All 12 entries tagged Management

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July 19, 2019

THE FINAL SPRINT

It is the last month of my masters that is coming up. As the title rightly suggests, it is the time for the final sprint. I have been reflecting regularly about my daily experiences. Since the past few weeks I was feeling a bit choatic about the strategy that i have to make. I have identified the major problems through data analysis. There som emajor themes that have emerged which need improvement in. It includes process improvement, supply chain inventory, logistics and operations. There are certain ideas that came into my mind that I can include in my roadmap.

This reflective blog aims to structure those ideas and work on them further. The first thing will be to improve the processes and making them stable. There are a lot of ways to do that. The most important thing will be to find the bottlenecks in the processes. It involves making the maps and flows of all the processes and start identifying the bottlenecks. After standing and observing the processes and bottlenecks it will be necessary to actually make and standardize data on the cycle times and the lead time for all the processes. Actually just doing this thing and communicate a brainstorming session with the top management will help to solve a lot of loopholes in the process. Once I know the lead time of my operations then I understand my process better. In order to integrate the whole supply chain then it is necessary to know your demand. Do the unorganized companies know their demand? I doubt that. There has to be a separate program for that purpose as well.

There are a lot of talks about the quality management systems in the literature. I think the basic start of quality will be from the observation on how do we do things? What are the products and tools that we require to manufacture one particular product? Are the inputs standardized? It will be more about how do you do the things? For instance I will observe the chemical pasting technique on the shoe sole. It will help to make a huge amendament into the current process and ensure the quality of the product. One thing very necessary to ensure quality is the flow of the whole business. Along with the flow of the materials it is important to record the information flow of process. How the information flow can also help us to ensure the quality. If there are the right check points about the product quality in the process then it can help in maintaining quality with right information flowing. The data flow of the process can also help in the quality management. The data on the defects counting, rework products can also help improve the quality.

We talk about the operations and the thing that comes into the mind is the lean production. The very first basic thing will be to apply the 5S and the 7 waste techniques. Just making sure that everything is in place and there are no wastes in the processes. I learnt about some techniques such as the value stream assessment for checking the whole process flow. If I look at the current processes in the value stream assessment, i think I can identify the main areas and bottlenecks in the business that I can target. For instance the customer gives order, it goes to the sale department for verification and updation of the records, then that goes into the ERP system data feed, with which a new forecast is made and also the materials are ordered looking at the production capacity and the production schedule. This is the process of normal companies. But does the unorganized manufacturing businesses have even this process? This is something to be considered. This is all judged on the basis of process flow mapping. Once other interesting tool that I observed today was the swimlane tool. It is also very effective to showcase the processes. It segregates the processes on the basis of different functions and it is very important to see the interlinkages.

All the strategic roadmaps are developed by first of all seeing the current state then the desired state. Today James Black showcased me his work on the roadmaps. The first was the process flow of the whole organization. then he identified the loopholes in the process. For instance, the organization was not undertaking the forecasting with the data and the sales order. So he recommended those changes with the new swimlane map which showed at what point in the process should the organization forecast. this will vary organization to organization. Right now if I can just focus on inward operations and supply chain of the organization, that will be really great.

Now I think one strategy that I have to make will be that of data collection points and themes. It is very necessary. The roadmap that I saw today was actually good. I have some ideas about it to add on. There can be two swim lane themes such as operations projects and the technological projects. In the operations project I can suggest that there should be scrap recording (as it is the KPIs for the operational excellence and quality). Then I can introduce the kanban and production planning project. Then I can introduce a project to get in the layout and flow of a critical parameter or process that was identified in the value assessment. Value assessment is more holistic than the value stream map. The technological projects will support my operational projects. This way I can put in process projects as well. Like the ERP project or the Data analysis project will be beneficial to support the flow and bottleneck project.

Lot of things can be done. Just using the stick it notes with the directors and telling them what is wrong can also be of much use. The visualization solves much of the problems. There are some data collection points in mind such as the cycle time, defect rate, or the sampling data. Look at demand segmentation concept once more. I found it interesting the amount I read. I ll read it more. I think I am ready to amke the startegy. Let's go ahead with it.


June 05, 2019

THE ORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND TRAINING

Today we had a seminar day at our last module KBAM. We discussed on a very interesting topic related to intellectual property in the organization and the training. I think the intellectual property sharing should not be a major issue for me particularly when I talk about the development of the whole sector as a whole. I think the role of a leader in knowledge management shouldbe related to protecting the knowledge base in an organization in such a way that the organizational knowledge is not lost even if the people leave the organization. There were certain points raised where there was a genuine concern that said that all kinds of knowledge must not be shared with everyone in the organization. I do not agree to it. If we do not share the knowledge with everyone then the people feel that they are not part of the system which will reduce motivation and remove the foundation of knowledge based organization. My responsibility will be to make one system work by retaining and reusing the knowledge. Sharing knowledge with everyone does not mean that eberyone will be an expert in the organization. It just means that making right knowledge available at the right places in the organization to work without obstacles. The Hoshin Kanri was a very useful approach in depicting how the major objectives can be made available at the shop floor level. Make the knowledge available to shop floor in such a way that they understand and contribute to the overall organizational goal. One very important point that I learnt from Paul's experience in military was about the increment that you get with the skills training. The organizations are always in doubt about the employees and their loyalty after they are provided with the training and education. There is always a fear that they will leave. But an increment and added responsibility after their training is always a good idea to retain them. To convert tacit knowledge into the organized knowledge, annual group appraisals and the interviews can always be a good idea. It gives us just a sufficient contact with the employees to know what they feel about the organization.

I have been researching a bit about measuring the benefits of knowledge management. It is difficult to measure the quantifiable benefits. some of the points in seminars that I found interesting were employee attitude surveys were a good way of measuring and indicating the benefits of the KM. One we can define the expected outcome and the current situation, then we can easily see the benefits of KM in the organization. This can be done with making forecasts and seeing whether our outcome was similar to forecast. Then we can improve on the new factor due to which the original result was not similar to the forecast. this will help us to add to the knowledge base and if outcome is same as the forecast then we can see the benefit of the knowledge management. The same way we can work on the repeated mistakes in the organization if we keep a record of it. KM is a stepping stone for creating a learning organization. There was a lot of self-learning in this module. Tomorrow we have the presentation. I am eager to see the 5 year plan and learn from my mistakes, as it si something that I have to do in my dissertation as well.


June 03, 2019

SELF–Learning

It is the firstI th day of the module week of KBAM.It is my last module at WMG. The course MBE was really good. It helped me learn a lot. I will miss the learning environment in the classroom and the discussions that we had with Paul. The very interesting thing about this module is 40 hours of self-learning. It is sometimes hard to digest this fact of autonomous learning. But I feel this is the reality of life. With this last module we are trained to submerse ourself with the real world. This presentation was a bit challenging. There are a lot of things that I need to consider. KBAM is such a wide concept and it is really difficult to extract the information out from such a source. It was really challenging. Tomorrow we will be focussing on the last leg of presentation, the preparation of the growth plan. The main point should be to present a plan showing benefits of each action and quick wins. This is the art of the possible. The main challenge will be to convince people about the benefits of knowledge managemnet as it is hard to measure its worth in absolute terms. It will be my first attempt to make the plan and will be interesting to learn from other teams as well. It is necessary to learn from mistakes. We have tries to make a practical implementation plan this time trying to avoid the mistake commited in hoshin kanri. Apart from this we learnt about respecting the individual an dtheir job in the organization which sets the basis of excellence.In the current industry, I feel that the employees are not trained, they do not know what is expected from them in the job and there are no standards in the job. Therefore in order to standardize the jobs it is necessary to standardize the processes. Excited to see what lies ahead.


June 02, 2019

SME KNOWLWDGE AND COMPETITIVENESS

It has been couple of days since I have been researching on the knowledge management in an organization. The basic idea that I always get is to improve the organizational capabilities. Improving the knowledge management system will lead to improved capabilities. It is very important to have a system where there is enough craetion of knowledge. The basic start for this in the unorganized SME can be to chart the process flow. The understanding of the whole process in an organization can lead to understanding of process loopholes. The brainstorming will lead to sharing and creating of knowledge about the process. The market research, customer and supplier feedback mechanisms create various forms of knowledge within an organization. Although the major challenge will be to create a system that helps to share and retain the knowledge within an organization. One way is to encourage sharing through workshops and sessions and visual boards. It thus becomes necessary to standardize the processes so that the processes oberve only the common cause variations. In that case documentation of the information and knowledge by one system operator could be used by the next operator. There has to be a way to extract the tacit knowledge from the individuals. This can be done through scrum meetings, departmental meetings, team meetings. Especially in a high labour turnover environment, a standarized process to record personal knowledge and experience is very necessary. This will lead to retention of knowledge within an organization.

talking about the competitiveness, it is necessary to move away from the rigid corporate structures. The SMEs need to start working like agile startups. The cross functional teams and the interdepartmental communication can lead to this. This is what system thinking teaches us. One very important aspect of this is to make knowledge accessible to every person in the organization more important the right person at the right time. I feel that establishing the right process is very necessary. The culture, process, leadership and organizational structures can be one of the most important competitive advantage factors for an organization. They can facilitate knowledge sharing.


May 29, 2019

PURSUIT OF GROWTH

This week has been a start of a very interesting module knowledge based asset management. We have to present the Board of Directors a five year strategic plan on implementation of knowledge and asset systems in waveriders. I haven't read too much on the topic so probably I ll start writing blogs and building my knowledge from the next blog. In this blog I ll discuss about the strategic growth plan. It is something which comes under the scope of my dissertation where I am making a growth strategy for the unorganized manufacturing business in India. I have gone through a lot of testing processes to stand where I am right now in my dissertation which comes out of the scope of this blog.

I have developed a criteria on the basis of which I ll find the loopholes in the current practices of unorganized manufacturing firms. The first part of growth is stability. Hence it is essential for my growth plan to provide them stability in the initial few years and talk about growth after that. It is really exciting how I have been able able to research on organizational capabilities and develop a whole new model on the basis for which I will be judging an organizational capability. For me the whole process of making this criteria has been overwhelming. It is like a small baby for me. Before coming here I imagined to look at all the aspects of organization and with my research I think I have learnt a lot. But there is only one thing which is left. To implement this criteria I think I need to have a practical experience in the application of it. This will give me a strong understanding of the practical implementation.

I am thinking now of making various steps and layers in my criteria. This will help to build foundation and get in quick wins. I can also put in the basic elemnts of each step in each level in the strategy. It is important to understand what these organizations want and what they wanna achieve. My basic role will be to coach them on the various issues. For now I know that they are keen on having good system, develop world class quality and have a strong market hold. My strategy should be such that it can holistically target these priority issues. I liked this phrase, "the art of possible" said by paul. It shows quick wins and keeps the people interested in the growth project. It is about taking one step at a time and understanding what is critical to their business. i think I know the absolute critical areas. I just need to formulate them. For instance, on the critical front if I can make my strategic growth plan in such a way that their scrap reduces within 6 months of implementation then I will be showing them the art of possible. It will all come with experience.

For this I can use the basic quality tools such as the Flow chart, histograms, checksheets, run chart, cause effect and pareto, and the 5S. The basic quality tools will help me to make major impact. I have believed in continuous improvement this model will be a a self evolving medel. i have to keep on updating it. i have approached CII on their SMe projects. I am sensing that they are not doing anything for the unorganized sector. My work has to be something which does not need government support. If i get it is good. But i have to make an impact anyways without relying on government. i have to show people the benefit of the work. i am passionate about making it happen. I hope that I keep my energy up in the future. The process and the journey will be really good I feel. Looking forward to develop the strategic growth plan for waveriders.


March 23, 2019

NECESSITIES TO CHANGE

Managing change is a very complex process. There are some important things that I learnt during the module. During change, people will be confused and would ask questions and suggest their own solutions. If you have a strong vision and finding it difficult to convince people to follow what is necessary for change, then the first thing that needs to be done is that we have to stop convincing them. Be critical and ask them the questions that you think are necessary for change. The overall approach to this process should be to find a solution to the problem, not suggesting your own solutions to the problem. If you are not able to answer questions about the reasons for change it means that the manager is not clear about why he wants to change the organisation. There might be different reasons for change in the SSIs. It might be linked to increasing the efficiency, managing the expectations of customers, Job enrichment or improving the job security of each person (making predictable sales, sales forecasting). Force field Analysis is another important tool that can be used in the process. Strategy is always about where we are and where we want to be? It is important to know the current scenario so that the changes can be made. There are several questions that need to be asked in order to drive it. What and Who needs to change? In order to encourage them to change it is important to buy them into the organisational vision. Appreciation of the future state of the organisations acts as a catalyst to change.

People's emotions are always at the forefront and cause hinderance for a leader. When you ask people to give up their traditional ways of working they start to resist it. It is necessary to keep in mind the change curve and be prepared for the emotions such as Anger, Depression, resistance. It is necessary to not take these things personally and guide the workforce through the whole emotional journey to instill a positive mindset. Continuous Improvement is a mindset that every employee in the organisation should follow. The reflective exercises will help to start the culture in the organisation.

Setting the organisational culture is important as a foundation. Things just build up on that. As people, who have operated in a traditional structure, the concept of changing the whole culture demands big changes. To build a resilient organisation, I need to develop a deeply rooted values and vision as a whole. The analogy of linking organisation with martial arts is very interesting. Just like a fighter you need to have strong base (deeply rooted values) and be agile in your response (believing in quick failures and learning from mistakes and standing up). Always looking into the opponents eyes (scanning the external environment) and making a counter strategy for the next move. Predictability is an important term that I came across. How predictable is the supply chain, sales, production capacitity, leadership, employee turn over. I would rate all of them low in the current scenario. The unpredictability makes the task of making change even more tough. It is a feature of the unorganised industries. Once I have predictable systems into actions, I can start calculating stable cycle time, give sales forecast. knowing procurement needs.

It is very imporatnt for me to start understanding what people are thinking. To manage change it is necessary to ask them the question of "why are they thinking what they are thinking?" Challenge their idea and generate solutions. As a traditional organisation, it is necessary to give the workforce the skills to change and transform themselves. This is how the change process will transform from the shop floor.


March 18, 2019

CHANGE SIMULATION

I am on a very interesting module cuurently named as Management of Change. Change leads to competitive advantage. I have seen the unorganised manufacturing sector where there is a lot of resistance to change. The need to survival forces them to develop their capabilities. Today I was put into a simulation where I was made as the finance manager of a company whose functioning I could relate to the organisations that I have experienced.There were a lot of similarities. I would take them one by one. We as a team were leading an organisation that had no direction. The people in all departments were busy with daily work without having a mission and a sense of direction. The main motive was to make profits and achieve a target but employees were clueless. There was a lack of strategic thinking in the organisation. We kept on producing the low profit margin product and no one thought about innovating the product. Easily we could have understood our manufacturing capabilities and produced a fine product. The lead times were too long, and the supply chain was not responding to the needs of the organisation. The possible ways to look at would be to be more customer consciouss and make products after researching the needs of the customer applying QFD in order to gain competitive advantage. Then it is very important for the R&D to introduce new products in the market. The current situation was such that the existing product could can easily loose its importance in the market due to the product life cycle. The introduction of new products is necessary. There was no transparency in the organisation as to the orders that came in and ones which got cancelled. this leads to delays and confusion within the organisation. A tarnsparent system can be of great benefit where the current order processing is fairly visible. The traditional organisations face fair amount of redundant paperwork, there is also a need to double check the processes causing duplicacy. There was further lack of communication within the organisation where the shop-floor workers were not able to communicate the difficulties in the production process with the top level management. These all are the problems that are face in the unorganised sector. To lead the market and change growth strategies are necessary to overcome these challenges. Hoping to enjoy next couple of days in the simulation.


February 11, 2019

BUSINESS STARTS WITH CUSTOMER

This blog will be about the Quality Function Deployment tool that I mentioned in my last blog. It set the basis of the new product development. The tool focuses on the customer. It makes us think what the customer wants, what are the requirements of the customer. Once you know your customer, it sets the basis for the further engineering, manufacturing, sales and distribution decisions. This tool is linked with the design areas that need to be targeted in the product looking at the customer requirements. There are certain requirements that I feel are necessary to start implementing this tool. As a part of my critical thinking journey I have realized the importance of word, "Why?" Why such a tool is not used in the small scale manufacturing industries back home. First answer can be the lack of knowledge. But there are various other reasons apart from them. The managers back home never realize that they need to improve the process by which they can know the customer requirments. There is no mapping of the customer chain. The customer cahin might include the wholesaler, retailer , purchaser and the final customer. Mapping the right chain will help to identify the various customers involved in the process. A retailer might be concerned with the packaging of the product and the final customer with the design. So to keep your product in the retailer shelf you need to provide the durable packaging. I feel that these things are considered in the SSIs but on a very informal scale. The definitions of the customer requirements is very informal. QFD as a tool will provide a very logical and structured approach. QFD captures the voice of the customer. It tells all the functions to do concurrent engineering.

I would highlight the most important part of the tool. It is collecting the information from the customer. There are various sources to do so. Why SSIs don't collect the information. Firstly, the whole of the industry has lack of knowledge about the data-driven approach. Very few people realize the importance of data in analyzing and making the important decisions. I highlighted the importance of data in the process improvement using six sigma as well. The collecting of information can sound as a cumbersome task but it needs to be done in order to know the customer requirements. The important point that needs to be noted is that the collection of wrong information or from unreliable sources will lead to wrong decisions because information is the primrary base for QFD.

I came across the affinity diagrams as well. The grouping of information cab be effective and efficient using this source. The main learning point here is that perform the exercise in complete silence and the group performing the organising of data should consist of peple from varied backgrounds.Once the data is grouped in the primrary, secondary and tertiary groups it can be listed on the QFD chart. Why I find this customer requirements grouping to be useful? It is because of the next step , which is to give the importance rating based on customer data and noting the customer competitive comparisons. This tells what customer think about our product w.r.t. our competitor product. This comparitive analysis gives us three importance things- Firstly, If both the competitor product and our product have the same rating, we can then see working on which customer requirement can help us in gaining competitive advantage. Secondly, the less rated criteria tells where to improve and the high rated criteria will tell us where are we the best highlighting the need to maintain it. In order to make the best decision this comparison should be compared with the customer importance rating to know the importance of each characteristic.

I feel if the SSIs are able to do even this amount of work in QFD effectively, it is already enough for them to make the right decisions. I will keep this as the first phase of achievement in QFD if I wish to apply it. The next phase calls for looking at engineering requirements based on the customer requirements. We can now look at our competitor degign and analyze in what aspects are we better or worse than them. The relationship matrices can be beneficial in establishing the link between which design helps in achieving which customer requirement. This tool puts the complete picture in front of the manager for decision making. If there is a blank column in the relationship matrix, it means that the particular design characteristic which we thought was important does not help us fulfill any customer requirement. And in the same way, a blank row tells us that the particular customer requirement is not fulfilled by any of the desugn characteristic. It calls for making changes in the product design in order to fulfill the requireemnts.

This is the major benefit of the QFD tool. It shows the complete picture of the process and guides the manager on the next step. This tool sets the path for the new product development and takes us through the process of designing and researching about the product in the initial stages of development so that we do not make too many cahnges during the manufacturing process. I learnt that this matrix form can be helpful in decision making of any form. One example was shown by Paul during the Hoshin Kanri presentation when he helped an organisation to understand their most important area of focus using the decision making matrix. I would like to explore it further and know more about it. QFD essentially helps to make quality products. What is quality? I need to define it but I feel it starts from the leadership of the organisation. The Japanese companies have applied the Statistical Process Control and QFD very effectively in their organisations. The world knows about Japanese Quality. I need to figure out a way to use them. It starts with collecting data and putting the right processes in place I think. The next step will be to identify those right processes.


February 05, 2019

RE–DESIGNING the Design

MBE always keeps on exciting me. I have had quite a few product design experiences in the manufacturing industry. But I realize now that most of the design specefications that I was part of were merely assumptions. WE have never followed a structured process of designing the product. Without trying the new approaches, I would never know the importance of following the structured process of listening to the voice of the customer. I came across two tools namely the FMECA and the Fault tree analysis. FMECA was a very structured approach. It can be very structured approach in finding the possible failures in the product. The overall ideology is that design the product to perfection in the initial stage so that there are no inflated costs in the manufacturing stage in case of defects in design. The FMECA tools helps to achieve this ideology. We start off by looking at the product failures such as breaking of the shoe sole pasting. The possible effect of this thing would be development of rashes on the feet of the customer. The cause for such a failure mode will be due to the unskilled pasting by equipment. Such a analysis of the whole product helps the manufacturer understand better the design of the product and related training needs attached with the product. This presents a complete story of the processes and the design of the product to the manufacturer. The important part is to rank the most important causes using the Severity, Occurence and detection rating. This will help the designer know exactly which place to focus on and where to work upon. The second tool was also very interesting one to follow. It is the Fault Tree Analysis. The loophole I found in this approach was that it is diificult to use before designing the product. The faults are found out and analysis is done when there is a design of product in hand. So for me it doesn't really click too much in terms of designing the product. No doubt it is a good approach and tool to find the various causes of failures. I have found Quality Function Deployment as a very effective tool and appraoch in terms of designing the product and New Product development. The voice of customer plays a very important role in the approach. Just make what customer wanrs. QFD gives us a systematic approach to know what the customer wants. The interesting part was to use the the results in QFD to determine the competitive advantage of the product from the customer perspective and the areas of improvement as well. Basically what these tools do really well is that they present the whole story of customer requirement /design/ failure modes/ process failures in front of the manufacturer or service provider in a graphical and easy viewable form. Glancing at them helps to take better decisions with respect to the requirements. But the important point to be noted is that, it is necessary to perform these functions correctly in order to make correct decisions. Any mistakes in the data collection process or any form of bias can lead to ineffective application of these tools.


January 24, 2019

DECISION MAKING

Today's day brought an end to something that I was really excited about. It is about value-elicitation. I had a fair bit of idea about my values but now most importantly, I have the ranking of them on which are the ones that are most important. As a child I was educated in an environment of value creation but little did I know back then the importance of these values in decision making. As a leader of the organisation I have a set of values/template which can help me in making the right decisions. The more these decisions are aligned with my values the more satisfied , well-off and happy I would be. I will develop these personal values further to set them as a basis of my organisational values. The more aligned the leader is to these organisational values the better will be the synergy in the organisation. These personal values can help any leader to develop the desired organisational values. These values can define all the spheres of decision making in the business. A organisation with the values of compassion and respect for the community will not shy away from taking decisions within the organisation such as setting up health and safety mechanisms in the business. On the other hand, an organisation with the value of being the most profitable business will align all its decisions that generate immediate profit building. Having defined the values, it is easier for the employees to understand as well what to expect from the organisation. This can further help to set up the Human Resource strategy of the organisation. It eases up the recruitment process as well. The people applying for the job in the organisation know exactly know whether they want to work in the business looking and interpreting the values of the organisation. Some people enjoy working in the hard core money making businesses such as investment banks whereas other people don't. Adaptability can be a core value of the business. It means whenever business faces a new challenge, all the employees need to develop an acumen where they are able to welcome change and adapt to dynamic business environments. Values can go even one step further in defining the brands. Reliability is a human value but it can also be a brand value. We all know the reliability of NIKE as a shoe brand. Values are a reflection of our personalities , our organisations , our brand value and above all the kind of decisions we will make. Again, the more the decisions are aligned to the values, the more happy a person would be. This has brought a complete circle to my learning in the leadership module. I asked this question what is the right thing to do? I know now what is the right thing to do. Taking the decisions on the basis of my values will always help me figure out the right thing to do.



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  • Good post Saurabh. I agree that sustainable success in any field cannot be achieved through a quick … by Paul Roberts on this entry
  • Thank you for your thoughts Paul. Critically analysing the point, most of the business have short te… by Saurabh Kukreja on this entry
  • Lots of thoughts here Saurabh. Picking up on your last point, perhaps the starting point is to consi… by Paul Roberts on this entry

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