An interesting Kaizen exercise in the class ..

 Kaizen is about continuous improvement. As usual in the Lean Operations management class for sem 4 MBA in Alliance School of Business, Bangalore, I was talking about Kaizens and had distributed a small self prepared note to the students. About 5 students attended the session in a class strength of 19, as the classes were resuming after the closure due to Covid and hijab row in Karnataka.

Click here for my caselet on kaizen.

After discussing about the different aspects of the Lean process, given here namely, identifying value, plotting the value stream map, creating the pull, establishing the pull system, the final step was continuous improvement or kaizen.

Since I already have an experience of carrying out Kaizens in the industry, I thought this would be a good opportunity to let the students get real hands on experience on administering Kaizens and benefiting from it. All other actions like value identification, plotting value stream map, waste removal, establishing flow and pull in the system have got to do with  contining the status quo, but what makes the Lean system (Toyota Production System) really unique is the concept of continuous improvement or Kaizens. 

Setting aside complacency, the lean system firmly believes that always there is a chance to do things better. Even when we visit the Toyota plant in Bidadi or Jigani, we are always able to observe the immediate urgency in employees minds of the need to bring positive changes in the work environment, procurement, assembly line, product design etc.. 

Accordingly I asked the students to come up with two Kaizens each on how to improve the quality of classroom interaction inside the classroom. The students were on their own. They came out with good suggestions. After collecting the Kaizens, I asked them to be be seated together around a table and evaluate each of the ten Kaizens and classify them into Class A, B or C.

Two Kaizens were class C, impossible to implement, while one Kaizen was class B, ie. possible to implement but needs time, investment in infrastructure and more talent. The third group class A, had the rest seven Kaizens. I asked the students to analyse each of these seven kaizens and identify the top one with greatest impact and benefit. 

Two Kaizens came on top. 

• One relating to bringing more of case discussions, not just caselets in the class. 
• The other Kaizen related to bringing more of visual system of teaching and active learning, activity based learning in the classroom. 

I have asked the students to do an A3 analysis - the PDCA mapping of the improvements (click here) of the 7 Kaizens and tell me how it can be implemented. 

In an earlier occasion while discussing about Kaizens and implementation with the EPGDM students, one of the students told me how the Kaizen system failed in his organisation. The person who proposed the Kaizen had the responsibility of getting it implemented too. In other words, it was only the people having problems who reported the problems and had the responsibility of fixing the problem. Kaizen was looked at from a negative angle - only those who had problems would report them. This saw the Kanban practice failing because no one wanted to admit that his area had problems. 

The A3 discussion is going to add more colour to our class discussion and I am sure the learning would remain in the minds of the students so that they would start practicing Kaizens in full earnest, knowing the intention and spirit behind Kaizens, when they get to industry. 

George.

Warehousing and Automation

This is the age of e-commerce and we see more and more ecommerce companies entering the fray, making use of technology and modern warehousing and transportation modes and supply management theories to serve customers around the world.

The Fortune 500 list (US companies click here) and global 500 (global companies click here) have Walmart, the physical retailer at the top and Amazon, the e-commerce giant at #2 and #3 respectively.

The physical retailer and electronic retailer, all need warehouses to stock their products. The physical retailer is hard pressed for warehouses at geographically distributed sites across the world, while the ecommerce giant can afford to have centralised warehouses at major cities and effective distribution systems.

I happened to go through a research published in HBR Feb 2022 of how Automation is causing many a heartburn in the warehousing industry. Click here ..

Though automation in warehousing can increase efficiency and productivity it can also result in lot of joblosses and resulting heartburn among employees.

How can this be overcome ?

Fear of job loss, inadequate training and unreliable technology are the main concerns from the employees while the positive points are greater safety, increased productivity, speed and higher quality work.

If the companies keep investing in safety, training for workers and ensure their growth prospects within the company, automation will cease to be a major concern in organisations. Employees who are displaced with the arrival of robots can be gainfully employes elsewhere in avenues where robots cannot play a serious role, like the front end or front office of organisation and solving customer issues.

Visit to Nandini dairy plant, Dairy circle, Bangalore

 

Daily all of us have our share of milk, be it fresh or in tea or coffee. We cannot do away with this milk. But have you ever considered how all this happens ?  Tyhe Dairy supply chain is one of the most difficult and cumbersome supply chain in that it involves many people, particularly if the daily is in the cooperative sector. How complex the dairy supply chain is to collect milk from the farmers, homogenise it and bring it to the collection centre and then to the Dairy circle plant for further pasteurisation, packing and distribution to the outlet points around Bangalore.

 

Along with Major Druv and Prof. Sajan Mathew, we made a visit to Nandini Dairy plant in Dairy ciecle this afternoon. Dhruv is doing his EPGDM project over there. 

 

The entire supply chain was explained to us well by the Asst manager (production) Kavitha. We were also taken to the control room from where we could control all operations in the plant, right from receiving milk to pasteurisation, packing, shipping etc.   

 

The plant is maintained at high levels of cleanliness and hygiene. The butter pant, the chiller, the screw conveyor through which the butter reaches the packing area, all were a treat to the eyes and mind.

This is the second most advanced dairy processing plabnt in the country after the Amul plant in Anand, Gujarat.

George.

How Jaguar used lean methodology to improve operations ..

 

Jaguar is one of the iconic car manufacturer from UK that has had tough times over the past four decades.

Sensing problems, Jaguar was up for sale and was bought by Ford. Later Ford sold it to Tata from India. While Jaguar was with Ford, they tried a partly successful implementation of lean in their Jaguar S line at Castle Bromwich plant in Birmingham. While Jaguar was with Ford they successfully implemented lean. Probably due to mismanagement and high input costs for Ford, they had to finally sell it to Tatas.

Looking at the lean implementation, what were the salient points behind the successful lean implementation in Jaguar? I am listing out four points which is a great learning for organisations around the globe looking for lean implementation. Refer to this case ..

1. Bringing change in the working culture and organisation structure

2. Matching supply to demand by incorporating Just in Time inventory policies

3. Visual management and visual control

4. Open Information centre.

5. Ownership of work and formation of work teams

The Reliance Amazon ecommerce war in India ..

Reliance Jiomart has physical stores spread across the country while Amazon has big warehouses across the country and both have excellent supply chains to back them. The retail store model of Reliance versus the Inventory model of Amazon. Who will win ?

 

Reliance has set up about 12,000 stores of Reliance fresh across the country and can enable fast delivery and returns of products while Amazon on the other hand has big high tech warehouses and access to 11000 pin codes in the country. They resort of bulk buying at low prices and then undertake mass transportation across the country and deliver at attractive prices. Recently I purchased a 255 litre Samsung refrigerator from Amazon, I got it at Rs 2500 less than the listed price and free delivery too. As an independent customer, will I be looking at speed of delivery or cost of acquisition ?

Click here for an interesting video case study by Think school.

Amazon is a global leader with about 0.6% (0.006) of revenues coming from India, ie. $2.2 billion out of a global revenue of $380 billion. . Amazon India recorded revenue increase of 48% at INR 16200 crores and 18% reduction in loss to INR 4748 crores.

As per a report from Times of India (click here), egrocery market in India has grown by 60% in 2021 and is expected to grow by average 45% in 22, touching a total of $18 billion by 2024.

Research firm Forrester forecasts online retail sales in India to grow at a CAGR of 30% between 2019 and 2024 to touch $359 billion. 

Reliance takeover of Future group consolidated their position in the retail market in India increasing sales to Rs. 350 billion in 2020.

Jiomart is making use of whatsapp to increase its penetration and hopes to rope in 15 million business users of whatsapp and 400 million ordinary users. 

The stage is set for an explosion in the e-retail market in India with a third player, Flipkart with Walmart backing. Who will finally get to control the Indian ecommerce market, we have to wait and see. Meanwhile it is good time for customers, with excellent availability, almost infinite variety and low costs. How long can this good time continue for the customers ? Can technology leader Amazon play an important role in this game and demolish everyone else ?

8 pillars of TPM

Has technology really disrupted the modern industry ?