Mangalore catholic history ..

In fact, the Mangalore catholics have been the christians in India who have been persecuted more than any other christian denominations in India. Tippu Sultan and his expeditions to Srirengapattanam will for ever remain some of the most blotted in Indian Christian history. Having escaped the Portuguese from Goa, after conversion into Catholic faith, they were treated badly by Tippu Sultan with so much of contempt and disdain, as they had helped The British to defeat his father Hyder and Portuguese in the Great Anglo Mysore wars. Finally in the fourth Anglo Mysore war, Tippu was killed and thus ended the cruel reign of Tippu against Christians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangalorean_Catholics

Since i have Catholic friends from Mangalore, I can actually feel for them more than any one else.

george..

Fighting corruption ..

Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party are out to fight corruption in the different dimensions as how it exists today.

Corruption of ideology - communalism, corruption of character - criminal behaviour, corruption of materialism - crony capitalism and corruption of lineage - dynastic politics..

ge..

Rockefellers and ambanis ..

Exactly a hundred years ago immigrants like Rockefellers and Gettys may have engaged in crony capitalism in US by selling the oil they discovered to the people of US and getting extremely rich overnight (depriving and dispossessing the original owners, the American Indians of this wealth) ..

Maybe the US elected representatives were not smart to see through the game then.. (though Rockefeller eventually out of guilt, returned everything to the society ) Can a petty businessman like Mukesh Ambani in India continue to fool the people of our country using the same strategy ?

Should we allow a cheap works contractor like Mukesh asked to drill out national resources, claim ownership of these resources ? Let the people of this land decide ..

April 1 is the ultimatum Mukesh has given to the country to fall in line .. Atrocious !!

Thank you Kejriwal for bringing up such a relevant issue and sensitising the people of this country of the wrongdoings of such core criminals like Mukesh ...

Cliques and intrigues in the church ..

The poor and humble Pope Francis is fed up and bewildered with the intrigues, cliques, favouritism shown by Cardinals (old and new) and exhorts them to shun all those .. To become one with the ordinary man, partake in his sufferings and pains.. Be simple and humble, like their leader the fisherman from Galilee ..
The mafia within the church may not agree to him, he may soon be toppled in a bloodless coup .. The Catholic church ( as are all other churches) may be feeling upset with having to listen to the truth at times. .. Vested interests who enjoy the ill benefits of its great wealth will be the first to protest against this posting ..

The greatest wealth is to live content with little - PLATO 400 BC ..

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/Pope-tells-cardinals-to-shun-intrigue-cliques-of-royal-court/articleshow/30905971.cms

At sherons house, first birthday ..

Pink tabebuia trees in full bloom on outer ring road Bangalore..

Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky - Khalil Gibran .. 

The Outer Ring Road in Bangalore city approaching Silk Board from Sarjapur side is a very beautiful sight these days..

Rows of Pink Tabebuia trees on either side of the road are in full bloom with mesmerising beauty ..

ge..

Kejriwal and Dr Devi Shetty ..

Arvind Kejriwal, 

 

 

Dr  Devi Shetty..

What is the similarity between these two people ?

Arvind Kejriwal is Bachelor of Technology from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India (IIT KGP), Dr. Devi Shetty is MBBS, medical doctor from Kasturba Medical College) KMC Manipal, India India and FRCS from Edinburgh, UK.

Kejriwal is the Ramon Magsaysay award winner considered as Asia's Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Devi Shetty is a Padma Bhushan awardee in India, the third top civilian recognition award of the govt of India.

Kejriwal is from the prestigious Indian Revenue Service (IRS) and former Comm. Of Income Tax, GOI, Dr Devi Shetty is founder of Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangalore, , the worlds largest, cheapest and highest quality cardiac facility.

Still what is common between them ?

Both were trained under Mother Teresa, the saint of the gutters in Kolkata ..

If Dr. Devi Shetty is being worshipped and adored all over the world, can the other person be far behind ??

george..

Playing the Theory of Constraints game ..

 A chain is only as strong as its weakest link - Eliyahu Goldratt.

Theory of Constraints is a theoritical concept with loads of learning from the practical domain introduced by the Jewish Shop floor engineer cum manager Eliyahu Goldratt through his book "The Goal " in 1984 and made popular by him throughout the world.. 

Last year when we visited Titan Jewels in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, owners of the famous Tanishq brand, the SC manager was telling us how through Theory of Constraints and the consultancy offered by Eliyahu Goldratt himself to Tata Sons, Titan Jewels could increase its turnover from Rs 5000 crores to Rs 10,000 crores ( $ 2 billion) in a matter of four years and Tata Sons, their turnover from $ 65 billions to $ 100 billions plus, even beating IBM..

Brief description of the game is given here .. as played last year .. I do not know, we may be the only Bschool in the country to play this game, not even the IIMs .. It gives a clear visualisation to students of how inventory gets accumulated at some workstations in an assembly line and how tackling this workstation alone, instead of all the workstations together, will help improve the productivity of the line. 

On 15 Feb 2014, the second version of the game was played in the Operations class of 50 students (all initial stock only with the first workstation and none with the intermediate workstations) for 10 rounds by 9 assembly lines in the Operations class at Alliance University, Bangalore.

 Each of the first workstations of the nine assembly lines were given an initial stock of 30 units of inventory. The production at each of the five workstations in each of the assembly line ( or in other words the machines which were working at each station) was randomly chosen from 1 to 5. The production from each workstation was decided by a random number generator between 1 and 5. In the initial round, only the items passed from upstream stations were passed to downstream stations, while in later rounds, the inventory accumulated from earlier rounds were used if there was a difference between machines available at that workstation and inventory passed from upstream workstation.

Assumption :

It is assumed that each workstation has five machines and each machine part- processes units during a shift. If all machines are up in a workstation, it processes five parts, if only two machines are up it processes just two parts. these two parts now proceed to the next workstation for machine specific processing operations.

Mass Conservation Equations

The equation which guided movement of raw material from each work station was this :  
Items processed at each workstation i to workstation j (IP_i,j)= min(machines working at station i (M_i), items processed and passed from upstream station i-1 to i (IP_i-1,i). 

As the game progressed, each station started accumulating stock and thus the items dispatched from each work station to the succeeding workstation changed over passage of time. 

Items processed and passed from station i to station j (IP_i,j) = min ( machines working at station i (M_i) + WIP at station i, items processed and passed from upstream station i-1 to i (IP_i-1,i) + WIP at station i).

The game was played for ten rounds in the first phase. The data is given below.

Assembly line   Final O/P    Bottleneck Stn     Inv. bottleneck        Throughput rate

I                          19                 2                         16                     19/30 = 0.633
II                         17                 4                           5                     17/30 = 0.58
III                        18                2                            3                     18/30 = 0.6
IV                          -                -                     - ( no team)
V                         18                2                           19                    18/30 = 0.6
VI                        17                2                            3                     17/30 = 0.58
VII                       17                2                           6                      17/30 = 0.58
VIII                     14                4                            11                    14/30 = 0.47
IX                        16               4                             6                     16/30 = 0.53
X                         18               4                             9                     18/30 = 0.6


How the game is played : 

The game is played for three phases.

Assembly lines are created with 5 workstations in each. ie. if there are 30 students in the class, six assembly lines are setup. At the first workstation in each assembly line, initial RM inventory of 50 units is supplied. No other workstation in the assembly line is supplied any stock. The output from the last workstation is the throughput of the line. A record is kept of the inventory at each workstation at the end of each phase. ( the coloured tokens acting as inventory can be given to the first station as RM inventory if tokens are running short.)

A phase of the game is playing for 10 rounds. The bottle neck station is identified after each phase and the inventory accumulation there is removed completely/partial level ( the decision variable taken by the team members) at end of phase I. The game is continued after each phase with the same stock of WIP at all other stations retained as it is, is played for another two phases (with identification of bottleneck station and complete/partial removal of inventory accumulation at the bottleneck station at end of phase 2). The assembly line which gets the maximum throughput at the end of three phases is the winner.

The analysis of the game : - phase I.

Assembly line I had the highest throughput of 19 units with a throughput rate of 0.633 while lines III, V and X had a throughput of 18 each and throughput rate of 0.6.

The highest bottle neck at any workstation in any assembly line was observed as 19 and 16 on lines V and I respectively. Station 2 on line I and station 2 on line V had maximum accumulation of inventory, in other words these two stations had the least processing rate ( ie.  highest processing time). These are the bottleneck stations of lines I and V.

As per Eliyahu Goldratt's Theory of Constraints, we now have to turn our attention to the bottleneck stations (instead of concentrating on all the stations at the same time) and remove the bottle neck by way of better line balancing of machines, better maintained machines, techn, better training to workers , better quality of raw materials etc. etc.

After the initial bottle neck is removed ( bring the inventory to zero) continue the game for another ten rounds. Now another workstation may become the bottle neck.  Work to remove the bottleneck for this station also. As the bottle neck is removed we find the throughput rate also improves, which is the success of the assembly line. As time was limited, we could not play the game for another 10 rounds and hence could not demonstrate to the students how the average throughput rate (for two rounds) increases.

The final winner of the game is that assembly line which gets the maximum throughput after running the game for minimum thirty rounds, ie. three phases.

The uniformly distributed random number table between 1 and 5 is available here.. 

ge..

Why a United Andhra means a lot to the people of Andhra..

I was born in Guntur as also my brother, which is part of the Seemandhara area.

Telengana was under the Nawab and less developed , educationally and financially, even though the Nawab was the richest person in the world at a point of time. The coastal Andhra was under the British who over the centuries saw that the place was educationally advanced. All major rivers flow through Seemandhara area. All the major CMs of Andhra have been from Seemandhara area.

I was told by my friends that the people of Telengana were so lazy under the Nawab. The dialect of Telugu spken in Telengana is used for comedy slang in movies. The people in Telegana are so lazy they get up at 11 am.

All growth of Andhra Pradesh and the develoment of Hyderabad has been as a result of the efforts of the hardworking, educationally and culturally advanced CMs who all have been from coastal andhra and people of Seemandhara. Chandra Babu Naidu even lost the last elections in Andhra as he was seen going out of his way to make Hyderabad the IT capital of the country.

Dividing Andhra into Telegana and Seemandhara is against the wishes of 80% of the people in Andhra. When the state was formed in 1956, Kurnool was the capital in Seemandhara. To help growth and development of Telengana, Hyderabad was elected to the capital of United Andhra and the people and politicians of Andhra have been putting their hard work to its growth from 1959 onwards. The move by K Chandrasekhar Rao to carve out Telengana is but a very selfish move from him. The people and state of Andhra will never forgive him or his children for their excesses against the people of Andhra.

A this late moment, to divide Andhra is a very poor action of the Congress party, the party is out of sync with reality happening in the villages and towns. It appears Sonia Gandhi has vested interests in seeing that she would not give a United Andhra to Chandra Babu Naidu who is set to come back to power in Andhra.

ge..

Even though BJP and YSR Congress, had given assurances to Congress they would support Congress move to bifurcate Andhra, a late minute rethink by both parties to backstab Congress will teach Congress a lesson or two.

Arizona State University, WP Carey School of Business Supply Chain series videos ...

Here is an excellent series of 12 videos I found exceedingly useful for students, academics and practitioners of Supply Chain Management around the world. It opens up new facets of thoughts, actions and research in the wide world of Supply Chain Management.

Thank you WP Carey School of Management, Arizone State University.

Module 1. What is Supply Chain Management :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi1QBxVjZAw

          Module 2. Buy it : Managing Supply.   
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYbtZ0x9_SA

Module 3. Make it: Manufacturing and Operations    
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncli94xodm8

          Module 4: Move it : Transportation and Logistics.   
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZpHiMTwOdM

Module 5.   Sell it and Service it : Retail Considerations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUO2EaJnb-w

          Module 6.   Supply Chain Integration 
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_yMW2b0kNk

Module 7. Global Supply Chain Management   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuQ200JAViA

          Module 8 : Socially responsible Supply Chain Management  
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdbKvXh6sLU

Module 9.  Business Processes 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUInjQvzIkE

          Module 10. Measuring Performance
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4HPYYR5iLw

Module 11. Quality Management
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJNVrY_Z2NM

          Module 12.  Supply Chains and Information Technology :
          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXDvHgjRNDQ

george..

Raping the country clean of gas and energy ....

The Congress and BJP leadership owe it to the country to give a reasonable explanation of what is happening regarding the greatest scam to have hit post independence India with both the parties being equally compliant and responsible for this sad state of affairs.

Having promoised to deliver LNG at $2.3/mmbtu for the next 17 years and won the contract, it was nothing but great scheming and collusion between the Ministers Deors, Moily and Oil and Gas secretarywith Dhirubhai Ambani, crook #1 in the country to rob the country of thousands of crores of rupees.

All the people who were against Arvind Kejriwal are dumb now as to why only Kejriwal could unravel this deep corruption happening in the country between all major political parties and the biggest corporate house, the Reliance Industries.

It will take some more time for the people to understand the clean intention of the Aam Aadmi party.

One thing happening in the country for the better is this, whoever comes to power atDelhi inthe general elections of 2-14, the going will be tough for them as an ever vigilant press, media and political parties are waiting to expose the crimunals, the rapists and murderers of the country to the people of the world..

An excellent discussion that happened on NDTV is given here.. TOI news report is here ..

Shell representatives who are supplying to Reliance is making a point on behalf of Reliance in this talk, fighting for Reliance.  An example of crony capitalism.

Very sad that there is no one willing to fight for the aam aadmi of the country whose wealth is being raped by these individuals, politicians and corporates.

By listening to the discussion, it is clear how the speakers except for AAP leaders are trying to save their skin and are advocating for their private vested interests against the interests of the state and the people of the country.  This discussion also highlights how important is energy, gas to the Indian economy and how corporates aremaking the people of the country believe that they are doing a great service to the country by raping it..

Our politicians and corporate leaders need to be given a class on ethics, patriotism, how not to be fooled by private vested interests and how not to believe that the common man would take all that they deliver to the people of this country without a pinch of salt or any questions asked ..

ge..

The frontiers of Innovation getting extended day by day ..

I had a free day in College without any classes or papers to correct and I decided I would do some great informative reading and learning that would benefit me and my students and would give me some idea to work on for the next six months.

I finished a couple of papers and was looking at the application of innovation when I decided to do some basic reading on Innovation.

The most important learning I had today was that Innovation is not company driven, it is individual driven.

Here are some links to it, I shall keep adding to these.

The first is a TEDx talk by the Chairman CEO of AutoDesk, Carl Bass - The new rules of Innovation : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKV3rhzvaC8

The Indian knife Innovation : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SclN-2CteXM

Electronic Tattoo .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oeFBGFzcrg

Carnegie Mellon lecture 51 mins : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amt3ag2BaKc

Some basic thoughts : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP80EoL4Z70

George..

Nido Tania ...

A life had to be sacrficed to make our consciences prick .. Where are we headed to ?

Nido, our prayers are with you .. RIP ..

ge..

Learnings from this morning's JIT systems Game at Alliance Uty, Bangalore..

We did a dry run this morning at Alliance of the JIT systems game. Raw materials from two vendors supplying cups and A4 poster sheets with the accurate round slots for placing the round cups respectively were assembled by an operator whose job was to see that there was enough inventory of four units each of the different variants of raw materials and work in progress with him before pushing it to the final assembly area.

The assembly area had area to stock only four units ie. only four kanbans were working initially .. The no of output items are manufactured and kept as work-in-process inventory,   As and when items are taken by the upstream entity in response to a demand for them, items are assembled or built to fill up the output inventory stock.

The measure of inventory, RM, WIP and FG if any, is kept at each entity, the cycle time of the whole assembly line is noted for the first level of four kanbans.

The game is repeated with 3 kanbans and 2 kanbans resply. The inventory quantity is measured at each entity and the cycle time is noted.

The aim of the game is
1. to find the relationship between the inventory held ( number of kanbans) at each entity and the response time measured by means of cycle time of the line to respond to customer demand.

2. to find the relationship between the number of Kanbans and the number of good quality output.

The variability of customer demand necessitates forecasting of demand and hence provides an opportunity for the occurence of bullwhip effect.

The beer distribution simulation game was played as a periodic review model, while this game is a continuous review model.

A good description of this JIT game (push / Pull)  can be found here ..

The worksheet for noting the readings during the game can be downloaded here ..

george..

Excellent placement of Operations major students at Alliance University ..

It was Shivam Tushar of the Jan 12 batch who came to meet me with the good news of his placement at the world No 2. Kuehne & Nagel, logistics company, that actually made me write this short note on the excellent positive atmosphere in the operations stream at Alliance University. Even before the course gets over by end March, over 70% of the 60+ Operations major students from Alliance University Bangalore have been placed in very reputed companies of the world.

As a Professor in the Operations area in this University Bschool www.alliance.edu.in, it gives me great pride to see students coming to us before the interview for sound advice on facing interviews, clearing some concepts and after the interview process coming to tell us the good news of their placement.

The major factor for lot of students from the Operations stream getting placed in good companies, some students even getting multiple placements is because of the high quality instruction and the academic challenges we give the students here during the course. The students are engaged by the faculty and introduced to operations concepts more by games and experiences, presentations and case discussions, besides the usual classroom theoretical sessions mode.

The great stress all the faculty members place on students getting practical exposure by way of mini projects for the subjects, mid way through the course, the excellent training and support provided by the faculty and the support infrastructure at Alliance University for the internships and the high quality of dissertation projects in the final semester, all add to the high quality of placements for the students.

Being able to get enough exposure even during the course by doing mini projects / internships / dissertation and then during the interview, leading the interviewer to ask specific questions regarding the mini project / internship etc gives the upper hand to the students to perform well at the interview.

Students from the BSchool getting invited to make presentations at premier Institutes of the world like MIT at Boston etc. and the frequent discussions of journal papers from reputed journals like HBR, SMR etc. in the classroom speaks volumes of the great stress the faculty place on research and introducing students to the recent research developments from across the world. ( Research ideas get included in textbooks after a leadtime of 5-10 years). Being well informed naturally adds to the confidence level of the students and therefore superlative performance at the placement interviews.

Wish all students the best in their endeavours, a great future and a satisfying career .

george.

The GREAT Indian democracratic exercise of 2014 .. World's envy ..

The current democratic exercise taking place in India is simply amazing .. No where in the world at any point of time in history has so many people, more than 800 million eligible voters  are going to elect their representatives to represent them in the topmost powerful law making and governing body of the country, the Lok Sabha, ever voted in the greatest and biggest democratic exercise of the world. China can never dream of such a possibility, not even the third most populous United States, one third the population of India.

In fact the role played by the press and media in India now is so very important, that no major developed educated country in the world can ever boast of being able to carry out a giant exercise of this magnitude, done after so much intelligent discussions, actions, provoking thoughts, speeches, welfare activities and the like. Perhaps in human history this will be the greatest public engaged activity ever ..

The politicians in India are gaining experience and wisdom from the process and are playing it safe and cool. There are centrists, as well as rightists and communalists from the extreme right, moderate leftists and extreme leftists, regional parties trying to etch out a portion of the pie for their selfish interests. There are newcomers with a superior intention to cleanse the system of corruption, not wit a political intention to remain in power and loot the state. The political reality that has emerged over the years is that the national parties cannot get majority on their own, they have to share power in coalitions (as was done in the earlier two or three general elections) with these regional parties who are an aberration to the political scene of the country.

The wide coverage of the 2014 general elections, thanks to an ever vigilant, vibrant media and press makes one wonder to what great heights the Indian Democracy will rise.

The first National General Elections 2014 debate on "Political Leadership" held last night, Thursday, Feb 6, 2014 on Timesnow TV was telecast live to 51 countries worldwide. It is a clear reminder of the interest the world is showing in who takes over reins from April 2014 to rule the greatest country of the world, a great country through all of history and the country that will remain great for a bright future of the world, a country which has produced the greatest spiritual and political leaders of all time.

Even we in India are all looking with great hopes at the path the country is taking, critically analysing the activities of political parties and who can bring peace and at the same time development for all of 1220 million people of the world, raising their standards of living and responsibility to the world, raising their ethical and moral standards like never before.

Were it not for the violence, greed, pillage, exploitation and excesses of the white man in India for about 400-500 years, the Indian people would not have got the opportunity and reason to remain united, work in unison with peace and respect to the world.

We Indians believe that the great sacrifices of leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, SC Bose, Maulana Azad in gaining it independence from the British and their statesmanship and vision in leading it thru the past 66 years will for ever remain etched in golden letters for ever.

george.

Sochi winter Olympics - $51 billion extravaganza ..

Arvind Kejriwal.. the man , the phenomenon..

Arvind Kejriwal continues to bemuse the common man, the elite, learned and the politician of the country alike. His simple life style, very high intelligence, a service mentality, life of submission to the service of the people of the land, a never deviating policy to stick to the truth, being honest , these are the points which make him to stand out among the motley crowd of dirty Indian politicians. Hope he lives to the promise and hope he has given to the people of the country. Delivering the country from the cruel clutches of the self serving politician from any of the political party, hope he lives a long time to save the country and its people.

http://www.livemint.com/Politics/XERu7Qq6eidzuQrpQewQcN/The-different-shades-of-Arvind-Kejriwal.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_Kejriwal

http://www.babusofindia.com/2011/08/team-anna-10-things-you-may-like-to.html

Sleeping on Delhi Railway platform before he became Delhi Chief minister ..

ge..

Jugaad and Innovation .. any different ?

Jugaad is a term applied to a creative or innovative idea providing a quick, alternative way of solving or fixing a problem.

Is Jugaad always the true solution or is it a stop gap arrangement ?

According to some researchers of innovation, an innovation has a commercial application for an idea which can be effective in easing the efforts or time to reach a final solution.

Jugaad on the other hand  is nothing but a stop gap fix, not a permanent one of finishing a work easily. We need to move from a Jugaadi mindset to a more permanent one, of offering a true, verifiable, superior, replicable solution to a problem considering the long term applications.

Jugaad is a short term solution, while innovation is a long term, stable, documentable, verifiable solution to a problem.

ge