OR Taha ..

Operations Research by Hamdy Taha has been one of the best OR books I have come across after the text book by Ravindran, Philips and Solberg, Wiley. 

I have not seen any other OR book as exhaustive and simple as these books where most of the OR concepts have been explained well.

George

Private trains on Indian tracks by 2024 ..

The Chairman of the Indian Railway Board Pradeep Yadav recently made a very startling disclosure that Indians will soon be able to travel in luxury and comfort in private trains on Indian tracks by as early as 2024.

What are the questions people would ask the Railways ?

• Safety - would traveling public be offered better safety equipments and live monitoring of tracks to prevent accidents ?
• Security  - would the traveling public be more secure inside the train, especially single women passengers ?
• Passenger amenities - offer new and innovative amenities ?
• Luggage handling solutions - will innovation be brought here ?
• Costs - would privatisation hike up the costs and make rail travel prohibitively costly ?
• Availability of seats and capacity - to start with private operators would be working side-by-side with the Indian Railways augmenting the Railways capacity. Slowly as more trains and routes would be open to private firms, the competition would increase. 
• Reach - would private trains run on all sectors being run by IR now or only on profitable routes
• Number of players - how many private players would be allowed on any single route ?
• Are the railway tracks across the country capable of handling high speed trains ?
• What will happen to the existing employee base and how will they be retrenched ?

For the private players, the questions that need to be clarified by the government are as follows

• Entry parameters
• Exit parameters
• Minimum trains to be operated
• Minimum distance to be covered
• Minimum facilities to be provided
• Minimum stations to be serviced
• Minimum overhauling facilities
• Who will resolve mutual disputes with the Indian Railways that could arise ?

The steps would be akin to the liberalisation and privatisation plans for the telecom and air travel industry in India. The privatisation in the two above sectors has worked out smoothly. It has offered great benefits to the Indian public. Indian private telecom players now offer the world's ONLY FREE domestic telephone calls to any part of the country. Would railways privatisation also offer great prospect of service and travel to the Indian public ? 

Presently Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC) between Delhi and Mumbai and Delhi and Kolkata already offer private freight trains for the past thirteen years. It is slowly picking up.

For Indian Railways, 62% of  revenues come from movement of freight and 38% from passenger movement transporting 8.26 billion passengers and 1.16 billion tonnes of freight for the year ending 2018. 

As an experiment on privatisation, IRCTC (a quasi govt agency under Railways) is offering two rakes called Tejas on private basis where each customer is given a Rs 25 lakh personal insurance, in addition the customer is given preferences on the pick-up and delivery of passengers and their luggage from homes to destination, including the type of food and the type of accommodation etc. The flexibility offered to the passenger is possible only because it is run as a private entity.

The entry of private trains is sure going to make our train rides in future more enjoyable.

Click here for more info ..

George..

Ban single use plastics ..

Caranzalem beach, courtesy Indiamarks.com

Just 1 km stretch of Caranzalem beach in Goa generated almost one tonne of plastic waste (single use plastic) in a clean-up drive from National Institute of Oceanography, (NIO) Panaji, Goa last Saturday.  

Imagine the pollution from single use plastics in India with a total coastline of 7517 km .. 

Given that almost 50% of plastic pollution across the world is from single use plastics, can we be a bit more discerning in it's use and disposal ? 

Click here for the news item ..

Plastic trash on beaches come from two sourdces, those deposited by the sea and by tourists. The trash collected by the NIO team in Goa would most probably be beach trash, deposited by tourists. If we create better awareness among the beach tourists to help maintain a good neat beach free of plastic and other litter, it would be a great service to the people around, other prospective tourists and to the beach health in general.

In June 2019, a paper from WWF and Uty of Newcastle, Australia in the Environment Journal, (click here) that humans on an average ingest about 5 grams of micro-plastic a week from the water we drink. Where does our drinking water get this plastic ?  Plastic littered in the drinking sources of water is the way micro plastics are found in drinking water. The study further states that every human on a average consumes about 250 grams of micro plastics a year coming to us from water, food sources etc.

This is indeed a threat. We are aware of plastic being a carcinogen, inducing growth of cancer. Human ingestion of micro plastics is thus a big threat to human survival.

Single use plastics after te use, is littered and either finds it's way into landfills or water bodies, both of which is  a threat to human and animal life on earth.

We need to think of a concerted innovative effort to control this littering of single use plastic around the world, especially around South East Asia, which is claimed to the world's largest user of single use plastics.

George..

Report on Role play - Budget Airlines ..23/9/19

The importance of role lay to get the students to know about the management decision making process cannot be better put through other than through a role play session in the class.

In the Alliance School of Business sem 3 MBA Operations, Operations Strategy we did a role play on the Low Cost Airlines. The case for the discussion was written by the author way back in 2017 and revised in 2019. (click here).

Accordingly we prepared a list of the stakeholders in the case and got the students to do a role play in the class on the same. (click here for the presentation)

The benefits of role play

• Students immediately apply content in a relevant, real world context.
• Students take on a decision making persona that might let them diverge from the confines of their normal self-imposed limitations or boundaries.
• Students can transcend and think beyond the confines of the classroom setting.
• Students see the relevance of the content for handling real world situations.
• The instructor and students receive immediate feedback with regard to student understanding of the content.
• Students engage in higher order thinking and learn content in a deeper way.
• Instructors can create useful scenarios when setting the parameters of the role play when real scenarios or contexts might not be readily available.
• Typically students claim to remember their role in these scenarios and the ensuing discussion long after the semester ends.                                 www.carleton.edu

Kempegowda International airport, Bangalore, courtesy The Hindu.

While doing the role play, we came to realise from the deliberations that happened in the class that the Government policy of LPG plays a big role in deciding the rates of taxes and motivation these private low cost airlines have in giving the best service to the customers in the country.

The customers and the airlines were asking for a roll down of the taxes charged by the government on the tickets, airport usage fee and on the fuel used by the planes, but the government was very silent, given that a large portion of the money the central government receives is from the fuel taxes and surcharges. This is the revenue part of the government on which the central government has a firm and decisive say.

The petroleum companies were pointing fingers at the government citing the policy parameters within which they are forced to work and their helplessness in reducing the taxes. The fuel price increase is the result of global volatility of the fuel prices.

IATA, wanted the budget airlines management to give the best to the customers by way of better coordinated high quality services, better connectivity, more in-flight facilities, on-time functioning of flights etc.

Indigo - India's largest budget airline, 240 planes, 48% domestic market share, June '19

The flying public were also worried about the transportation time it takes to travel to the present Kempegowda international airport in the northern suburbs of Bangalore city. The Secretary of aviation has promised that he will be talking to his counterpart in  the transportation ministry to speed up the Metro construction in Bangalore.

The prospect of a new domestic or international airport coming up at Hosur was a matter of concern for the domestic flight operators as they have one more node in the country to address and which would necessitate their redirection and re-planning of flights within the country.  IATA was fully confident that the new airport at Hosur would convert many of the local train and bus passengers to air passengers, as presently the very high commute time of almost 3 hours to Kempegowda airport was discouraging passengers from travel by air. 

The Bangalore airport handled almost 33 million passengers in 2018-19, third only to New Delhi (69 million) and Mumbai (49 million) during the same period and was ready to commission the second runway by Oct 2019. Since the meeting happened in Bangalore, the issues relating to Bangalore air passengers were highlighted in the high level meeting convened by the IATA and Secretary, Aviation GOI.

The meeting ended with a vote of thanks by the IATA representative.

George

Simple points to youngsters for a healthy life ..

Here are simple 25 tips / actions for experiencing a richer life. Gems to help lead a happy life ..

1. Be physically active - exercise daily / go for long walks / do yoga regularly

      2. Eat food just what is needed, have everything in moderation

This is what WHO asks you to do ..

3. Take enough sunlight during the day

     4. Use public transport wherever possible

5. Observe all spiritual lents, it helps your body systems to recoup

     6. Donate blood at least once a year

7. Help financially and materially those who cannot repay you ..

     8. Eat plenty of salads, leafy veggies and less of meat

9. Read lot of books, discuss and write whenever possible

     10. Whenever possible mentor or help youngsters, the future of the world

11. Care for all aged people, orphans and children

     12. Do not bargain with street vendors

13. Be firm and kind to your children, care for your spouse and spend quality time with the family

     14. Be thankful to God for all the blessings you have received

15. Visit elderly people and people in hospitals / prisons

     16. Spend money carefully and be careful with money

17. Have concern and pray for the weak, aged, diseased and imprisoned people of the world

     18. Speak frequently to parents, Love your siblings, help them, have occasional get-to-gethers

19. Listen to good music and watch great movies ..

    
     20. Drink lot of water (warm if possible)

21. Have a positive frame of mind, speak good of others

     22. Avoid red meat and care for the environment ..

23. Whenever possible eat locally available grains, fruits and vegetables

     24. Be in touch with friends, kin and relatives

25. Be considerate to all plants, animals and birds of the world

These are some simple tips that can help youngsters lead a happy and contended life.

George..

Will Vikram lander on moon wake up ?

A priceless pic of Moon .. Courtesy NASA, LRO.

It was not only Indians and ISRO who were frantic to know what had happened to the Indian lander on Moon, Vikram, the whole world was. NASA's Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter (LRO) sent this image of the spot where Vikram had a crash landing two weeks back on 7 September 2019 early morning.

The lunar night is evident from the dark patch, no sunlight, that was fast approaching from the right side, as the moon is rotating from left to right.

If ISRO had installed the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) on the lander, probably even during the lunar night the search operation could have continued. ISRO has just solar panels on the lander and there are strategic reasons for that too, not to pollute the lunar surface with unnecessary radioactive materials that could be a threat to future lunar colonies etc.

With temperatures going to -180deg C on the Moon during the night, will  the systems on Vikram survive the extreme cold to pick up and still be active when the lunar day starts in 16 days time from now ?

A big question for India and a less hopeful one at that. But the learning is too good.

George.

Green Digital Transformation Initiatives at Alliance University

Green initiatives in the exam area ..

World over climate change is creating a flutter as unnatural events occur and climate changes happen very frequently in different parts of the world. How do we cut our greenhouse gas emissions by half by 2030 and Netzero emissions by 2050 ? (as mandated by UN SDG 2015) ..

We talk about Digital Transformation unmindful and ignorant whether these transformations are green and improve our lives for the better ?

Firstly these digital transformations have to come out from our homes and work area. It is through these initiatives that we are able to convince others of the efficacy of Digital Transformation. That is the best way we can convey the meaning of Digital Transformation measures.

Accordingly we initiated an Green Digital Transformation initiative in the AU Examination process satisfying United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #11 (SDG) 2015.

The immediate advantage is less use of paper and stationery. We are giving a live model to the student community and the community at large at what are sustainable initiatives that we undertake at the University.

Students at Alliance University took a computer based Mid-semester exam (MSE) in computer lab for Logistics and Supply Chain Management subject of semester 2 MBA Operations of the Alliance School of Business using Moodle e-learning LMS at the AU portal site on 19 September 2019 from 2 - 4 PM.

Section A - objective type

Section B - short answer type

Section C - case analysis 

While quizzes in Section A give results immediately, sections B and C need faculty intervention to read and evaluate answers. You are welcome to witness history in the making in Alliance University totally doing away with physical answer sheets ..

We are hopeful that more and more faculty members from the different schools will take to this digital model.

Way to go 🙏🙏

George..