the frontier of knowledge. This helps organisations and individuals to keep abreast of developments in their area of interest. 

The article mentions about a research study that was done on 92 leaders in different walks of life to find what circumstances prompted them to take on leadership roles. It was like how they looked through 4 lenses of life expectations and experiences. These 4 lenses are as given below.

1. Being - having natural traits of leadership,  accepting responsibilities and rising to the occasion comes naturally to these people. John F. Kennedy was an American President who had the natural charisma and capabilities of a leader.

2. Engaging - these group of people engage with others and motivate them to perform and help attain higher goals and objectives 

Leaders become great not because of their power,  but of their ability to empower others. - John Maxwell

True leaders dont create followers,  they create more leaders.. Life of Jack Welch of GE is an example ..

3. Performing - these group of people individually carry out tasks to attain leadership roles

Great leaders don't tell you what to do, they show you how it's done.

4. Accepting - leadership is thrust on them due to their innate abilities or accomplishments. Mahatma Gandhi had leadership of Indian Congress thrust on him because of his profile as a successful lawyer and a humane individual who fought against racism in South Africa.

Great Leaders believe in delegating very important tasks to their colleagues and subordinates and only carry out super critical tasks which only they can accomplish. They also believe in motivating others by understanding their innate strengths and helping them succeed.

George 

Can the new-born Covid experimental ventures survive into the future?

Covid time has brought up many entrepreneurs both in the service sector mostly in healthcare sector and in the manufacturing of PPE equipment and ventilators ... When the developed and developing world, who are the major victims of this virus which originated in China, are trying to shift their developed businesses from China to other countries of the world, with maximum focus on India, going to be the greatest beneficiary, this topic is of great significance.

When we have so many new entrepreneurs who have set up new experiments and businesses in these trying times, what are the features of these businesses to ensure that they have the potential to survive into the future ?

The following four points would throw some light on this aspect.

1. Is the innovation addressing a a long term problem which has evaded a solution for a long time ?

2. Finding the future potential of the present business and how it would perform and which customer segments can it target ?

3. At the right moment, understand the market, pivot the activities of the startup to a higher level and gear, addressing new potential sectors and customer segments

4. Keep in mind that a business model that supports social entrepreneurship can transform into great innovations into the future.

We should not forget that it was the second world war that brought the digital revolution, including the digital computer, digital communication and everything digital, to the fore, of which we all are great beneficiaries. There is a great potential for some new technology or business that has been developed during these trying Covid times to turn into an innovative offering for the world in the future.

This paper has valuable inputs from a paper by Dirk Schroeder "Turn your Covid 19 solution into a viable business", in HBR of July 2020 (click here for the paper)

George..

A design thinking exercise on improving retail sales during Covid times

Service sector is presently facing great hardships given the Covid protocols of social distancing necessitating reduced customer density at service facilities. 

The famous Little's law gives us the relationship between the number of customers in a facility N, the arrival rate lambda and the average time spent by customer at the service facility, T  by the expression 

N = lambda x T.

The arrival rate of customers lambda is an independent variable, outside our control, while the no. of customers inside the service facility N during this Covid time is decided by the government and health authorities depending on the shopfloor area.

The only variable under the control of the retail management is the time each customer spends at the retail outlet, T. 

Given the random nature of customer arrivals, getting customers to maintain the same spend on products and services (merchandise) at the retail outlet while at the same time reducing the time spent at the facility and permitting only limited customers inside the facility to maintain social distancing norms is the challenge for retail outlets across the world, during this Covid time. The only variable within the control of the service outlet is the time spent by the customer inside the facility and the availability and variety of merchandise.

 

Taking the case of the outlet of a large major all- India retailer in Bangalore, a Design Thinking exercise was done to evaluate the options. The participants were a private group and after the initial empathy building exercises, the participants were asked to brainstorm on ways by which 

1. the individual customer spend could be improved

2.  reduce the time spent inside the retail facility. 

 

Government regulations are presently in place where not more than 15 customers could be allowed in the said retail provision and veg/fruits facility at any time. The facility works in two shifts from 6 am to 2 pm and 2 pm to 10 pm and has about 6 staff in each shift. The staff man the counters and weighing centre, besides taking stock of inventory and arranging replenishment of depleted shelves.  Replenishments come mostly in the morning. 

Maintaining less human density (hence increased social distancing) inside the store while at the same time ensuring faster flow of customers though the facility, thereby spending less time at the facility and enabling more customers within the 12 hour open window of the store, is the only option for the store management to ensure it remains profitable even during this Covid time...

The many suggestions to improve customer spend and reduce customer time inside the service facility that came up during the brainstorming session of the Design Thinking exercise is given below.

1. make employees more customer responsive thereby offering more customer service 

2. better visible arrangement of merchandise on the shelves

3. availability of large, comfortable, well maintained carts

4. better display of notifications and areas earmarked for specific items of merchandise

5. create more space for stocking items by reclaiming part of the frontage of the store

6. keep staple items at the rear and fast moving items prominently displayed at the counters at comfortable heights which ensures customers get a view of the stock and revise his/her purchase plan

7. increase check out counters so customers don't queue up at the exit

8. increase the warehouse heights so that extra items can be stocked, enabling faster replenishments when stocks get depleted

9. as far as possible ensure a uni-directional flow of customers within the premises to prevent customers intersecting others' paths

10. improve the indoor colour shades and aesthetics

11. classify vegetables and fruits in organic, healthy and economical (value for money) sections 

12. pre-packing of fast moving staple items like potato, sugar, onions, tomatoes into convenient packages of 2 - 3 kgs each to enable faster movement of customers from staples area

13. exhibit posters requesting customers to ask or help in case they are unable to find particular items of merchandise 

14. improve cubic utilisation of store shelves  

15. smaller items could be placed in drawers attached to the racks than be placed in the open 

16. maintain a fixed layout without much of change at least for 6 months so that repetitive customers can shop faster

17. keep dedicated staff at busy areas like vegetables, staple food item shopping area 

18. make provisions for self-weighing and sticker generation by customers 

19. more staffing at manual weighing counters

20. air conditioning to provide comfort to customers shopping 

21. increase the alley space to reduce the feeling of congestion inside the store 

22. a new metric rack ratio which is the ratio of storage floor space to total store floor space in the store is to be deployed to ensure effective utilisation of floor area. 

23. have welcome staff at entrance and exit to guide and direct urgent customers to the racks and enable faster ckeckouts,

After these 23 suggestions have been generated, it is being discussed with the store management, who will take valuable suggestions and do a quick deployment on the shop floor. If this prototyping is found effective, it will be deployed not only at this store, but across the county.

The quality of the ideas generated at the brainstorming session was what added lot of value to this design thinking exercise.

This note has borrowed ideas from a Harvard Business Review article from Robert Schumsky and Lawrence Debo, What Safe Shopping Looks Like During The Pandemic, HBR, July '20 and the author acknowledges the authors of the HBR paper.

George..

A fool-proof supply chain for Covid vaccine

The Covid vaccine discovery is happening at a fast pace around. While two clinical trials are underway, about 50 vaccine candidates are in clinical evaluation. 

Herd immunity is what can hold the virus in control. Herd immunity should cut across economic cleavages in society. The policy of the highest bidder deciding the market price and distribution strategy along with the appropriate effective supply chains cannot work for this virus. The geographical spread of the vaccine administration covering the major hotspots across the world only can ensure herd immunity, bypassing all economic wellbeing and literacy considerations.

What are the precautions we need to take to ensure the covid vaccine once released does not get mired in corruption and favouitism and instead gets through to the needed people in the society who can ensure a fast and safe herd immunity.

Vaccinating the people closely associated with the virus : The different groups of people who need to be first vaccinated with the covid vaccine in order are

1. patients

2. healthcare professionals across the world

3. law and order maintaining personnel, police forces and paramilitary

4. workers from the government machinery who are holding the thread to arranging an upkeep of the quarantine facilities and containment policies

5. social service workers arranging for transportation, stay, food etc for the patients and their dependents

6. the vehicle personnel including drivers and maintenance personnel.

Once these patients and service personnel are vaccinated, the rest of the public can be vaccinated keeping in mind their geographical spread irrespective of financial and social status.

Financing of the vaccine for the different strata of population across the different countries of the world can be taken up by the global financing bodies like the United Nations, OECD etc.. Gavi, (click here for the HBR article) the vaccine alliance of the world has been functioning since 2000 in almost 73 poor countries supporting 496 vaccine programmes and helping vaccinate half of the world's children. This programme has eventually helped all ages of people to be vaccinated. A programme on similar lines would be what the billionaires or rich groupings like the OECD of the world need to focus in the coming months and years.

Personal Identification : The global process of inoculation would necessitate a form of personal identification system for the people inoculated. This would ensue the effective and safe administration of vaccine. Some proposals could look at having bio-markers like a coloured permanent strip or a semiconductor chip to be ingrained under the forehand skin of the patient could ensure a fool proof method of identification of inoculated individuals. Incorporating blockchains to ensure a safe and integral fool-proof system of vaccine inoculation could even be implemented. 

Monitoring the process : Using AI and Data analytics, the efficacy of the inoculation programme could be monitored.

Cold Supply Chain : ensuring the availability of refrigerators and other appliances, mainly solar powered to ensure a cold supply chain from manufacturing, bottling to transportation and storage at the destination is going to be the next big challenge of international bodies and counties of the world.

Global coordination : global coordination between international bodies and countries of the world for the first one year after introduction of the vaccine would be very critical to the success of the inoculation programme.

These steps would not only help improve the output from the progamme, but also ensure we have a closely monitored and efficiently managed innoculation programme to manage the viruses that are going to attack humanity in the future, given the change in environment and global temperature and climate which we humans have burdened on this planet through our extravagant and careless life style.   

George..

Why is Covid spreading fast in India ?

Why is Covid spreading fast in India ?

• George Easaw, Alliance University, Bangalore.

From what started as the first a Covid infected Kerala origin medical student returning from Wuhan, China by end February '20, the numbers getting infected by Corona virus is increasing in the country to the present tally of 52,000 new Covid patients daily as of 30 July 2020.

How come the numbers have swelled of late, to put us at #3 globally. With no respite in the infections, very soon we will be touching the #1 spot globally.

The author has identified some of the  major causes for the present high Covid infection rates in India, as given below.

1. Inadequate testing of patients leading to failure in patient identification 

2. Error in testing, type I error (patients remain undetected) and spreads the infection to families and communities 

3. Spread from asymptomatic and undetected patients leading to community infection.

4. Inability to carry effective contact tracing for lack of manpower to help find source of infection 

5.  Not following home quarantine religiously leading to infection among family members and relatives 

6. Inability to contact trace presently quarantined persons because of false addresses and mobile numbers 

7. Low reliability of antigen test kits at 70% compared to RT-PCR at 90 - 96% leading to inaccurate infection rate, triggering the spread further.

8. Reinfection of cured patients remaining asymptomatic because of of infection from a genetically mutated and/or increasingly potent virus strain

9. Virus mutation leading to more potent strains and ineffective and inaccurate treatment 

10. High density of population, especially in cities, leading to poor ventilation, congested surroundings,  low hygiene levels and hence faster virus spread.

11. Non-availability of hospital beds are forcing governments to either reduce testing or allow people to do self home quarantine 

12  Ill-equipped hospitals and improperly trained medical professionals acting as virus carriers, spreading the infection.

13. Comorbidity from other diseases of the heart, high blood pressure, liver, lung problems accelerate Covid infection

14. Once admitted to hospital, the psychological and mental stress of isolation, accelerates the deterioration.

15. The high cost of treatment  combined with low medical insurance penetration is a deterrent factor for people approaching hospitals, triggering infection at community level

16. Misinformation of home-cure remedies and ineffective untested alternative systems of medicine delays start of symptoms based treatment 

17. Lack of a properly balanced diet of the right quantity of carbohydrates, proteins and vitamins reduces immunity levels 

18. Political communal propaganda of divine curse due to various reasons, strikes a chord with the illiterate masses

With a better awareness of these reasons, it is hoped that our political and health authorities can act and we can fight the Covid disease together better, faster and more effectively. Fighting Covid is now no more an issue of the healthcare system of the country, it has impact and ramifications much beyond what was thought of and requires a concerted effort from all sections of society to help fight it out.

George..