Friday, December 30, 2005

Travelling in Delhi:

I had come to Delhi (from Mumbai) for first time in month of April. Before coming to delhi I had worked for small period in Chennai and Coimbatore. When I arrived New Delhi station I expected the station to be good and well maintained like that of Dadar and CST station of Mumbai. I thought that since Delhi is capital city it must be having much better facilities for traveling and must be well organized. But I was shocked to see the situation in and around Delhi station. It was quite dirty and whole station was stinking. It was too crowded, like of most of the railway stations of big cities, but it was least organized and no one helped when asked for directions. Anyhow I came out of station and was amazed to see Cycle rickshaws which you see in rural areas. Paharganj side of railway station was to crowded due to these cycle rickshaws. I took one rickshaw to go to hotel on Kutub Road (which company had booked) behind Sheila Cinema. It is walking distance from Station (I never knew that) and for this rickshaw wala charged me 25 Rs.

I had to travel to Laxmi Nagar, Chawri Bazar and Gurgaon to meet my clients. After very bad experience from Auto rickshaws I started traveling in bus. Once I went to Asharam by auto from New Delhi station for that I paid 110 Rs(that too after bargaining. Auto driver was asking for 150 Rs). I was pretty happy with my bargaining skills as I had saved 40 Rs by bargaining. Later I came to know from my friend that the fare is not more than 50 Rs. All the autos have meters installed on them but they never use it. So if you are in Delhi and want to travel in auto rickshaw then first ask the fare and then bargain. Unlike in Mumbai where you don’t have to bother about this; all the autos use meter for fare.

Buses are another nuisance. I was there in Delhi for 1 month and then I came back again to stay permanently (for job) in month of July. At that time I was staying in Vivekanand Puri near Karol Bagh. I used to catch bus from there to go to my office on Asaf Ali Road. Now, in Delhi there are two kinds of buses. One is DTC and another is private. DTC buses are govt buses and usually preferred by people. It stops only at the bus stop and the drivers drive pretty fast (though rashly). So if you are on DTC then don’t worry. You will be on time to your office.
The only negative point is that the bus conductor nicely sits on the back seat and you have to go to him to take tickets. In buses of Mumbai and most of the other places you have to sit and the conductor will come to you to give the ticket.

Another one is Private buses. They offer worst kind of services. First amazing thing I encountered was that they don’t move until the bus is full. That is if you have entered the bus then it won’t move for 10 mins or more. The bus people first stuff the entire bus and then they move. That’s not enough. At every bus stop they again stop and wait for the passengers to fill it. In this manner they stop for few minutes on all major stops. If you don’t know which bus to catch then don’t ask private bus people for help. They will tell you to sit in their bus even if does not go to that place. And then after sometime of travel they will tell you to get down and catch another one. Always ask people standing on bus stop for help. They will be give correct information.

Apart from this, the buses of Delhi are very dirty and stink too much. Every now and then you can see people vomiting out of window which makes a very awry scene (yuck…). In evening most of the time you can spot 5 or 6 people half drunk and traveling. Almost half of the Delhi eats Gutka and its stink is all over in air when the bus is crowded. In my initial days in Delhi traveling in Bus was a nightmare (though I am used to it a bit now).

I hope Delhi administration does something for this and provide transport facility like that of BEST in Mumbai or like that in Chennai and Coimbatore.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

The Chains of Belief

Once a priest was passing the elephants, he suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a small rope tied to their front leg. No chains, no cages. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from their bonds but for some reason, they did not. He saw a trainer near by and asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away."Well," he said, "when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie themand, at that age, it's enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free."Priest was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn't, they were stuck right where they were.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it once before?

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Lack of Teamwork in Indians: Experience of Sam Pitroda

Lack of teamwork and co-operation is one of the most serious problems affecting progress in all areas of India and wherever Indians workworldwide. The key problem in India is always implementation, not lack ofpolicies. We have great policies and ideas about how to do things, butseverely lacking teamwork.When the Japanese came to work in India to develop the Maruti Suzuki car, a joke went around that one Indian was equal to 10 Japanese: Indians were verysmart, capable and dedicated individuals. But 10 Indians were equal to 1Japanese: Indians lacked team spirit and co-operation.What makes matters even worse is our crab mentality , if someone is trying to climb higher and achieve more, the others just drag himdown. The signal that the others send out is, I wouldnt do it; I wouldnt let you do it; and if by change you start succeeding,we will all gang up and make sure that you dont get to do it.The question is: Where does this attitude come from, and how do we recognizeand handle it?

Hierarchical System

Part of the problem is our cultural background. We have had feudal and ahierarchical social system in which whoever is senior supposedly knows best.This was fine in earlier times when knowledge and wisdom were passed onorally; but in modern society, there is no way that one person can knoweverything. Today, you may find that a young computer-trained person has more answers for an accounting problem than a senior accountant has. Untilwe understand how best to leverage this diversity of experience, we will notbe able to create and fully utilize the right kind of teams.

Sam Pitroda: In my younger days in the US, I attended an executiveseminar for Rockwell International, where about 25 senior company executiveshad congregated for a week for strategic discussion. In the evenings, wewould break out into five different groups of five people each. In thosegroup workshops, someone would delegate tasks, saying: You makecoffee; you take notes; you are the chairman; and you clean theboard. The next day, there would be different duties for each groupmember. No one ever said, But I made coffee twice or I cleaned theboard entire day. I thought to myself, if this were happening inIndia, people would be saying, But I'm the senior secretarywhy should I make the coffee and you be the chairman?Hierarchy comes naturally to our minds.
What Derails a Team?
Group work requires a thorough understanding of the strengths and weaknessesof individuals irrespective of their hierarchy. Because of our background,we often dont learn how to exercise and accept leadership- to leadand to follow simultaneously. Some gravitate toward exercisingleadership, and others gravitate toward accepting the lead of others. But intrue teamwork, everyone needs to do both.Being a good team player implies respect for others, tolerance of differentpoints of view and willingness to give. The ability to resolve conflictswithout either egotism or sycophancy is a very important aspect of being ateam player: You have to agree to disagree. I find that people in Indiasomehow tend to focus on achieving total agreement, which is almost alwaysimpossible. So before work begins people want everyone to agree oneverything instead they should say OK. This is what we agree on, solets start working on this. What we dont agree on, we willresolve as we go along. For things to move forward, itsimportant to work on the agreed-upon aspects and not get bogged down in theareas of disagreement. Yet another snake that kills teamwork ispeoples political agendas. You have got to be open, clear andhonest to be a good team player. Most people though, have a hidden agendathey say something but mean the exact opposite. I call itsplit-level consciousness. To say and mean the same thing is avery critical part of a good work ethic.
Criticizing the individual or the idea?
When Sam was working in C-DOT (400 employee size company), If someone hadnot been doing well, Sam used to tell the person directly to his face in ageneral meeting. The employees said that was insulting and they should bepulled aside individually to be told of the inefficiency. But in today'sworld, you cannot afford to do that every time. Besides, Sam figured thatcriticizing someone in a meeting was for the benefit of all present, andeveryone could learn from that individual's mistakes. It was then that Samlearned how Indians do not differentiate between criticizing an idea andcriticizing an individual.So in a group, if you tell someone that his idea is no good, heautomatically takes it personally and assumes that you are criticizing him.No one can have a good idea everyday on every issue. If you disagree with myidea, that does not mean that you have found fault with me as a person.Thus, it is perfectly acceptable for anyone to criticize the boss - but thisconcept is not a part of the Indian System. So from time to time, it isimportant for an organization's Chief Executive to get a report on thepsychological health of the firm. How do people in the team feel? Are theystable? Confident? Secure? Comfortable? These are the key elements of ateam's success. For a boss to be comfortable accepting criticism fromsubordinates, he must feel good about himself. Self-esteem is a keyprerequisite to such a system being successful.
Mental Vs. Physical Workers
Another serious problem facing India is the dichotomy and difference inrespectability between physical and mental workers, which seriously affectsteam performance.Mr. Sam had a driver named Ram, who he thought was one of the best driversin the world. He used to open the door for him whenever he entered or exitedthe car. Right in the first few days Sam told him " Ram bhai, you are notgoing to open the door for me. You can do that If I lose my hands". Ramalmost started crying. He said, " Sir, what are you saying? This is my job!"Sam told him that I didn't want to treat him like a mere driver. He had tobecome a team player. Sam told him that whenever he was not driving, heshould come into office and help out with office work - make copies, filepapers, send faxes, answer phone call or simply read - rather than sit inthe car and wait for me to show up.Diversifying tasks increases workers' self-esteem and motivation and makesthem team players. Now, even If Sam calls him for work in the middle of thenight, he is ready - because Sam respects him for what he does. TeamInteractions unfortunately, when good teams do get created, they almostinvariably fall apart. In our system today it is very difficult to buildteams because nobody wants to be seen playing second fiddle. It is very hardin India to find good losers. Well, you win some and you lose some. If youlose some, you should move on! You don't need to spend all your time andenergy of different cultural backgrounds, religions, ethnicities and castegroups - a fertile ground of diversity in the workplace. We should actuallybe experts in working with diversity. But it can only happen when we get ridof personal, caste and community interests.There could be a 40-year-old CEO with a 55-year-old VP. It has nothing to dowith age; capability and expertise are what counts. But you don't yet seethese attitudes taking hold in India. Managers in the US corporateenvironment who work with Indians - and in fact, with Asians in general -need to recognize that these individuals have a tendency to feel that theyare not getting recognition or are not being respected. It must be realizedthat these individuals have lower self-esteem to begin with and thereforehave to be pampered and encouraged a little more because they need it. Thismakes them feel better and work better. No Substitute for Teamwork. Teamworkis key to corporate and national governance, and to get anything done.The fundamental Issues are respect for others, openness, honesty,communication, willingness to disagree, resolution of conflict, andrecognition that the larger goal of the team as a whole rumps Individual orpersonal agendas.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Food for Bachelors

Cooking food is night mare for Bachelors . And if you don’t have proper equipments for cooking; then forget about it. Numerous times my mother used to tell me to learn cooking so that it becomes useful incase I have to settle in a new place and cook my self. But I never took that piece of advice thinking that whole of my life I will be at my sweet home and there will be someone to take care of cooking. Whenever my parents were out, my sister used to take the charge and cook food for us. The only thing that I managed to prepare was Tea, that too with difficulty; and every time I prepared either sugar used to be more or milk used to be less. Cooking is not my piece of work, was the impression I had in my mind right from the beginning.

But at last the most feared thing happened. I was transferred by my company to Delhi. In Delhi I used to hang around in hotels on Asaf Ali Road and Karol Bagh. In afternoon I normally used to eat food from Bhaja Govindam restaurant on Asaf Ali Road, besides Delite Cinema. At night I used to eat mostly in Mool chand or Sarvana Bhavan of D B Gupta marg.
After some time I realized that it is now time to stop hotelling around and prepare food at home.

Then I shifted to Gurgaon, which is on the border of Delhi near Faridabad. The Kitchen was quite spacious in my new room which tempted me to cook food. But I did not know A B C of cooking. Its during this time that I started trying ready to eat foods. Infact I started experimenting on these foods and tried all modifications and combinations. Following are few of my masterpieces;

1) Maggi: God bless Maggi. It is the ultimate saviour for people like me. Some times my mother used to prepare this at home. But I never had Idea how it is prepared. One day while strolling in the market I brought it to my home to prepare it. I knew it gets prepared in 2 mins but how it is prepared I did not know. I spent more than 10 mins searching procedure to prepare it; on the wrapper. I thought that Maggi is common that company has stopped printing the procedure on the wrapper. At last I got it in the bottom. It was in only two lines and written in very small letters. Anyway I started preparing Maggi from that day onwards. Once my friend told me that we can also put vegetables in it, which enhances the taste. After taking details from him I started experimenting with all sets of vegetables. I started with peas, tomato and potatoes. Then I started adding Cauliflower, Radish, Cabbage, Baby Corn etc. In recent experiment I prepared Maggi with Panner. It tastes wonderful. The way of cooking is too simple. Just put a bit of cooking oil on frying pan. Put whatever vegetable you want(with a bit of salt and pepper). Cook it for sometime and then put small quantity of water in it. Then put Maggi and prepare it as usual.
2) Sunfeast Pasta : This is my recent favorite. I prefer Sunfeast to Maggi. Its very easy to cook and comes in different flavors. Sour Cream onion is my favorite flavor. Add peas and cheese into it to get a different taste. Want more veggies then add chopped Cabbage or Shimla Mirch to boiled Pasta. Once I had even added Schezwan Sauce just to test. I was not so good; but wasn’t bad either. So if you want some Pasta with Chinese twist; then try it.
3) Chings Schezwan Sauce: Oh, you will love this. I disclosing one of my favorite recipes. Boil potatoes till it becomes soft. Peel it. Add a bit of cooking oil in frying pan and put all sorts of vegetables which you have in market. Add little water, salt, pepper etc and Cook it for some time. Take the boiled( and peeled) potatoes, mash it, add finely chopped Coriander and Pudina leaves to it. Take this mixture and add it to the cooked vegetable mixture. Treat it with Schezwan sauce and lo…. You have prepared a great Chinese delite.
4) Cremica Salsa: This is something really spicy and hot. I have tried everything with sauce. In the above recipe if you substitute Schezwan sauce with Cremica Salsa it gives you totally different experience. Once I had it with chopped Lotus stems, onion leaves and boiled Bambino Pasta. Also once I had Cheese Pakora with it. Just cut cheese in big cubes, fry it in cooking oil for some time and then have it with Salsa.Easy! Isn’t it?
5) Sil Mayonnaise: When you want to have a salad, then Sil Mayo is best. Just have some mashed potatoes, chopped cabbage, onion leaves, Lotus stems, tomatoes and add mayo to it. Mix it well. This is the best thing to have with Pasta.


So friends, if you want something interesting, then go on experimenting. You will definetly come across some thing quite tasty. If you want to share anything then please post it.

Working in Forbes Gokak Ltd:



On 11th July 2005, I joined Delhi office of Forbes Gokak Ltd as Sales Engineer for Solid Carbide cutting tools for North India. Before joining Forbes Delhi office I had worked as Market Research Engineer for Solid Carbide Cutting Tools with the same company. I had been recruited by company on contract basis but was later appointed as a Sales and Application Engineer for North India. Solid Carbide cutting tools were manufactured in joint venture with M A Ford, America. Company had manufacturing unit at Aurangabad. The job as Market Research Engineer comprised of visiting major end users of Solid Carbide Drills and End mills and calculate the true potential of its market in India. Through this assignment I had visited all the biggest manufacturing units in India. After the completion of the survey I was transferred to Delhi to look after the sales of Solid Carbide in the Northern region. The experience of Market Survey was very useful for me in the initial phase of work.

Anatomy of Job:
I had been to Delhi previously for Market Survey. Therefore I had a bit of knowledge of our dealers and End user companies in my territory. Forbes Gokak uses SAP for CRM, billing and other purposes. Initially most of my time went in learning and understanding SAP. The software was very complex and required good amount of training to understand well. The sale of Solid Carbide was between 9 and 10 lakhs prior to my joining. Most of the sale was done via dealers who played a major role is sale of products. Our company had Godown in Delhi.
According to the rules; first dealer should give orders and then bills were prepared. These bills were sent to Godown from where they were dispatched. Dealers are expected to keep stock of all the standard and fast moving sizes. But in Delhi most of the times dealers followed the shortcut. They used to go to Godown and take the goods on slip( called Challan). Copy of this Challan is then sent to office where a bill is made on its basis. This system was not recommended usually because dealers ceased to give orders and treat the Godown as hardware shop. This system also discouraged dealers to stock the goods. It was responsibility of Engineer to see to it that the goods are properly stocked in Godown. If any particular size is not available then Engineer is expected to put a request through SAP called Indent. When Indent is made the required size is sent to that godown(from where indent is generated) from manufacturing facility of the company.


Problems:
Initially I faced many problems due to weak understanding of system. The problems are as under:

1) SAP was very complex. Extracting correct data from the system required good practice. For eg: In order to remove the list of sizes available in stock there were many parameters that had to be inserted. If the billing has to be done for a particular dealer; then it was more complex because Tax, VAT, discounts and other parameters came into the picture. Also the process of retrieving data from SAP is very slow.
2) The range of solid carbide cutting tools in use in the northern market was very high. It is a pain for an Engineer to maintain exact stock of all the sizes which are in use. There are near about more than 150 different sizes of End Mills and Drills. Tracking all the sizes and listing the sizes whose quantity are not adequate is a bit difficult.
3) Dealers usually don’t support much. May be this was case with me since I was new to the region. After sometime of working Sales Engineer develops rapport with the dealer and things go smoothly thereafter. But in my case; dealers were a true nightmare. If any size was not available in market they call insist on its delivery as soon as possible.
4) After joining the Delhi office I realized that godown is half empty. All the deficient sizes should be indented as soon as possible.
5) Sluggish delivery and logistics.

Real Work:

After studying the working of Forbes group and history of sales of Solid Carbide I realized that we are not able to meet demands of Dealers (or Market). Most of the sizes of Solid Carbide I weren’t able to supply within time limits. The deliveries of most of the sizes use to take more than 2 weeks which was too slow in the competitive market. The sale of Solid Carbide, as I had mentioned before, was around 10 lakhs/month. According to my calculations if the entire demands of the dealers are met, then the sale would increase by more than 50%. Also once I was advised by one of the manager Mr Patkar, that more tools you are able to provide the dealers, more sale you will be able to achieve. But as an Engineer I cannot order a very large quantity and stuff the godown with material. Most of the special sizes had to be manufactured and stored in very low quantity as their consumption was very low (5 pcs/month) and few sizes; especially standard sizes had good consumption (about 70 pcs/month). Differentiating sizes according to their consumption was again very difficult and time consuming. I came to know later that SAP gives data of consumption of cutting tool of a particular size in previous month. But on checking I came to know that it does not give number but gives the value of sale of that size in Rupees. Again it can be used but it may give erroneous data as most of the time a particular size was sold at different discounts and prices to dealers. If you order more than what is required then it added to dead stock which should not happen.
For e.g.: 20mm long reach End Mill of 2 Flute has consumption of max. 5 nos in a month. If we manufacture and stock 20 Nos of this size then it means that it will be a dead stock for 2 months.
In this manner consumption of different sizes varied from 5, 20, 30 to 80 Pcs/month.

Development of my Clerical skills:

The real job of an engineer is to be on field and develop business for company. In the beginning I did not get time to work on field due to inventory problems. I mostly concentrated how to keep inventory up to date and meet all the demands of dealers. I started working on this issue by maintaining an excel sheet of all the major sizes used, along with their monthly consumption. Also by this time dealers used to constantly call and keep on reminding about number of sizes which were either deficient or nil in godown. I used make regular indent of these sizes and sent it to our manufacturing facility. It is during this time I encountered a harsh fact. Even after computerization and SAP implementation, an Engineer had to follow manufacturing personals constantly. According to rules once the indent is generated by SAP the required material had to be sent to the godown from where indent was generated. But it rarely happened. Most of the time the required size used to be available in manufacturing unit even then it is not dispatched against the indent. An Engineer is then supposed to follow constantly for every single size of tool (out of more than 150 sizes). With my experience I worked out how much time it takes for a material to reach Delhi godown and then I planned accordingly. I prepared a detailed Excel sheet with all the data and with excel tools I modified it to suit my purpose. At last the labour paid and I was able to make a system that directly projected the number of sizes deficient in godown. I did this by using the excel sheet I prepared and imposing it on CSV file downloaded from SAP which gave the net stock available in godown.


Result:

The more you provide; more sale you will achieve. The key to increasing sale in Delhi market is to provide material on time ie. Better inventory management. This proved to be correct with consistently increasing sale of Solid Carbide Tools. Approx. Sale figures are given below (figures inclusive of excise duties):

July = 11 lakhs
August = 15 lakhs
September = 18 lakhs

In this period no major client was added. Increase in sale was achieved with the same clients and user base.


After word:

I left Forbes Gokak Ltd in Mid October to join ZERO.COM as a Business analyst. ZERO.COM is an Australian based company that specializes in CRM and business forecasting software.

Monday, December 19, 2005

My Engineering College


Konkan Gyanpeeth College of Engineering (KGCE) is situated in Karjat ,in Raigad district of Maharashtra. KGCE is approved by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and is affiliated to the University of Mumbai since 1996. KGCE offers 4-year Bachelor of Engineering (BE) Degree programme in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Production Engineering, Instrumentation Engineering and Information Technology.

Location:
Karjat is the last station of Central Railway (approx. 2 hrs by local train from Dadar) and is four kms away from Karjat Railway Station. KGCE college building is situated on top of a small mountain and has two storeys. But it has two floors below ground level (an architecture marvel).In fact entire Work shop, Mechanical and Production Department are situated below the Ground floor. The Labs, Canteen and classrooms are very spacious and building is well maintained. College boasts of having biggest playground and campus in Mumbai University. The College hostel is also one of the good hostels of Mumbai University.

Staff:

Konkan Gyanpeeth has Staff of varying capabilities. Every year TSEC sponsors faculty members for P.G. & Ph.D. courses in reputed institutes. Few Lecturers have very good knowledge of their respective subjects, while others are student’s nightmare. Some Professors don’t even prepare themselves for the lecture and students don’t dare to question them. They know what will be its consequence in the Viva Voce, which is feared by most of the students. KGCE has a long history of professors taking advantage of VivaVoce to show their upper hand (which is discussed in closed student circles only). Few Peons and Non Teaching staff have airs of their own. They never leave opportunity to show off their supremacy. While others are there who are helpful in different manner. You can get file, journals etc of previous year if you have proper contacts.

Labs and Library:

KGCE has a spacious library having more than 10000 Technical books. The library also subscribes to National/International Journals and Periodicals .It has a capacity to accommodate large number of students (though it becomes inadequate during submissions). KGCE is making all efforts to equip its laboratories with the modern equipments. In the process, KGCE has acquired many state of art equipments like CNC Internal Combustion Engine, Steam Generator etc which college claims that even Govt Colleges don’t have.

Hostel:

Hostels of the College are good and spacious. There are 3 one storey building for Boys Hostel and 1 for Girls Hostel (though 1 building of boy’s hostel is locked out due to lack of students). They are comparatively clean compared to other hostels. Hostel is situated near college and far away from the nearest market. Therefore students find it very inconvenient when they want to have something from the market. Most of the students leave hostel after first year and stay in the town as a paying guest. Most of the students in hostel are from suburbs of Malad ,Kandivali and Borivali of Mumbai (apart from those who are from outside Maharashtra ).

Crowd:

Crowd of KGCE Sucks(it really does).This is one of the reasons why people don’t prefer KGCE even if it is good in education(which most of the time is immaterial to college goers).And as the year goes by ;it becomes bad to worst. I won’t comment more in this section.

Festival:

Annual Fest of KGCE is called Spring Fiesta. It used to be much awaited event of the year. But its of not much importance for students these days, specially from the year when management decided to limit the Festival to 1 week only (5 days actually,).It is said that a Professor (who once served in army) few years back was responsible for this great act .All the sports and literary competitions are performed during this period.The Pronite (last day of festival) has lost its glamour due to lack of funds from college. Number of students coming from other colleges to this festival is usually nil, due to the remoteness of location of the college.

Miscellaneous:

When I first came to KGCE it was in the month of June when rainy season just started. The atmosphere around college was very beautiful and captivating. I was enthralled by the greenery around College and made my mind to get admitted to this College (which I regretted later). That’s the only season which you enjoy. Most of the students fall in this natures bait and get admitted to KGCE. Winter is a bit harsh. The only problem is hot summer. You can feel sun rays burning your skin. Heat is exceptionally more than in any of the nearby regions. Attending lectures and practical becomes a Herculean task in this atmosphere.
Academic performance of KGCE students has been excellent and consistently KGCE has been producing rank holders in the University of Mumbai. KGCE students have been performing excellent in sports and cultural activities as well and they have won several Trophies/Medals in various inter-college competitions.