John McCarthy, father of Artificial Intelligence, our future ....

 John McCarthy, 1927-2011, the father of Artificial Intelligence did his BS from Caltech, PhD from Princeton and worked mostly in Stanford University. He was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist.

He along with others, coined the term “Artificial Intelligence,” and invented the first programming language for symbolic computation, LISP (which is still used as a preferred language in the field of AI), and invented and established time-sharing. His main research in the field involved the formalization of commonsense knowledge.

Simon, McCarthy, Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester and Claude E. Shannon coined the term "artificial intelligence" in a proposal that they wrote for the famous Dartmouth conference in Summer 1956. This conference started AI as a field.

While AI has been improving, the November 2022 launch of ChatGPT has been a game changer. ChatGPT is a conversational application of GPT-3, the most powerful AI system in the world, allowing you to have a natural conversation with this powerful technology.

Can AI plan an invasion and take over the world? Absolutely not. AI cannot have a vision or purpose on its own except someone designs it that way. It cannot design itself that way (through deep learning) because deep learning is to improve the efficiency of what the AI was designed for. Humans are territorial in nature, meaning we like to feel in control in order to feel safe. If something is unknown to us, and therefore outside of our control, like AI, then we fear it.

How can I not be left behind in the modern era of AI ? Learning the relevant programming languages and tools will be beneficial. Python is the most popular programming language for AI, it's one of the hottest languages going around, and it's also easy to learn! Python is an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language with dynamic semantics.

Existential risk from artificial general intelligence is the hypothesis that substantial progress in artificial general intelligence (AGI) could result in human extinction or some other unrecoverable global catastrophe.

AI will never replace human intuition (click here for Forbes aricle)    

Late Stephen Hawking, however had a different point on AI and its impact on humanity. 

Impact of AI on humanity :

74 year old theoretical physicist, late Stephen Hawking, author of the classic, "A Brief History of Time", Professor and Director of Research at Centre for Cosmology at University of Cambridge has highlighted three catastrophies to befall planet earth in the next one hundred years and finish off human domination.

First catastrophe is the proliferation of artificial intelligence robotics. Imagine a world where humans would be coexisting with AI robots in the era of general AI. Imagine the disaster that would befall humanity then.

In Hawking's own words, "Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete (with these self-proliferating machines) and would be superseded". Artificial intelligence powered autonomous weapons like "autonomous armed quadcopters" could be a big threat to humanity.

Second catastrophe as Prof Hawking predicts is the arrival of aliens from outer planets. Either they come with better intelligence and better weapons and technology to conquer mankind and see its elimination or are less intelligent and hence not much of a threat, would depend on how well we are prepared to meet such an eventuality.

The third catastrophe to befall planet earth in the next hundred years is the uncontrolled proliferation of atomic weapons resulting in a global war which will ensure the end of life on planet earth.

Prof. Hawking also talks of global warming  and genetically mutated viruses as the other two imminent and dangerous threats staring at mankind, if we do not come out with a global concerted action plan to combat these threats facing mankind as a whole. Click here for the BBC interview with Prof. Hawking on these threats..

Let us hope the potential of AI is harnessed effectively in the right direction and measure so that AI instead of spelling the doom for mankind will be beneficial in the long run.

George

Artificial Intelligence and Amara's Law ..

In the continued experience of technology and the challenges, we have come across one more law, it is Amara’s Law (named after the scientist and futurist Roy Charles Amara (1925-2007)):

Amara's law sates that,

We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate it's effect in the long run.

In the short run, humans tend to overestimate the impact of technologies, we tell great things about technologies, what it can accomplish and so on. The technology takes time to be assimilated among the population and the growth is really incremental in the initial stages. But in the long run, all the small deltas (increments) get added up and the impact is really great.

In the graph below, we plot time on the X axis and the impact of the modern technologies on the Y axis. (Image credit Shubham Vyas, IIT Guwahati)

As an example, when Internet got introduced in the commercial world in the late 90s, we predicted the great impact it would have on humanity but we saw the great dotcom bust and our short term dreams all went bust by 2004. But not losing heart, the Internet usage and applications got wider and wider acceptance and we see in just 25 years, it is penetrated all aspects of human life, from health, finance, commerce, education, news, banking , what not .. !!

Similarly we understand that the new technologies of AI, Virtual Reality and Autonomous Vehicles are benefiting humanity in increments presently, as it is in the evolutionary stage, but in the long run will provide revolutionary benefits. It will change the way we interact and deal with each other, with nature, our environment, our surroundings and with machines.

The impact of AI technologies on humanity will be profound in the long run ..

That day is not far at all, maybe in the next 20 years ..

George ..

Why MOODLE LMS is the best ..

Why MOODLE is the best LMS in the world ? 

(the text was compiled by Google AI, the blog owner, except for very minor tweaking, helped by putting the points in logical order)

Moodle is the most popular Learning Management System (LMS) in the world. Moodle has been adopted by universities, schools, and organizations from all corners of the planet. At the core of Moodle is a simple philosophy – to provide educators with the best tools for delivering online education.

Moodle is the world's most widely used LMS system. It's an open-source framework used for all kinds of eLearning, including blended learning, distance education and workplace training.

Moodle based LMS enjoys popularity with all types and sizes of organizations, mainly because it is configurable, highly-flexible and feature-rich. The fact that it is open source implies that it is open to scrutiny, and developers from all over the world can access and modify the codes and make it more secure. One of the many benefits of using a Moodle site is that it can be accessed from anywhere via PC, tablet or other mobile devices via a web-browser or through a free mobile app.

With automatic updates to the latest Moodle release, MoodleCloud hosting seamlessly gives educators the choice to adopt the open source learning platform for their teaching and training objectives without the need to install, maintain and upgrade software and servers themselves. There is no need of a MOODLE server. 

 For first time users, MoodleCloud is the often trusted solution for hosting. One of the reasons for this is the fact that MoodleCloud is Moodle's very own hosting solution. While Moodle™ is completely free of cost and available to download for any kind of website, Moodle™Cloud is a freemium solution. With MoodleCloud free plan, you get to create unlimited courses for up to 50 users and 250 MB of storage. 

Of all MOODLE applications globally, higher education uses 15% of all MOODLE installation, the rest 85% of global installations covering online education, IT cos., hospitals, government etc.. (click here for a detailed article on MOODLE users globally)

 The most trusted learning management system for higher education. With Moodle LMS, you can create a flexible and accessible online learning environment helping you save time and better support your students throughout their academic journey. Moodle is used for blended learning, distance education, flipped classroom and other online learning projects in schools, universities, workplaces and other sectors. Moodle is used to create custom websites with online courses and allows for community-sourced plugins. That explains why MOODLE uses in higher education is just 15% of all MOODLE installations world wide. 

Blackboard prioritizes providing better assessment tools for teachers, while Moodle focuses more on learners' engagement tools. 

Top universities of the world like Oxford and Cambridge use a combination of LMS including MOODLE, while Harvard uses CANVAS LMS, but has MOODLE integration possible. The Harvard Business Publishing (HBP) catalog can be integrated into the Moodle LMS platform, which allows for simple tool integration and unlimited access to HBP course materials for students, instructors, and course administrators.

The main difference between Canvas and Moodle can be observed in content creation. Moodle offers content authoring tools while canvas on the other hand fails to do so. Moodle is free and allows the user to make changes to fit their learning.

 Moodle has a very robust logging system that tracks every time a user visits a page or clicks a link. It records when files are uploaded, when quizzes are taken, when students log in, and even when students view an item.

The Moodle Proctoring tool is for MCQ (Quiz) assessments only and captures your picture via webcam to identify who is attempting the MCQ (Quiz) assessment. It will capture your picture and screenshot automatically every 30 seconds and store it as a PNG image.

Moodle is ahead of the curve when it comes to detecting and preventing cheating. One way that Moodle can help a teacher prevent cheating is by providing additional statistics about each student's performance, such as how long they spent on each question. 

Moodle is open source or free software (GPL). It is written in PHP. It will run on most common web servers, on common platforms. It requires a database, and will work with MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle. 

 

Moodle software has the power to streamline training processes for the best learning experiences and proves itself invaluable when it comes to structuring and sharing course materials with learners, and also in monitoring and assessing progress. Moodle Partners give financial support, contribute code, coordinate major projects and grow Moodle's userbase in exchange for being part of an exclusive group of official partners allowed to hock Moodle related products and services.

 

Moodle does not require programming skills 

Moodle learning analytics supports two types of models.

• Machine-learning based models, including predictive models, make use of AI models trained using site history to detect or predict hidden aspects of the learning process.
• "Static" models use a simpler, rule-based system of detecting circumstances on the Moodle site and notifying selected users.

Artificial intelligence is one radical approach that allows the personalized experience of many teachers and tutors. Artificial intelligence helps to discover what a student does and doesn't know and creates a customized curriculum for each learner, given the gaps in knowledge. "An AI-based eLearning platform is a machine/system that possesses the ability to perform different tasks requiring human intelligence. It has the ability to offer solutions to human-related problems, like speech recognition, translations, decision making, and much more."

Let me stress it again .. MOODLE is a FREE and OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE (FOSS) .. one can scale it to include any number of courses, to any number of students and for any amount of time. Unlike proprietary offerings like Blackboard, Moodle developers are working for societal good, really trying to push the frontiers of learning and knowledge around the world so that no one is denied an opportunity to study .. 

The final benefit of using an LMS that is driven by one of the largest open source teams in the world is that there are an endless amount of learning resources. Within Moodle’s Community Forums, you have the ability to connect with other Moodle users and find answers to your questions. With 144 million forum posts and 72 million Moodle learning resources, there is seldom a Moodle question left unanswered!

With over 500 Moodle plugins developed by the global community,(AI is just one of them) learners, managers, and administrators have the opportunity to flourish in an environment that makes learning collaborative, engaging, and fun. 

Alliance University Bangalore India has been using MOODLE for the past ten years and has courses in blended learning mode across the different schools of the University. Click here to have a look.

George Easaw 

 

AI, for the common man ..

In the next 10-20 years we can expect Machine Learning and narrow AI to dominate AI applications, which is learning from past experience and using that data to predict the future for specific applications. The more data we use, the more accurate the results will be.

Machine Learning, an important subset of AI is different from conventional approach. Instead of creating software that has a specific outcome, science of writing programming, (conventional approach), machine learning helps machines to understand from loads and loads of data and learns from examples fed to it. This is the future of narrow AI for the next 20-30 years in our lifetime. 🙂

What constitutes modern day innovation ?

Chris Howard, Head of Research at Gartner tells us in this latest 2022 HBR article Innovating in uncertain times (click here) that it is 

1. keeping an innovative mindset, 

2. retaining key employee talent

3. focusing on cyber security, 

4. addressing global climate crisis through environmental sustainability initiatives

5. investments in emerging technologies and

6. focusing on technology adoption

These are the points that organisations need to focus to bring an innovative mindset in the organisations and help tech managers through these uncertain modern times.. 👍🙂

Finding ways to dispose used tyres

Tyres do not biodegrade. But they are 100% recyclable.

This picture is from the outskirts of Kuwait city showing an old tyre grave with 20 year old used discarded tyres lying in the open.

The above statement is a very strong statement that tells about the potential of tyres to damage the environment and at the same time to be of use to society. The fact is even after 500 years, tyres do not biodegrade but they break down into small and small parts that never degrade. They get spread or distributed in the environment that results in grave damage to planet earth. 

An interesting article from Harvard Business Review '21 (click here) tackles this issue in depth. Tyres along with all plastics, smart phones, computer hardware etc. fall in the bottom right quadrant of the Circularity matrix (easy to access and hard to process). 

Design for Recycling (as these parts cannot be reused) to retrieve valuable parts, recover rubber for road construction and concrete, process to retrieve biofuels, retrieve steel wires and other precious metals is presently according to research, the best way to recycle tyres. 

The other circularity strategies of Retain Product Ownership and Product Life Extension will not work for these products

It is high time used rubber tyres start getting recycled as fuel in furnaces of cement and iron and steel companies (already happening) and society finds useful ways of disposing old tyres. Rubberised roads where old tyres are mixed with bitumen to give strength and durability to tarred roads is one useful way. Studies have shown that finely shredded used tyres can be mixed with cement in concrete to give strength and durability to concrete.

Will humanity find an innovative way to process these used tyres to benefit humanity through the Circularity route ? As one of my friends suggested, if we can restrict the personal transportation sector by offering better public transport, this menace can be nipped in the bud itself as car tyres take up a high percentage of global tyre sales,  almost 60%. These days tyre wear particle pollution in the atmosphere is more deadly than vehicle exhaust pollution. 

2.4 billion tyres were manufactured globally in 2022 (49% in China followed by US, EU and India) and is expected to grow to 2.8 billion by 2028. Click here for a purchasable report of global tyre industry.

George 

Twenty sessions, twenty two quizzes, human-AI collaboration, power of AI.

We have all the time been hearing, and indeed have a lingering fear in the back of our heads of how AI can replace humans and how it could be a threat to humanity in the long run. But carrying out an instance of an effective case of human-AI classroom collaboration, this impression is getting a changeover.

Human-AI collaboration is the study of how humans and artificial intelligence agents work together to accomplish a shared goal. AI systems can aid humans in everything from decision making tasks to art creation. -wikipedia

Human-AI symbiosis means interactions between humans and AI can make both parties smarter over time - H. Jarrahi

Here we explain a case of human-AI collaboration which is maturing into case of human AI symbiosis.

An AI depiction of Alliance University

A very practical case of human AI collaboration has happened in the MBA sem 3 Operations classroom in Alliance University Bangalore, India from August 2022- Dec 2022 when in the MBA third semester subject of Operations Strategy and Environmental Sustainability,  in about 20 sessions, the 46 students had the benefit of taking 22 quizzes, ie. at the rate of 1.1 quiz for every classroom session, besides four internet based multimedia quizzes too. The benefits this has brought to the student community is being assessed. 

 

In a 2020 study (click here) conducted at the Iowa state University in US it was found that the students who were quizzed at least once a week tend to do better in their understanding and grades than those who were not. The AI intervention in this case was not in the quiz administration but in the help offered by Google AI that helped the faculty member to prepare the high quality  quizes with the help of AI resources.

The multiple quizzes which were administered almost on a daily basis would not have been possible but for the big help offered by the Free and Open Source software MOODLE, the Learning Management System (LMS software) in Alliance University, Bangalore, to a very large extent Google AI and the Google cloud.

In quick feedback taken from students, they were positive at being able to assess for themselves their own understanding of the concepts, get almost daily and weekly feedback on their improved awareness of subject fundamentals to help improve their performance in the subject. Final exams are almost a fortnight away, student performance at that would highlight the real benefit of AI in aiding and improving student academic achievements, understanding and grades.

Google Decision Tree AI algorithms aided in preparing questions that  accessed the extremes of human ingenuity, understanding and comprehension in each subject area, which was otherwise impractical and out of reach of human intelligence and perseverance. Entire case studies were also prepared courtesy Google AI.

Looking forward eagerly to complete this Human-AI collaboration classroom exercise this semester and analyse the results in depth over the coming weeks and see this mature into a human AI symbiosis exercise soon. This would result in spanning out further  human-AI collaboration classroom exercises for other courses and get a comprehensive outcome, promising or otherwise, that could further push the boundaries of student understanding, grip and mastery over a subject domain and help the student community the world over.

George 

SDG report 2022, insights ..

The 500 page SDG report 2022 published by Cambridge Press, edited by Jeffrey Sachs et al (click here) makes interesting reading as to how the 2015 SDG makes sense to the world seven years after it was propounded to save the planet earth. 

We have barely another eight years to see all the 17 SDGs blosom into positive results for planet earth and its inhabitants.

While I am satisfied with the rankings in general, it is very fortunate that we have neglected our co inhabitants on planet earth. 

In a study by OECD (click here), while human issues and problems get top priority, consideration for all life on land, (SDG 15) flora and fauna is only at rank 15 and all life below water (SDG 14) is given the last rank 17.

Isin't it not high time we took all flora and fauna, on land and below water with us in our fight to protect the planet ?

Alliance University is contributing in no less way in ensuring Quality Education (SDG 4) and reducing inequalities (SDG 10), but our lookout is how we can ensure that all other people of the world are made aware of these SDGs and work towards fulfilling the goals by 2030. 

By keeping the campus green (SDG 13) and with an effective water treatment (SDG 12) system in place, Alliance University can state with great pride an confidence that we are fully supporting the United Nations in its aim to conserve the environment.

George..

How I benefit from Google AI ..

According to Britannica, artificial intelligence (AI), the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. The term is frequently applied to the project of developing systems endowed with the intellectual processes characteristic of humans, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize, or learn from past experience.

As an early user of Amazon AI through Alexa, I have been enjoying the privileges of  using AI for songs and entertainment, news etc from end 2017 and now  have of late started using it in my professional work. Google AI is helping me in this.

How Gogle AI is helping me

1. While preparing quiz and noting text, I use the Google AI  program to convert speech to text

2. The speech converted text has some grammatical mistakes, Google AI points it out to me underlining the same in red

3. The speech converted text can have some spelling mistakes too, Google AI points it out to me underlining it in red

4. To get a broad understanding I also access, the section titled, People also ask. This is the Google AI contribution to related aspects of the search I have made. It gives me a 360 degree understanding of the idea / concept in mind and what questions people have asked Google over the past many years and what was the closes answer Google could provide to those questions. 

The Google AI gives me great inputs to prepare lot of the quizzes I give to the students, app 15 to 20 in each subject during a semester, both in Moodle and the quizzing platform quizizz.com. The conceptual clarity given by quizzes makes it a great teaching pedagogy style.

Over the next couple of years, I am sure AI would have entered more aspects of human interaction and learning and we look forward to it.

George..

The Aravind way ..

We are all aware of the Toyota way which explains to the world the spirit and enterprise behind the Toyota Motor Company, how they operate and how Toyota has come to be the global leader in four wheeler transportation. Toyota Way's 14 principles are given here. 

If one has to speak in brief about the Toyota Way, it is all about doing things right the first time and continuous improvement. Respect for people and responding to the market needs through a pull system of production adds to the great impact Toyota has over the years had on the global manufacturing system. 

Automobile manufacturing being the largest manufacturing operation in the world, naturally the largest global automobile manufacturer becomes the world's largest manufacturer.

Recently during a visit to the world's largest eye care facility, I happened to come across the Aravind way.The seven points of the Aravind way are given below.

1. Making eye-care accessible to all
2. Incorporate quality and continuous improvement
3. Patient-centricity and compassion
4. Self-reliance / finding a way
5. Frugality
6. Staff centricity
7. Sharing

7 Principles of Aravind way ..

Explaining the Aravind Way in simple terms , it hovers around the concept of compassion and the urge to avoid needless blindness. By closing our eyes for just five minutes, we find how difficult it is to live. All other physical disabilities give you discomfort , one still enjoys the world around, but blindness kills your spirit to survive.

In  our visit to Aravind eye care headquarters hospital in Madurai, what we felt striking was the compassion and altruism, the unselfish desire to do good to society. 

All activities at Aravind were centered around the patient. The extreme patient centricity be it in the way patients are registered or in the way they are taken around the facility for testing and treatment, there was utmost care and concern, irrespective of whether the patient was paid or unpaid. 

Toyota speaks of value added activity and plotting the value stream. Any activity that does not add value adds to the cost.  Similarly the mindset in Aravind has been to avoid all non-value adding activities - frugality. Frugality was observed in the way the hospital was arranged, the bare essentials were always available, but not the extra luxury or comforts. The entire Madurai hospital was air-conditioned, to enable patient comfort, especially during the summer months in Madurai where the temperatures could go very high around 40deg centigrade.

Because of the Aravind facility, patients in Tamil Nadu and nearby states like Andhra, a new facility has been opened in Tirupathi, Andhra lately, eye care has become accessible to everyone. 

Finding a local solution to all eye care related problems and developing the self reliant mindset has enabled the Aravind system to innovate itself and be a self reliant model to the whole world.

Not discriminating between the paying and free patient and be able to give almost 50% of all surgeries for free to the needy patients speaks volumes of the sharing mindset the Aravind system espouses to the whole world.

Hoping they are able to continue doing the great service to humanity and be able to spread to other parts of India and the world in the near future.

Like the Toyota Way, Aravind way also speaks of Continuous Improvement, that hidden urge withing oneself to continue to serve better the society around oneself and to bring in better and useful innovations to the needy patients.

Toyota speaks of giving respect to people, the employees of Toyota, Similarly Aravind system respects the staff who are engaged in the process, medical and admin. While talking to the staff we could see the contentment they carried of the system that reflected in their actions, speech and the way they conducted themselves. 

Wishing the Aravind system grow and prosper to great heights and be of great service to society.

George.

Feline visitors in IITB campus ..

Feline visitor frequency has increased in Indian Institute of technology Powai Mumbai  campus of late, why ?

Thanks to indiatimes

When we were there late 1990s, there used to be a notice on all campus and hostel notice boards, internet was not that popular then, of a new feline visitor on campus and to exercise precaution. More security guards used to be deployed across the campus, near swimming pool, near isolated roads etc. 

Both the times I have seen only captured leopards, not wandering ones, inside cage, was in the forest in front of the swimming pool. The captured leopards used to feel fearful and within couple of hours they were released back into the forest behind the campus, the Sanjay Gandhi national park. Recollecting good memories    

 

It is natural action for forest officials to release deer and bovines into the forests to provide food for the leopards. The scarcity of these animals is what is forcing the leopards to come to human habited places in search of food and meat.

Hope these felines and humans are able to co-exist in the IITB campus in peace and harmony.

George.

Elon Musk on the threat of Artificial intelligence..

The other day I was listening to Elon Musk talking on the threat AI poses to humanity. Please click here to listen to the interview.

Born in June 1971, at 51 years, we know Elon Musk is no doubt, the greatest tech-preneur on planet earth now. With more real life experience than any living human being on global finance, cutting edge technology in EV, space systems, Internet technology, mass communication and social media, with the courage to experiment, experience extreme success and cross depths of despair and failure, his words carry a lot of weight. 

Being more daring than anyone living, he has been through the peaks of intellectual brilliance and depths of commercial failure. Indeed his words carry lot of weight. According to him, Artificial intelligence is the greatest existential threat to human civilisation. 

Musk feels Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is more dangerous than artificial narrow intelligence, like in cars or in medical field, he feels artificial intelligence if allowed to grow irresponsibly, without regulations and oversight is a bigger threat to humanity than nuclear weapons. 

Agreeing fully with Elon Musk, I feel we definitely need global monitoring systems and regulations to oversee research and developments in this area like we have in the area of nuclear weapons. 

Can the world think of an agency like Global Artificial Intelligence Monitoring Agency (GAIMA) that can guide and direct the research and innovations in AI globally ?

George..

Competitive Strategy - Michael Porter

Started reading this book by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter in preparation for the new subject of Competition and Strategy for executive PGDM students coming very soon .. 

Taken aback by Porter's  deep knowledge and writing of competitive business strategy and factors responsible for success of business..

The book is totally from a business perspective on the different factors for successful business strategy formulation and execution. 

Very little mention, at least till end of chapter 1, on customer satisfaction or contribution of technology to the success of industrial revolution. 

Looking forward to more surprises while reading the book..

George..

Visit to Aravind eyecare, Madurai Nov 22

With Dr. Kim, second from left, seating

 

After about 6 months of communication, planning etc, the MBA students and faculty of Alliance school of business Bangalore spent a busy 2 days visiting Aravind Madurai on 17 and 18th November 2022. We are back at our Bangalore campus and the 28 students from BBA, MBA sem1 and sem3 are back in hostels etc.

Madurai is an ancient temple town in South India on the banks of Vaigai river with a history that could be traced two thousand five hundred years back to the times when Ashoka ruled parts of India, and Homer, Greek philosophers and mathematicians were busy laying the foundations of the western civilisation.  Even Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu does not have a history of more than three hundred and eighty years. 

The students learned a lot in this visit to Madurai. Prof. Ananth was a great help in our interactions with the employees and public in Madurai. Thanks a lot to Aravind for the terrific care and professional approach. Everything at Aravind went according to clockwork precision and that speaks why Aravind is world-class.

An engrossed and  captivated audience

Great hospitality, practical exposure to the hospital operations and great knowledge transfer was evident. We will treasure this visit throughout our lives. The following points are worth noting.

 

We really appreciate the way Aravind planned this visit by our business school and how they executed it with precision and finesse. Though we reached our Guest house rooms at 3 AM in the morning of 18 Nov, we immediately settled in our rooms, which were very clean, neat, quite spacious and available at very reasonable rates. Right from the word go, it was professionalism in the conduct of the session from 9 am on 18 November. Parallel to our session, there was another session, a 3 day workshop that was also being organised for health workers in another part of the building.

Inside the Madurai Meenakshi temple ..

Upto 11 am, we had interesting talks with the senior leaders of Aravind and immediately after coffee, we were divided into 4 groups and taken around the free and paying facility of the hospital. We were given a theme and had to move around the hospital  in the registration, paid and unpaid sections, paediatric section and the different departments to observe and make points for the post lunch discussions and presentation from 2 to 4 pm.

Management  Information Systems were implemented in Aravind in the early 90s. They were far ahead of the competition in data analysis. The in-house planning for the daily out patient consultation and surgeries for two months in advance at Aravind, enabled by excellent forecasting is a great help and support for Aravind planners, to plan for how many doctors to have each day in the OP division.

 

A good thing we observed at Aravind is the absence of an appointment booking system. In my visits to the country's second top medical college, CMC Vellore, the patient bookings are done at least 2 -3 months in advance. Any emergency patient has to beg, plead and make his or her way through the hospital bureaucracy to get to see the top doctors at other major hospitals. That is not the case at Aravind. Any patient who is in need of medical help, be he influential or not, can come to the hospital anytime between 8 and 6 pm on any day and he will be seen, irrespective of whether the doctors are busy or there are excessive patients and so on. The doctors take it as their bounden duty to attend to any needy patient whenever he/she arrives at the facility for help, even outside the office hours. This is a great step to ensure accessibility and reach even to the very poor and dispossessed in the society.

 

Inspiration Hostel, where we stayed

Another interesting observation we made was any person could go to either the paid or free sections at his will. Though the physical facilities at the free section are having less of frills, the doctors kept assuring us that the quality of the medical care that was administered to the patients at both the facilities was the exact same. One should not be surprised to find a patient arriving in a car and then joining the queue at the free counter or a poor patient coming and joining the paid counter. 

 

The story going around tells how the former Indian President, APJ Abdul Kalam when he came to Aravind in his younger days took the great Aravind medical care as a free patient and felt the warmth and professionalism of the Aravind system then.   

7 Principles of Aravind way ..

The other positive point we noticed was the very less throughput time for a patient to walk through the entire system for treatment. Though the patient screening and processing system was world class and very strictly adhered to,  to prevent the issue of patients getting lost or being delayed,  the patients were tagged to a guide, (who is a trained less skilled medical professional) to each patient in the paid section and to 3-4 patients in the free section. This saw that the throughput time for a patient who come to the hospital, register, meet the doctors, get medical advice and leave the system in about three to four hours, all this without the patient appointment system. A clear demonstration of the patient-centric (customer-centric) approach of Aravind. Jeff Bezos of Amazon would definitely have great takeaways from a visit here.

The other major point to be noted is the openness at Aravind. They have the best global systems in place and invite their competition from around the country and the world to come and see their facility and help improve service delivery to the patients. Over 46 years from the start in 1976, we feel,  Aravind never had any great competitor. Though it would be unfair to say, Aravind is its own competition as the ecosystem has not grown professional enough to catch up with the Aravind system, anywhere in the world. Empathy and compassion with the poor and an undeviating commitment to eliminate unwanted blindness from the earth is what drives the Aravind system to such exemplary levels of dedication and accomplishment. 

Dr. G. Venkataswamy, guiding light of Aravind

To see on a daily average 2500 outpatients and to carry out daily about a thousand surgeries in the paid and free sections, is not a small thing for any hospital. Aravind has mastered the famous assembly line, first propounded by the Ford Motor company, for carrying out the surgeries which reduces the theoretical time to carry out a surgery to about 4.5 minutes. The doctors are motivated to carry more and more of their skilled surgical practice than doing any of the less skilled activities like taking the patient vitals etc. They are thus able to improve the productive time for each doctor, improve his/her out by doing things to large volumes. 

 

The hospital, in spite of doing all such free service, generates returns at 35% EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes and amortization) by carrying out tasks at large scale. Last year even being a Covid year they carried out a lakh surgeries. After August of this year the numbers have all picked up as Covid fears have died down.

The inspiration behind Aravind is of compassion, empathy, non-exploitation and not sidelining the less fortunate or dispossessed in society, the principles espoused by the founder Dr. G. Venkataswamy in 1976. The whole story of Aravind is of bringing the sidelined to the mainstream .

The visit has deeply touched our hearts the way Aravind with empathy and without any exploitation is helping the needy sections of the society, the way it is trying to change lives and livelihoods for the blind across the world, from the present global 3% impact to 10% very soon. 

 

The simple man from the village ..

Dr. Kim, the medical director, gave an interesting session, very lively, interactive and highly informative. A big thanks Sir. He gave a very balanced view of the vision and mission of the hospital in the winding address. His balanced presentation and interaction was very timely, highly impressive and informative. 

It was heartening to understand that Google was collaborating with Aravind to perfect the Google lenses to help the partial and totally blind patients. Google collaboration to use AI based algorithms to detect the early onset of diabetic retinopathy is another great research work happening at Aravind. Click here for a 2018 Hindu report.  

 

Among other global accolades, Aravind is a winner of the 2008 Gates Award for Global Health, The António Champalimaud Vision Award in 2007, and the Conrad Hilton Humanitarian Prize in 2010. Click here for part 1 and part 2 of a write up on Aravind that shows how Aravind embarked on digital transformation and innovation much before competitiors had even heard of it.

 

In short, the learning was multi-dimensional and far-reaching. Aravind is the world's biggest business case for compassion. The students managed a visit to the Meenakshi temple in the evening after the visit before boarding the bus at 11 pm for our return journey to Bangalore.

 

George...

John Davirose Rockefeller and his philanthropy

After reading JDR's autobiography, I am surprised to find how big an entrepreneur and how great a philanthropist he is. At age of 25 he had set up Standard Oil and by age 54 he was a great philanthropist.

The directed philanthropy that he started was instrumental in removing poverty from some parts of Africa and smallpox from the face of earth.

Toyota 14 Principles ..

The Toyota Way (Toyota Production System) is a comprehensive expression of the company's management philosophy, which is based on the two foundational principles of Continuous Improvement (kaizen) and Respect for People.

The Toyota Way defines the fundamental values and business methods all Toyota people should apply in every aspect of their day-to-day work, at every level of the company, worldwide. 

Click here to read an interesting blog

The Toyota Way is supported by two main pillars: 'Continuous Improvement' and 'Respect for People'. Toyota is never satisfied with where they are and always work to improve their business by putting forward new ideas and working to the best of their abilities.

We are living in a world of great competition. Even though the Japanese or Toyota were not the first to invent the automobile, the brain came from Europe, the Japanese have shown the world how good they are at execution, discipline, standardised orderly, neat approach, continuously striving to improve the product or process through  continuous improvement or Kaizen. 

They have been able to show the world how excess of inventory in any organisation or industry can be dangerous, costly or even fatal and why manufacturing just in time when the customer needs the item is the best and cheapest high quality way to get reliable good products out of the system for the customer.

The implementation of Toyota Way saw to it that any employee could work to improve the company . TPS reduces waste, increasing efficiency and reducing costs

Ford and lean manufacturing, Open Forum ..

I had the good opportunity to present a session in the Open Forum from Alliance School of Business, on 7 October, organised by the Operations stream on the topic Henry Ford, Mass Manufacturing and Lean Manufacturing. It was attended by 5 faculty from the Operations stream. 

Presenting before a faculty group is always beneficial as the presenter has to go to a higher professional level than what is delivered to the students. Also the preparation time for the talk was almost the whole holidays of Dussehra. I was also simultaneously reading Homer's Iliad, as that was the topic originally planned for a future week.

Without doubt we can say that Ford was in a major part one of the greatest industrialists the world has ever had. 

• Industry 1.0 focused on Mechanisation, cotton loom, printing press, steam engine etc.
  
• Industry 2.0 focused on  invention of electricity and mass manufacturing. 
• Industry 3.0 focused on the Digital Revolution sparked by the invention of the microprocessors and digital computer starting with the cutting edge work from Claude Shannon of MIT. 

We are now at the threshold of Industry 4.0 which is going to be the one of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Internet of Things, Blockchains, 3D Printing etc.

Yesterday's talk was specifically on the contribution of Henry Ford to Industry 2.0 or Mass Manufacturing.

Ford introduced Model T car for the world in 1908. It was initially offered at $850 and by 1925, it was offered at $260. Henry Ford's three pronged focus was on 

1. cost reduction (affordability), 
2. simple to operate (simplicity) and 
3. working for a long time (durability).

Ford is said to have been asked repeatedly why Model T came only in black colour, it was because black colour was cheap, dried faster and it was possible to make a car in just 90 minutes with the black paint.
Ford hated waste. He wanted lot of value addition and focused all his efforts on it. He created the concept of mass mobility, revolutionised mass production, helped create the American middle class and helped Americans to move from the cities to the towns, started the suburban sprawl. 

On first December 1913 was the day Henry Ford installed the first moving assembly line for the mass production of an entire automobile. His innovation reduced the time it took to build a car from more than 12 hours to one hour and 33 minutes

It kick started the MASS PRODUCTION REVOLUTION WORLD OVER.

The use of the moving assembly line allowed for the work to be taken to workers rather than the worker moving to and around the vehicle.

Ford also shocked the world by doubling workers pay to $5 per day. He wanted to give respect to the working class, and was sure this act would help him retain the best skilled workers in Ford.

Going through his autobiography, we understand he was more happy giving dividends to the working shareholder than the non-working shareholder.

Doubling the average wage helped

• ensure a stable workforce (no quitting) and
• boosted sales (the workers could now afford to buy the cars they were making)
• laid the foundation for an economy driven by consumer demand.

Ford for the first time brought these LEAN concepts to the world.

• Flow: started with raw materials and ended when the customer left with his car.
• Standardisation: standardization of product models, associated parts and also production tasks
• Reduction of wastes: in particular operator movements by minimizing the number of tasks to be performed
• Just in time: Ford worked on its Supply Chain to get the right amount of materials and parts according to demand

(all these lean concepts were developed 12 years before Sakichi Toyoda proposed looms stopping when fibre got cut (autonomation) for looms)

Why then did Ford fail ?

Ford did not focus on organisational improvement, solely on product quality. Product was more important than the organisation. Family run organisations after two generations need to be transferred to professionals to manage, as complacency sets in the family and it is difficult after two generations to find grandchildren with the same fire in the belly as their grandfather. 

Of 100 businesses that are started, it is found from a Harvard study that only 40 enter the second generation and of the first 100, only three enter the third generation. Click here to read my blog on this phenomenon. It was the reason why the 160 year old Tata Sons from India had to slowly move to professionals to run the organisation as smart leaders were not coming from the family.

Though Model T started at $850 around 1912, through mass manufacturing he brought it down to $260 in 1925, making it the car of the masses by reducing waste, ie. inventory pileup . Ford ruled the world of automobiles the first 40 years till 1940 when we find General Motors under a great leader Alfred P Sloan overtook Ford. MIT named its business school after this doyen of the manufacturing world. Japanese entered the market with low quality products, but kept continuously improving their products, conquering global markets.

The discipline, practical application dedication saw the company Toyota, born in 1939, 36 years after Ford in 1903, take over the world automobile scene presently.

The 2021 automobile sales global is given below. (statista.com)

1. Toyota            9.56 m
2. VW                 8.88 m
3. Hyundai-Kia` 6.67 m
4. GM                 6.29 m
5. Stellantis       6.14 m
6. Honda            4.46 m
7. Nissan           4.06 m
8. Ford              3.94 m
9. Renault         2.69 m
10. BMW             2.52 m

Top 10 sales 55.21 million vehicles and global sales are 66.7 million vehicles.

For a company that ruled the automobile world for the first fifty years of the last century, in the face of increased competition and better manufacturing methods, can it or will it revive and survive in global market ?

George.

Homer's Iliad - story of war, heroism, valour and deceit ..

During this time of Dussehra holidays, I thought of making good use of the time. I am reading Iliad by Homer (lived in the 8th century BC) written and published around 750 BC on the Trojan war fought between Greeks and Trojans from Troy (modern day Northwest Turkey). Encyclopaedia Britannica claims Homer to be one of the all time greatest of the world's literary artists and Iliad, his first work to be one of the earliest literary works.

 

Throughout the book we see mention of the names of different Greek Gods, mainly Apollo as Gods did rule the lives of the people. King David of the Bible Old Testament would be born only 200 years after the Trojan war was over, around 1000 BC. Appeasement of the native ancient Gods through offerings and sacrifices was very much prevalent then, as we now also see. The full compilation of the Old Testament in the Bible was not ready, it had to wait till 600 BC.

 

Believers of the Old Testament Gods of Jehovah in Jewish belief have moved to the more convincing Triune God for Christians as a matter of conviction and convenience. One should remember that this shift happened as the old Gods were getting ineffective and their teachings were inadequate, feeble and weak.

 

Who knows whether in the coming years we too will not switch over to more powerful Gods, created from our imagination, more suited to the modern times, digital avatars in the digital and artificial intelligence domains ?

 

The main story line is the conflict between the Greeks – led by Agamemnon, King of Mycenae – and the Trojans – whose king was Priam – which took place in the Bronze Age around 1200 BC, and lasted 10 years.  The epic Iliad is about the tenth year of this ten-year war between Greece and Troy. It is a description of the events that took place during the tenth year of the war and told by the protagonist of the poem, Achilles, one of the most celebrated Greek warriors in the war. The other book by Homer, Ulysses is about the tale of the victor Odysseus making his way to his home country, Greece.

 

This singular book forms the basis and one of the most influential books of western literature. Written in poetic style in ancient Greek language and recited over the ages, the English translation has withstood the test of time and is as absorbing as the original one.

Gods, Kings and warriors united the people then while the people fought others who were following their own different Gods (as do the present day people). Wars described how nations (and people) were born, survived and went down under.

I am thoroughly and slowly enjoying each step of my trip to Troy, in the north west corner of Turkey, going back in time by 3200 years, to understand the minds, thoughts, beliefs and actions of people, their conversations, emotions and stories of heroism and valor during the time of the war. This helps us to gauge where the present day men are faltering in their steps, helping understand the weaknesses and limitations of the present day Gods. 

Achilles

Ancient Gods keep changing and increasing over time, man has not changed. Old Gods are forgotten, new Gods are invented and put in place. These Gods will be forgotten and new ones again invented in the future, in another five hundred to thousand years. The book is the defining one that paved the way to the birth of English literature. More reading will expose more facts to me in the coming days.

One of the events in the book mentions about the Trojan leader Chryses asking the Achean (Greek) leader Agamemnon to release his daughter Chrysues. The request is refused. The Trojan leader now requests God Apollo who brings in a plague to inflict the Acheans (Greeks). When Agamemnon realises the plague was due to the interference of God Apollo, he releases Chryseus.

Though I have not reached the end of the book, I understand, towards the end of the war the Greeks through an act of deception under the King of Ithaca, Odysseus, build a huge white wooden horse and leave it at the gate of Troy as an offering to the Gods. They pretend to give up the battle and sail away back to Greece. Sensing victory, the Trojans took the white horse inside the city of Troy, when the soldiers or warriors who were hiding inside the big wooden white horse came out and ransacked Troy, bringing the great ten year battle to an end.

Some comments need to be made about the age of this composition to know how important it is to world culture and specifically Western literature. The oldest Hindu epics (the oldest world religion) of Bhagavath Gita, Ramayana and Mahabharatha, as per Encyclopaedia Britannica were written around 500 - 300 BC, which qualifies Homer's work to be among the oldest in the western and eastern world. As per Columbia University sources, the Confucian Analects, the Confucian holy book, is believed to have been written after the death of Confucius in 479 BC and  between 476 and 221 BC. 

The Angams of Jainism were composed around the sixth century and written around the fourth and third century BC. The Tripitakas of Budhism were composed around 550 BC and written during first century BC. The other older religion Jewism, it's holy book Torah, which is the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, as per Britannica was composed in sixth century BC and revisions done in the fifth century BC. Christianity and Islam are too nascent and young to find mention in this writing.

The distance between Greece and Troy is just about 380 km, which in modern day driving one can do in 6-8 hours driving or an hour of flying. It took 10 years for the victorious Greek forces under Ullyses to reach Greece from Troy after the war ..

Though the story line for the events in the book is almost 3200 years old and told about 2800 years ago, the narration is very real and lively. It is great to see that people three thousand years back also had the same feelings and emotions of fear, confidence, anxiety,  valour etc.. as any one of us. Homer's writings will continue to dominate and influence global thoughts and actions for a long time to come.

George 

Henry Ford and Toyota Production System ..

We all know Henry Ford was the doyen behind the introduction of affordable motor cars for the traveling public of the world in 1912 with the introduction of the Model T Ford motor car in the US. 

Going through Henry Ford's autobiography, My Life and Work, published in 1922, while talking of workplace organisation, hygiene, cleanliness, orderliness, vendor relationships, innovation etc, it gently reminds us that the original principles of efficient low cost production was proposed by Henry Ford around the 1920s itself. 

I get a feeling that the Toyota Production System principles were originally proposed by Henry Ford around 1920s. The only TPS/lean manufacturing thinking I find lacking then, is the unit type of production, acting against old batch production. The 1914 Harris EOQ model was ruling the world of Inventory management then.

Henry Ford in his autobiography also talks of costs as paid to vendors and prices paid by customers to buy Ford cars. According to Ford, the costs should be lowered and this will ensure that prices at which cars are offered to customers are also lower. If the vendor is not working at full efficiency, what ever products he offers to Ford will be at a higher price. The supplying vendor cannot lower it any further as he is already working at an inefficiency and is unaware of ways and means to lower it any further. This is a challenge for Ford as it cannot reduce the prices at which cars are offered to customers. 

Ford found a solution to this. Why not make everything by itself from scratch, from steel to tyres to parts. This will ensure that the same high level thinking to improve efficiency of production at high quality and lower raw material costs are incurred by Ford and thence charged to the customer through lower prices for Ford products.

I have been engaging the subject of Lean Operations for the past more than ten years in Alliance University Bangalore and have taken lots of industry workshops on the above topic. Little did I know or ever dream that the same principles used by Toyota in the 60s and 70s and later expanded as Lean Manufacturing practiced by world manufacturing and service organisations around 80s, 90s and still continuing, they have all been copied from Ford's production / manufacturing philosophy.

Why could not Ford motor company carry forward the revolutionary thinking on simple and efficient production system to benefit itself in the long run.  Even though I feel Toyota picked up Ford's production philosophy quite late, it was Toyota who could bring the substance, rigour and discipline of efficient production systems in place, result of the discipline in the Japanese systems and culture, so necessary to get high quality production out from the factory.

 

Ford and Edison (L2R) 1927 ..

In the book we even find how Ford encourages and implements the plans proposed by his shop floor workmen to improve workplace efficiency, what we in Japanese call as the Kaizen, more systematic and orderly application of incremental continual innovation on the Japanese shop floor. Ford believed that the line worker in touch with the machine and the process was most empowered and knowledgeable of innovations and changes that could be brought to products or processes on the production line more than anyone else on the shop floor, even the CEO.

The autobiography of Henry Ford, the doyen of world automobile sector, titled My life and work, is worth reading for any mechanical, automobile and industrial engineering enthusiast. It opens one's mind not only to the production systems and capability to the 1920s, published in 1922, but also tells us what were the thoughts that went through Henry Ford's mind, far ahead of dreams going thru the minds of existing American and other global manufacturers and customers. 

 

Ford River Rouge factory, Dearbon, Michigan, 1944

In fact, Ford was far ahead of the competition and thought of customer delight and obsession much earlier than any of the modern practitioners like Toyota or Amazon. He was among the first and earliest to propound the lean philosophy thinking to charge the customers less, produce less waste and  offer high quality products at low affordable prices to the masses (Motorolla's six sigma philosophy). 

 

In order not to charge the customers more, he looked at the vendor supply chain, exploring ways and means to reduce vendors costs by efficient working, manufacturing to scale and cheaper availability of resources. The result was Ford had facilities across the whole supply chain right from rubber plantations to produce rubber tyres to owning iron ore mines to produce steel for the automobiles.

Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motor Company, turned to the Brazilian rainforest in the 1920s to construct a rubber plantation that would serve as his personal supply of the material. The town, dubbed Fordlandia, was more than an industrial operation — it was Ford's attempt to establish a picturesque American society - Businessinsider, Feb 20

Ford Motor Company once owned 700,000 acres of forest, iron mines and limestone quarries in northern Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Ford mines covered thousands of acres of coal-rich land in Kentucky, West Virginia and Pennsylvania - www.thehenryford.org

After going through the book, I am more than convinced that the concepts of efficiency and value resulting in customer satisfaction was initially introduced to the world Henry Ford and later carried forward by Taichi Ohno and Sakichi Toyoda from Toyota and others. The world of global manufacturing owes to Henry Ford than to any other personality in post industrial 20th century global manufacturing for bringing in the modern concepts of value and customer obsession.

George.