Toyota visit on first of March 2021 ...

It was a great visit to Toyota on March 1, 2021 from Alliance University, Bangalore. The visit was initiated by Surekha Madam. Her passion and interest never faded throughout the 5 hour visit. We reached Bidadi around 8.45 AM.

After initial security checks etc we were inside the Toyota premises at Bidadi by 9.15 AM.

We were taken to the Toyota Technical Training Institute (TTTI) situated inside the campus. While we were going to TTTI, Miyawaki forests which are intense greening drives undertaken by Toyota under the leadership of Prof. Miyawaki himself, could be seen on either side. Of the 434 acres campus 25 acres are part of the Ecozone where the Miyawaki forests are grown.

After exchanging initial pleasantries and tea/coffee, we were taken around the TTTI to showcase Toyota's capabilities in training its 10th pass interns with holistic development to take up positions inside the factory. 

Toyota is extremely proud of the fact that it is sending individual entries in the World Skills Competition and has been winning prizes, recognitions and accolades over the years. 

(left) Alliance team with Surekha madam, Sajan Mathew, Sajan (from Toyota), George Easaw, Reeba Madam.

 

We were also taken to the different training areas and labs where the Gurukul students were preparing for the Skills competition which included Robotics, IoT and 3D Machining areas.

The visit next took us to the shopfloor. The pressing, painting, chassis fitting, trimline and final assembly areas were shown around. The importance of Takt time and how it changes with variability in customer demand was stressed heavily by the Toyota team. We were also taken to the final rollout testing area too where after checking for any water leakages, the vehicle is checked for any loose bolts and nuts etc before being taken to the tracks for extensive road tests on the vehicle condition. 

Mr. Sajan Edakkal from TTTI at Toyota accompanied us throughout the visit and was very helpful with clearing all our doubts. Mr. Bhat from TTTI and Mr. Jagadeesh from the HR dept spared their valuable time to be with us, guide us and clear all our queries.

The main purpose of our visit was to explore joint areas of collaboration and training for faculty and internship opportunity for students. Reciprocating our interest we look forward to a Toyota team visiting us in the campus this weekend or next to take the discussions forward.

The final part of the visit included a visit to the high quality ISO 21000 certified mess hall. (click here for my earlier writing on Toyota getting the coveted ISO 21000 certification). Due to the Covid scare only very less management staff are coming to campus as they are having WFH option. The regular workers are working in two shifts during this Covid time.

George.

The contradictions that drive Toyota ..

We have heard of the Toyota Production and the 8 step Toyota Business Process. 

How does Toyota thrive in the midst of contradictions ? It is a great story spread over a century, when Sakiichi Toyoda went to US at the beginning of the twentieth century  and studied the US Supermarkets. He thought of ways to make the Toyoda textile mills textile output error free by carefully planning Jidoka (human automation) on looms to stop when the cotton fibre broke.

Click here for the 2008 HBR paper on the contradictions that drive Toyota's system.

There are three forces of expansion and three forces of integration.

The forces of expansion are 

• setting impossible goals
• local customization
• experimentation 

The forces of integration are 

• values from founders
• up-and-in people management
• open communication
  

Any organisation would need the forces of expansion and forces of integration to keep it properly focused and planning to grow. 

Setting impossible goals are being in every line of automobiles in the market is not the right strategy as per Micheal Porter, but Toyota believes in setting such impossible goals for its employees.

Toyota believes in customising its products in each country it enters with the result they remain highly customer focused with many models to choose from.

Any big goal is broken down into smaller ones and then experimentation is done on these small goals. Failure is not fatal, but leads to organisational learning, provided the employee follows the follow instruction culture.

Looking at the forces of integration, these help give the company a sense of direction and purpose.

The founders values include 

• continuous improvement
• respect for people and their limitation
• teamwork
• humility
• putting customers first and 
• importance of seeing things firsthand

People management  is very unique in Toyota. Any person who is incompetent is not sent away, instead is retrained with on-the-job training and put on the task, this ensuring employment for life, an alien concept in other automobile companies.The training it imparts to employees helps instill humility in them. 

Open communications enable information flows freely across the hierarchies, across functions and seniority, outside the organisation to suppliers, customers and dealers. Employees listen to opinions and comments in an open environment. The employees are encouraged to seek information from the source itself than having it from other sources, avoiding confusion and uncertainty in the communication.

The above six forces that tend to expand the company and unite it together are very vital to the success story of Toyota. These factors ensure the company stays on track of Continuous Improvement and Respect for People which forms the main two foundational principles of Toyota. 

The author has been interacting closely with Toyota plant in India, Toyota Kirloskar Motors in Bangalore since 2011 and is very much aware of the Toyota culture and contradictions as outlined above.

George.

How can blockchains help Pharma supply chains ..

We are all concerned of being supplied with spurious drugs. It is often difficult to identify which drugs are spurious and duplicate and which are original. From the place of manufacture, to the point of consumption,the supply chains often get manipulated by having spurious or substandard supplies of raw materials or chemicals. This is an issue in the pharma supply chains observed globally.

It is said that annually about 60 million drugs are returned and it is difficult for pharma companies to check whether these are spurious or original drugs.

There are two types of problems with the global pharma supply chains. In the developing world, the problem is of delivering sub standard drugs or falsified products that have one molecule but actually is another product. About 1 in10 medications fall in this category. 

In the developed world, while it is not possible to commit forgery or supply sub standard drugs, the actual issue is theft. It is said that on an average developed countries lose about $ 1 billion of medicines. 

Referring to HBR of May '20, Why Big Pharma is betting on Blockchain, (click here) the author Alison MacCauley says that deploying Blockchains across the pharma supply chain can ease things to a great extent. Besides ensuring availability, blockchains can eliminate fraudulent transactions in the supply chain.

Block chains have advantages - 

• data privacy - the data privacy is ensured as the data is not shared, only supply chain partners get to see the data
• data integrity - maintained through complex mathematical computations, which makes it difficult or almost impossible to commit frauds
  
• data ownership -  large amounts of data is not owned by any single central entity, instead it is jointly owned by all the members in the chain.
• data verification - 
•     cheaper, easier and faster verification even with competing partners, 
•     ensure integrity of returned drugs before being resold to dealers, 
•     ensure compliance with expiry dates
• data sharing - 
• to enable identify, locate and remove expired, damaged and fraudulent products fro the market,  
• where supplies are low ensure redistribution and replenishment
• ensure supply chain agility by ensuring inventory availability,streamlining operations, avoiding fraudulent products entering market and so on.

Blockchain is an Industry 4.0 technology. Making  pharma supply chains agile, self-sufficient and efficient using Industry 4.0 technology is the best thing that can happen to the medical fraternity.

George

 

Can Artificial Intelligence accelerate the software testing phase ?

Software development, conventionally called Systems Analysis and Design in technical schools usually follows the waterfall approach. In the early nineties, I was teaching SAD in a Government Engineering College in Goa to Post Graduate students. As time passed by more practical models of software development have emerged. This link explains some of the most popular software development models (click here). In general, software utilization process follows the three phases of software development, testing, deployment and maintenance. Each phase is very detailed and time consuming.

Digital Transformation is hitting the world by storm and organizations are transforming to the digital model at great speed. Companies these days are able to overcome competition and gain customer satisfaction based on the speed at which they are able to roll out new features and changes.

There is general talk on whether the new technology of Artificial Intelligence can help accelerate the process. While going through the article in Harvard Business Review of Feb '21 (click here), this issue was discussed in great detail. Some of the points are being highlighted here.

Since digital transformation is the key to remaining competitive, maximizing the productivity of the expensive and scarcely available software developers is very important. Usual situation is that software projects are delayed and developers and testers work overtime to ensure it is released before the competition. With more and more organizations taking to Digital Transformation and the trained quality human resources are not developing at a similar pace, is putting a strain on the system. It is a question of doing more with less, and it is the right situation for Artificial Intelligence to step in. 

Developed codes pass through a basic process called unit testing which is time consuming, employing scarce resources. Advanced testing checking for integration, performance, functionality and security issues. The software testing globally is a $12 billion industry and much is presently being outsourced. leading to challenges of coordination and collaboration between the different stakeholders.

Software development is very creative and may not be a ready candidate for AI automation for the time being, but testing can be automated by developing suitable algorithms that can write and execute tests much faster than their human components. 

First of all, when it involves testing millions of lines of code, AI algorithms will surpass the human component any day, as it does not have issues of intellectual tiredness, errors creeping in and so on. Also under machine learning situations, these automated AI software solutions can get richer and more efficient and effective in detecting errors with each passing day and project.

Secondly, software and update releases come out more frequently leading to quicker customer feedback and faster error and conflict resolution. The software developers do not have to deal with unplanned work, are more satisfied with work and hence organizations find it easy to retain talent. 

Thirdly software developers work with challenging creative projects that are able to utilize employee talents more creatively and attend to important unplanned work in the process of deployment.

In future we will find AI based automation taking over the software development, testing, deployment and maintenance functions more effectively than their human counterparts, leading to automating writing application software and releasing revisions more frequently. Open AI's massive language model GPT-3, is presently being used to translate natural human language into web page designs leading to finally automation of the coding tasks.

George

How is China able to catch up with US in AI research and output ?

The whole world is fully aware of the potential of Artificial Intelligence and every scientifically advanced country is working hard to establish itself as a front runner in developing AI technologies. US traditionally has been the country that has been leading the world with almost 2000+ AI companies researching, experimenting and developing AI products for the world. Click here for a good introduction to the field of Artificial Intelligence from IBM.

Of late, China has overtaken US in AI research producing about 54% more papers at around 37,343 compared to the US with approximately 24,000 papers in 2017. (click here) The way China is developing in the global field as regards Artificial Intelligence is really astonishing for the world. 

China which was a non scientific entity especially in the Computer Science Engineering area about twenty five years ago, in just twenty years has developed fast and is presently the world leader in the number of publications and patents in the area by a good margin of 20% over the former leading country US.

How did this happen ? Click here (same as highlighted above) for an interesting Harvard Business Review article that describes how China has brought about this change. 

Catch up cycles happen when latecomers because of modern technology, favourable government policies and market environments are able to catch up with incumbents. 

China has caught up with the US especially in AI technology and applications. Three reasons are cited for this change. These reasons are a combination of demographic, scientific reasons and nature of the AI field besides favourable policy decisions of the Chinese government in promoting cutting edge AI research in Chinese companies. The far sighted vision of the Chinese political leadership cannot be discounted.

Firstly AI technology is not protected and is available largely in public domain as many researchers are working and publishing their results. This has enabled fast percolation of technology across applications and fast adoption.The Open Science nature of AI has helped in the fast spread of knowledge. 

Secondly data and Computer Science knowledge, talent and innovation in the AI field has got more impact on growth than patents that capture knowledge to pockets of usage. The conventional pharma industry by holding patents can give companies the edge over newcomers and competitors and kills innovation.

In the weak AI area, one makes an AI product puts it in public domain or use to generate data. This data is captured and using machine learning algorithms is analysed leading to refined product usage through data. The cycle continues. Sharing of the AI product to the public as early as possible is thus necessary for the early success of the product.

Thirdly China's large population and markets gives the AI companies the unique opportunity to handle large amounts of data and assemble huge databases. For example, Didi, the equivalent of the car hailing app Uber in China, on a daily basis handles 70TB (70,000 gigabytes) of data, with 9 billion routes being planned daily and almost 1000 car requests happening every second. The volume of data generated is so vast, the machine learning algorithm can learn by itself to take improved decisions after every cycle.

In the near future we can expect Chinese AI products and offerings overtake US, catapulting China to the numero uno status in the field. The Communist dictatorial leadership in China and it's wholly whimsical ways in dealing with dissent, competition and openness is already a matter of concern for the global scientific community. Hope China will come out open and public in it's AI policy for the whole world to be sure that AI is not being used in undesired ways for world domination in future.

George.

How effective are Digital Transformation exercises in global organisations ?

Harvard Business Review Analytics Services survey Rethinking Digital Transformation 2020 sponsored by RedHat was carried out globally on 700 plus senior executives.

The major findings from the survey were very impressive and interesting.

• 84% of these executives agreed that a combination of the right culture, revised business processes and new technology were responsible for bringing in a right digital transformation experience, 
• 70% opined that over the past two years Digital Transformation has become more important to business success, 
• 63 % said that cultural challenges were the greatest impediment to Digital Transformation, 
• 20% recognised Digital Transformation as effective in their organisations. 

The low figure of 20% is a clear reminder that even though Digital Transformation has great potential to bring in changes in organisations, it's success rates are quite low.

Key business goals of the organisation undertaking Digital Transformation were 

• revenue growth
• operational efficiency improvement
• customer retention
  

From the study we find that the key to Digital Transformation success is the fundamental organisational change brought about by 

• reimagined corporate cultures 
• business process modernisation and 
• technology upgrades
  

The 5 steps as outlines by the survey authors (from Red Fox) are as follows

1. clearly define and communicate underlying business goals
2. redouble efforts to achieve cultural change
3. develop KPIs to track cultural change
4. address business process changes and
5. identify high impact technology investments

The high impact technology areas that were identified from the survey are as follows 

• 63% - Collaborative Platforms to promote multi channel communication in organisations
• 61% - Business Process Automation
• 57% - Cloud Analytics
• 51% - Digital Automation Systems
• 50% - Artificial Intelligence technology (likely to take top spot by 2021)

Click here for the  Harvard Business Review Analytics Services survey Rethinking  Digital Transformation 2020 done on almost 700+ executives from the industry carrying out digital transformation in their respective organisations. 

George Easaw

What do Space-for-Space models mean for humanity ?

What do the Space-for-Earth and Space-for-Space business models mean ?

The activities of the different space organisations across the world have been focusing on reaching space and conquering the planets. Of all global space faring nations US, Russia, China, India, UK, Japan, Germany and France have made initial strides with US and Russia having made maximum progress. 

We have through the international collaboration on International Space Station done experiments on how humans could fare in space for long periods of time. Any flight above 100 kms of earth's surface is a space flight. We have not been able to take more than 13 people together out of the earth's orbits at a single point of time. 

About 568 people from 41 countries have been to space as of November '20. A total of 12 people have walked on the surface of the moon. (click here). Space travel has always enthralled humans and of the total of 105 billion people who have lived on planet earth till date (click here), only about 568 people have been into space, a mere 0.0000000054 .. Valeri Polyakov of Russia (picture on the left) has stayed longest in space for 437 days, app 1.2 years.

We have tried to grow vegetables, carry out 3D machining and have attempted to make alloys and carry out metallurgical exercises to arrive at superior products for humanity back on earth. We call it the Space for Earth business model.

Space for Space business model is even more interesting. It proposes means and ways to carry out space activities like manufacturing growing plants etc from space or outer planets. If humanity is able to conquer this realm, the possibilities to humanity is limitless. We can exploit the resources from different planets, satellites, asteroids etc for the benefit of humanity like planning human settlements outside earth, exploiting energy resources for these activities and so on.

The domain is still on the drawing board and in the imagination of people. The efforts of SpaceX, Elon Musk's space initiative and Made in Space Inc collaborating with NASA and working on NASA funded projects is sure to bring developments in this area. 

Recently I happened to go through an exciting article in the digital version of Harvard Business Review of Feb '21 (click here) which was mentioning of the dawning commercial space age and the maturing of the Space-for-earth business models to the space-for-space business models.

As per the above HBR article, the three areas where governments of the world could concentrate are as follows, I have added the fourth point.

• Allow Private Initiative - Allow private enterprise to take up the challenge and explore ingenious ways to exploit the space from earth and space from space initiatives
• Flexible Governmental regulations and policies - If governments try to implements its regulations tooth and nail, it is sure to dampen some of the private enterprise and spirit of inquiry. Instead there should be a judicious application of the government regulations
• International Collaboration - Moving across boundaries and forgetting geopolitical tensions got us the International Space Station. Similarly space faring nations should get together and work for expanding human forays into space beyond the solar system.  
• Creating More Awareness - Creating better awareness back on earth to the 'Space for Earth' and 'Space for Space' initiative can bring more innovation to the forefront and help with great experiments and journeys to the far reaches of the Universe.
  

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is opening up the space from earth and space from space initiatives including manufacturing to the private sector with a big push. Already Mahindra, Tata and Reliance besides small private players are already helping ISRO explore the deeper confines of space for India. 

With governmental and private initiatives, let us hope in the near future humans will be able to explore deep space and exploit its resources of energy and materials for the betterment of humanity and for establishing human settlements outside earth.

George.. (picture courtesy wikipedia)