Col Gadaffi, historical snaps, courtesy Telegraph ..

For everyone interested in world history and the growth of dictators over the years will certainly find this collection of snaps from Telegraph, UK really valuable and offering a deep insight into the life and history of middle east ..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/8343250/Libyas-leader-Colonel-Muammar-Gaddafi-in-pictures.html

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Another rat about to fall ..

The tank man in this iconic image from Tiananmen square , 1989 .. the image which shook the conscience of the world, but went no further ..

Closely following the heels of Egypt's big rat, Tunisia's small rat, here comes another medium rat .. arrogant and full of hatred for the world ...

It is so curious to know how Gadafi has found fault with Osama Bin Laden for this uprising and not the misdemeanours of his iron-fisted administration over the last fortytwo years.

Hope the other autocratic rats from the Arab world also beget the same fate as these unfortunate dictators .. Saudi is trying to appease its people with $31 billion gifts, Qatar and UAE rulers are meeting US diplomats .. Kuwait rulers are going all out to appease their people ..

The air of democracy is blowing with full force across the arab world much to the chagrin of the existing dictators and ruling families. Lot of currency is flowing out of the arab world to safe havens in western world and turned to dollars ..

China is busy smelling out and eliminating the perpetrators of the second Jasmine revolution .. China also will fall in the same uprising that is disturbing other despotic countries of the world. Can truth and the free aspirations of the people be pushed under the carpet for ever ??

Libya has seen just 1000 deaths through foreign mercenaries .. In Tiananmen square almost 800 people (official) and 3000 (unofficial) were killed from april to june 1989 ..

Wikipedia link of Tiananmen Square massacre ..

Indian Govt is getting a big shifting of people fromLibya to India by air and sea in place. The cost to the exchequer will be very high if the whole arab world goes on the boil .. Hope it happens staggered and peacefully without much internal disturbance and violence ..

Democracy comes at a price .. is it worth all this trouble and bloodshed, that is the question ..

It took the Internet and social networking sites a matter of just a couple of years to get public opinion against despots and dictators of the world. French and Russian revolution, Indian war for independence etc took hundreds of years to fructify ..

ge..

a 1991 snap from Goa Engg college ..

ge.. Thank you  everyone.. 

Lean Manufacturing at Toyota Bangalore..

During my visit to the Toyota shopfloor in Bidadi, Bangalore, I was specifically and particularly interested in knowing about a few major aspects. Having read and followed Toyota developments in lean manufacturing and their recent recalls of models, it was indeed a much sought after visit that was getting materialised. Sad that I could not visit the very advanced Etios line, set up at a cost of Rs 4500 crores in the very same compound.

The concepts I was interested were the following, Inventory control, how Kanbans are used, JIT, multi-item assembly, visual controls on the shopfloor, 5S and gradual shopfloor improvements.

Inventory Policy : When I discussed with the senior manager, I was amazed to learn that there is no material store inside the plant at all. Inventory for Toyota was being held by the vendors. In addition there was only one transport vendor for Toyota who was co-ordinating all just in time replenishments for spare parts and raw materials across the shop floor.. Come rain or shine this transport vendor saw to it that the items were collected from almost 60 different vendors as distant as Haryana and West Bengal and delivered to the Toyota shopfloor in Bidadi, Karnataka every half a day or once every day. On the shop floor I never saw any work-in-process buildup.

Kanbans : On the shopfloor material moves between workstations with the help of Kanbans. On each bin of parts, there is a piece of paper covered in plastic wrapping which has got all details of the item, its code, the assembly in which the part goes, the supplier, the lot size of the part and soon. If the assembly is only from a single source to the subsequent assembly, only one kanban is used, if it from multiple sub-assemblies, two kanbans are used, one authorising withdrawal and another production.

JIT : Just in time production entails that inventory is on the shopfloor only when it is needed and work in process is not built up between workstations. I was told that most of the iitems reach the shopfloor only when they are needed and at that time. TKAP, Toyota Kirloskar Automobile Products, delivers items every half an hour on the shop floor.

Multi-item assembly : Usually in assembly line we see just a model of car being assembled in an assembly line which spreads from one end to the other. I was really in for surprise when I found that the Toyota "U shaped" assembly line was attending to three models at the same time. Fortuner, Innova and Corolla were being assembled in the same line and were at different stages of assembly on the line. The workers were multi-skilled to work on any of these models.

Visual controls on shop floor : At every assembly stations and in the aisle there are many lights of green and red colour which indicates whether the line is up or down. Most of the tools were hanging from the top near the assembly line which makes it easy for the person to locate tools within armsreach. Where precise location was needed, robots were also seen. For example, the point where windshield were placed, robots were doing the job with great precision, applying resin etc..

5S : A place for everything and everything in its place. This is the principle behind 5S. One of the very startling observation was to see orderliness in everything they do. Even the verandah along which people were walking had the lanes on which people were to walk clearly demarcated asking them to keep to the left. On the shopfloor there were dedicated lanes for walking and dedicated areas marked in yellow paint where the forklifts were to rest. No inventory was floating around on the shopfloor.

Toyota Business Practices warrant that any improvement in the processes need to be properly investigated, studied, documented and followed up with dedication. An incremental change which is brought up on the shop floor will take anywhere between one to two weeks to be implemented but it will be done permanently. There is nothing like ad-hoc decisions on the shop floor. What it finally results in is the very high quality of output which comes out.

The one day I spent at Toyota plant, I could grasp many things. It was a great learning experience to learn from the leader. Hope there will be many such experiences more.. In a company employing almost 6000 employees with an annual turnover of app Rs.15,000 crores, with an annual production of 8000 vehicles a month, there are lots more to learn ..

George Easaw Ph.D.

Toyota plant at Bidadi, Bangalore ..

It was great to be on the shopfloor of the world's best manufacturer yesterday .. Toyota shopfloor at Bidadi near to Bangalore ..

The assembly line was at the same time assembling Innova, Corolla and Fortuner intermittently.. It was great watching the kanbans at work, Toyota Business Practices (TBP) and Lean Manufacturing, TPS in action ..

Planning to have a national conference on lean manufacturing and service sectors .. toyotabharat.com

Account of a visit ..

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The sad plight of Kerala ..An article by Shashi Tharoor

 Food for thought:

A great article by Shashi Tharoor .. 

Hosni Mubarak to step down ..

One among the world's dirtiest dictators, along with the other rogues from the arab world, no one knew that the man had raped his country and his dear countrymen to the tune of about $ 80 billion.. Mubarak is going to step down ..

The other spineless dictators from the Arab world will follow suit ..Let democracy win and autocracy be doomed ..
ge..

From college dropout to a rogue, story of a scamster .. ..

Shahid Balwa is in news for the wrong reasons.

For the persons who had no qualms in rising to the top echelons of realty industry will soon be cooling his heels in prison cells, thanks to his over zealous nature and greed ..

The fate of this rogue scamster to fight cases and be thrown on the roads with his business routed, is difficult to picture..

Once again goes to prove that the road to the top is tough but if taken by the easy route, can be equally hard on the buttocks at the fall .

ge..

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lean principles..

These are docs from different sources which I have collected and which I feel could be of some interest to students.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1--jNAXt3qsN4mxpNkdMoA6q1IkV15MahG1hgLKFtd3OrZ8hlXEB7YIMD4-YD&hl=en

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1ahBhGNKSr_B99Rhf-3ubf6lycn1sBoADCVROqNi3cGESsvc7Mc9_ZenGUX1T&hl=en

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1vzoZc3UVwqO7PH-rLMA-54NZUOYTb8HCW4k69YcP15F8nCoxTlra_-lS6TjG&hl=en

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1MEDzIn9W7ibl0b0T7XAm6WToS_ci_gHW3M6P93C6G4tQnvTikWYgbRlWuQFs&hl=en

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=1yUrftgjUw1NsghDiCZj-nyOcJocUy_fM8IPXDxEC6TQlD2uj0VGbvJAMhDDm&hl=en

--ge..

A dicatator is after all a dictator, even in gujarat .. ..

Gujju CM NarandraModi exposes his dictatorial style unabashedly.. Senior IPS officer finds himself in problem for giving evidence against CM in the Godhra riots SIT investigation.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Gujarat-questions-IPS-officer-for-furnishing-riots-call-data/articleshow/7431553.cms

With such people of low intellect, do not know who can help .. CAT should interfere immediately and help this police officer who dared a CM for the sake of the country.

ge..

What a winter storm ..?

lona Chisholm, 13 months, helps her mom shovel snow out of their driveway using a rake in Cohassett, Mass., Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2011. The first half of a two-part winter storm is expected to drop up to a foot of snow in parts of New England Tuesday before a second storm slams into the area Wednesday.

courtesy AP ..

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Today, Egypt; tomorrow Yemen, Jordon; day after ... ??

Today - Egypt; tomorrow - Yemen, Jordon; day after  ... ??

ge ..

World cup winning teams captains get-together in India ..

Clive Lloyd (WI), Alan Boeder (Aus), Kapil Dev ( India), Imran Khan (Pak), Arjuna Ranatunga (SL), Steve Waugh (Aus)

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Geopolitics and globalization ..

Globalization brings increasing peace and improves world trade and relationship between countries.

Quote :

Imperialism and territorialism are increasingly obsolete. Why take over a country and deal with the headaches of a welfare system, and have to fix the plumbing in Uzbekistan, when you can buy its output on the cheap? - unquote 

http://www.andykessler.com/andy_kessler/2011/01/newsweek-.html

Horizontal companies like Google unlike the vertical companies like in the digital ecosystem are contibuting more to the increase of wealth for all countries, companies and people who are contributing to the system.

ge..

Mobile phones indeed pose health risk ..

A fear which I have been nursing for long and which has been at the back of my mind for a long time ..

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Mobiles-pose-health-risk-says-govt-panel/articleshow/7415288.cms

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CBI finally arrests the tainted former telecom minister A Raja ..

2G scamster A Raja, Karunanidhi's right man is finally arrested by CBI. 

Let law take its course and decide the course of action .. Even though there is no unanimity on the exact amount of scam amount, it indeed is corruption and needs to be handled sternly..

Heaving a sigh, if this had not happened, all the efforts of the people, media and politicians would have been in vain.

Waiting for the others to follow, Adarsh, Lavasa, ones in Bangalore ..

ge..

Aditya Birla Group is world's largest producer of Carbon Black..

Aditya Birla acquires CCC, Columbian Chemicals Company to become worlds largest producer of Carbon Black.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Aditya-Birla-buys-US-co-for-875m/articleshow/7400965.cms

After being the world leader in Aluminium, this is indeed great news. Arcelor Mittal and Tata Corus are the world no 1 and no 2 in Stell production.

ge..

Move quickly on Adarsh ..

This editorial from The Hindu is very apt and forceful.

http://www.hindu.com/2011/02/01/stories/2011020156821200.htm

The high profile guilty who thought that they would never get caught and could have their way even when they tried to usurp the legitimate offering by the govt to the widows of Kargil war, flats in Adarsh Society, to their own benefit, should be taken to task and punished or court martialled whatever be the case and put behind bars. That is the least the govt can do to protect the image of the armed forces which took a severe beating with the selfish motives of some of the most senior retired officers and the dignity of the common man. 

We are getting fed up with the exposures happening on a daily basis in the country. India is not a banana republic where the powerful and mighty can have their say and get away with it scot-free. Even they are responsible to the law of the land and the common man.

With the active support of Jairam Ramesh, Minister of Env and Forests, in this crusade against corruption in the real estate sector of the country and his standing threat to demolish the 31 floor building at Colaba, the pressure is getting all the more greater with each passing day on the court and CBI to finalise this matter to its logical conclusion.

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