COVID-19 the Global Pandemic has presented a further toughening of the Business conditions for the Businesses across the World. Already the Businesses in most of the countries had been suffering due to slow economies. Now this Crisis is going to really push the Businesses to the brink. 

Let us examine the Leadership aspects of such a situation. What type of a Leadership is required in this situation? How do you guide your Business with a Clear Head? Let us examine some aspects of it. 

Indians are generally not very Rule abiding citizens. We violate rules in just about every sphere of life. From Traffic to Income Tax. The Current crisis requires People to practice Social Distancing. The Prime Minister had given a call to the Citizens to practice a Janata Curfew on 22^nd March’20 from 7 am to 9 pm. So far, the response had been very good. There may be some amount of underlying fear with the Indians about the virus. But Modi’s clear communication also helped in a big way. You can only see probably 5% of the normal crowds on the roads as reported by TV Channels. This is a very good example of good Leadership in Crisis. 

Support the Government

All of us have our own Political affiliations. I do not have any particular Political affiliation. I support whoever is doing good work. I do not try to be burdening myself with one Party as against another one. I do not support everything that Modi does and same is the case with any other Parties. I believe we should support the Political Leaders in the Country as they are the people who are leading us. We are electing them. I may or may not have voted for the Party that is in power now. We may not like their ideology. We should protest about that in the right forums. We should try our best to influence them. But when it comes to Nation Leading, we should support the government in Power.  This is very much needed to ensure Governments have fair chance of succeeding and doing something for us. 

Leadership in Crisis

Right now, the Businesses are in a deep crisis. The Order cancellations / Holds are happening as you read this article. The Businesses are scrambling to tackle the situation. Every Company requires good and Clear Leadership now. 

Every Leader will have to address at least two areas:

a)     Taking care of your Employees in the current situation.

b)    Taking care of your Business and giving the Leadership it requires. 

First things first, you need to take care of your Employees immediately.  

It is quite possible that you may be confused about where to begin and what decisions to take. Most of the Companies might not have had similar situations. So, there are no precedents. 

Right now, all your employees would be filled with a certain fear and uncertainty. You need to address that first. 

We need to work out the revised way of working for all the employees. Do not ignore this. Do not behave as if it is work as usual. Do not wait for the employees to start protesting. Be Proactive in this and address the fears. 

Take Decisions

Some of the following decisions may have to be taken:

-       How will the Employees come to work? If they are coming in their own cars / Two wheelers the risk is lesser. But if they are using Public transport, then you need to provide them with alternatives. The number of Buses is cut down in many cities. The Buses that are there may be crowded. If they can work from home, it is a good solution. If they cannot, then you need to bring them from home. Do not hesitate in spending this money. The Employees only are going to help you come out of this crisis. No one else. 

-       What precautions to take? Take the help of Experts in training your Employees about the precautions to be taken by them and their families. There is overload of information on the net. Everyone is an expert now on the subject of Corona! Take the information from authentic sources. 

-       Introduce new practices at work. On the basis of what you learn from the Experts introduce new practices and behaviors at work. These practices may involve washing the hands more frequently, using hand sanitizers before after meetings, not shaking hands, having more remote meetings than face to face and so on. 

-       Do not be ‘Top down’ in these decisions. While you should definitely lead the progress in the area of Employees, it is better for you to involve more employees in deciding what all specific measures to be taken. Let not HR be the only function that will decide everything. We can avoid the ‘Not invented here’ syndrome and avoid negative fallout from employees. It is after all their working conditions that we are defining. Let them participate actively. 

Try and reduce the risk of exposure to your Employees to zero. You may not arrive at all the measures in one day. But keep reviewing the progress every day. You have to make the Employees comfortable again. It is very important. 

Address your Business

Many Businesses are suffering now. There may be cancellations of orders / Postponements. You need to lead your Company in this area too. 

The Sales of March and at least the first quarter of next year will get affected. That is for sure. But you cannot accept a meek surrender to the situation. 

 If one door closes, surely there will be another Door that can open. Consider some of the following:

-       Right now, the Hospitals will require a lot of Products to handle the spike in the activity.  There can be big business waiting in terms of the Hospital equipment like X-Ray equipment, BP Apparatus and several other equipment, Support equipment like Air Compressors, Hospital clothing, Bed linen are all required in big numbers. The Hospitals are bound to be overburdened now. So, any products that help them to set up temporary hospitals quickly will be helpful. If you are not in this area, you may not want to get into this equipment now. But if these are related to your Businesses, then you can contribute a lot to the situation by producing more of all these.  

-       If you do not have anything to do with the Hospitals and their equipment, still you can look for opportunities to expand into. What can be the New Products that you can launch? What are those Products that you wanted to launch but not able to due to pressing commitments? Prioritize them now and bring out a bunch of New Products that will give you additional Sales once the current crisis diminishes. 

-       If you had been planning to get into New Markets, it is time to do the background work now. If you have to prepare some products for these new markets, this is the time to prepare. You may not be able to get your team to the new markets right now. But all the planning and background work can happen now.

-       If you had been struggling to reduce the Costs, now this is the time to make progress on certain Projects with Task forces working on Cost reduction. Create an internal competition with Cost Reduction Brainstorming Sessions. Try to make big progress in the area of Cost. You can aim at re-engineering your Costs during this period of Crisis.

-       If you had been planning to implement Skill Based Training, this is the right time for it. Define skills for various functions in your Company and start taking the help of E-Learning to skill up your Employees. E-Learning is the right tool for training Employees in this situation. It will not require employees to group in to one room. Your team should be able to deliver much more by the time Business comes back. Set up the Online Training school for your Staff and Workmen. 

-       If you had been planning to implement Industry 4.0 to improve efficiency on your shop floor, this is the time to implement Specific projects in Safety, Productivity, Quality Improvement and so on. 

It is good to reorient your Goals for the year 20-21. You can prioritize areas business other than top line alone. As earlier said, you cannot meekly accept the going down of the Turnover in the next year. You should find alternative ways of growing. You should infact discover a few more areas of growth and overall emerge as stronger company from this disaster! 

When I checked with a HR Head of a Company recently about how they are handling COVID19, his response was that probably there is some amount of overreaction and Social media hype about it.  But looking at the rapid spread of the Infections, maybe he changed his mind by now. COVID19 is declared as a Pandemic by WHO and India declared it as ‘Notified Disaster’.  I think we need to take it seriously to ensure we stay in control. 

Why a response is needed from Corporates?

COVID-19 is currently coming from People who travelled abroad. Corporates contribute to a good proportion of the Foreign travel. Foreign travel either for Business or for pleasure by the Employees of the Corporates. If we include the Children of the Corporate Executives studying abroad, the Corporates contribute to a lot of Foreign travel. Hence, Corporates can play a very important role in controlling the spread. 

Indian Companies are perennially in Crisis! 

If you look at the Eisenhower Time Matrix, most of the Indian Corporates are perennially spending a lot of time in the Q1. ‘Urgent and Important’. There are too many Crisis and we keep handling the issues right at the brink. Not a good thing. But we keep doing it. Indian Corporates are experts in living at the edge of the Chaos. We don’t quite get into full time Chaos. But we keep going in and out of them just like experts! 

My experience with the Indian Corporates is that when a Project is taken up, we ask for a lot of time. We fight for more time for the Project with the Boss. You would think the team would really do a great job by working on it systematically over the period of time taken. But most often I start getting calls from the team two days before the Deadline agreed. They would be asking for clarifications about the Project. They work very hard over those  last few days and Complete the Project. It would never be a Perfect job. But it won’t be a bad job either. I am not saying 100% of Companies and 100% of the Executives work this way. Maybe you do it much better in your Company?

Because of this dubious ‘capability’ to work well in a Crisis, I expect the Indian Corporates to do a very good job. 

But what is Critical is that they should identify it as a focus area and attend to it. A Clear Leadership is required for this Pandemic / Notified Disaster.  Otherwise everyone will be busy with their existing Crisis situations and wait for COVID-19 to become ‘Urgent and Important’ !! 

What are the areas for focus in this Disaster?

There can be at least 4 areas that a Corporate should address. 

a)     Your Employees: First focus area has to be your Employees. If you take care of your Employees, you are maintaining a big group of Healthy Citizens who can do more in this situation. Even if you do not do anything for the Society directly, maintaining your Business and contributing to the National GDP in this situation is a good enough contribution. Many companies are slipping on their growth right now. 

b)    Your Vendors: Second focus has to be on your Vendor Partners. If you are a Big company having several small vendors, then you can contribute a lot by helping these vendor partners to face the Challenge. It would also help you to keep the Production going without supply disruptions.

c)     Your Customers:  Then comes your Customers. If you are able to keep your Employee flock together and healthy, have uninterrupted supplies you can take care of your Customers. You would contribute to Economic growth in this challenging time. 

d)    Your City / Society: Then the City in which you are operating. If each corporate can contribute to taking care of part of the city that you are operating in, it can be a great help to the Government. 

There can be more angles to a Corporate’s Circle of influence. But let us start with these.

What can you do?

01.  Recognize the Problem: First of all, we need to recognize this as a Serious Problem. We cannot be lost in our ‘Urgent New Product Projects’, ‘Customer Line stoppage issues’ and so on. Please look at handling the COVID-19 as in the same direction as attending to all the Business Emergencies that you have. You are only modifying your approach and attending to an underlying issue for every project in your Company.  Special effort is required for Corporates to recognize it as Problem as we are used to responding in the last minute. This is one problem that you would not like to respond in the last minute. 

Data says that just a month back there were just 4 cases of the Infection in Italy on 21^st Feb’19. On 13^th March, there were 15,000 with 1400 deaths! Containment is the critical action that you can take. There is right now no medicine for this Virus. 

02.  Learn about the Problem: It would help to learn about the Problem from Experts. You may not be generally in touch with these Experts. You may have to contact someone in WHO or AIIMS or any of the Private Corporate Hospitals where the knowledge may reside. Invite an Expert to your Company and let your teams understand the Problem and the precautions that we need to take. 

03.  Formulate Teams: Formulate teams to address the four groups of Stake holders that you want to address. Depending on the resources that you have, you can prioritize in the Stake holders. Have clear leaders for the teams and Objectives that they have to focus on. 

04.  What can be the Goals: Single biggest Goal is for everyone to stay healthy. But the Process goals have to be the New Behaviors that you want the Stake holders to Practice. Some of the new Behaviors can be as follows:

a.     Spreading the knowledge about the Problem and the seriousness. 

b.     Not shaking hands. Practice Namaste instead.

c.     Working in Shifts to reduce the density of the employees.

d.     Using Video conference even for local meetings.

e.     Maintaining some distance between you and your colleagues.

f.      Avoiding non-essential travel. 

There can be many more practices that you may define in your Company. This article is not meant to define a complete list of Best Practices anyway. 

05.  Create Champions for monitoring: Some of our Colleagues are naturally more disciplined and keen observers. Eg. Audit department colleagues, Quality Department colleagues and so on. Use their services to monitor the practices that you have defined. As these are new practices / behaviors that we are trying out, there are bound to be violations. These Champions have to identify the violations and keep talking to the Teams. 

06.  Quick Decisions: In a Crisis, there have to be quick decisions. There can be a small team of Senior people who can be authorized to take decisions as needed. The Teams have to be informed about this. 

07.  Communicate, Communicate and Communicate: Communication is another important aspect that is very critical in this situation. It would be quite okay to over communicate. Let the Problems and solutions be known to everyone in the Company. Maintain transparency. Especially in the light of Bad news. Whatever is construed as Bad news can be screened before relaying. This is to ensure spread of undue panic. 

Through your efforts if you can keep your Employees healthy and also create Soldiers who can contribute to the immediate society around you, then you have done a great job! 

You would have also trained your Team to handle a real Crisis before it really hits you hard!! 

How are you responding to COVID-19? Please share so that Others can learn from you! 

Act fast and Prevent the spreading of COVID-19!

END

In the past few years, I have been witnessing an aggressive approach to Customers from Companies who pride themselves as Customer focused Companies! I will be talking about few Companies specifically. But I am not saying that only these companies are adapting these aggressive approaches to customers. There may be many more. I am talking about these companies on the basis of my personal experience.  Experience of others may be different.

ICICI Bank

I have been Banking with ICICI for about 25 Years. I have good amount of Deposits with them. I am a decent size Customer for them. I have Savings Accounts with them as well as Current accounts too. As I know the Bank for 25 years, I have a right to talk about them. Currently I am actively looking at shifting away from this Bank due to two reasons. 

The Bank’s service is deteriorating fast. They were not helpful to me in some specific cases. They will quote their Process when I ask for help. The Staff of this Bank are remarkably unfocused on Customers’ Point of view. Most of the Staff are young and totally untrained on Customer Service. 

a)     In addition, they adapt a very aggressive approach towards Customers to get more business from them:

a.     If I or my wife go to the Bank, the Staff will be all over us. Not to help us. But, to ask for Deposits, ask us to invest in Insurance and so on. 90% of the Visits are marked by Staff asking us to invest in some schemes. 

b.     If someone smiles at me, these days I am turning my face away as the second sentence would be about investing. 

c.     Whatever may be the agenda with which we go to Bank, they will harass us about investing. They will ask for Account numbers, look at our Deposits and then will go after us. Right now, a visit to ICICI Bank has become very unpleasant. 

d.     They also approach us on Phone. There are calls from their Call centers about various schemes. They also call from the Branch where we have accounts. They keep offering the same thing even though we said NO to it. They offer me Overdraft on the basis of my transactions. I said no to it. But they don’t care!  They keep calling every week and offering the same! I am amazed by their insensitivity. I keep picking up the call as the number is a usual land line or Cell number. If it comes from the usual 14*** then I do not even pick up the call.

ICICI Bank may be giving their Employees a wonderful incentive to get the Business! Otherwise I can’t imagine the employees to be so proactive. Earlier it used to be the Marketing guys who have these targets. It looks like every Customer facing Executive is given Targets now! With this, they have turned every employee in to a Marketing executive. Is it good for ICICI? Whoever has taken this decision, has committed a big mistake. Now there is no Customer Service at the Bank. It is only Customer harassment! I am talking from personal experience!

Volkswagen 

I own a Volkswagen Vento. I bought this car in 2012. Since then I spent a good amount of money on this Car. Somehow my experience with Volkswagen had been very bad. But I can say I am suffering the wrong choices that I made with reference to choosing Diesel Car as well as the Brand. 

But my experience with the Dealer of this Car in Coimbatore is very bad! 

-       The Bill for the Servicing is never small. I am suspicious of this Dealer as once they suggested changing Brake Pads when they have just changed it in the previous Service. Since then I am suspicious of their intentions! When I countered the Service Executive that the Brake Pads were just changed in the previous Service, he changed his tack. I never trust this Dealer after that. 

-       After Service, the Volkswagen (Being Customer Centric!!) asks for feedback. First the local Dealer will call. After that Volkswagen themselves call from Mumbai. Initially I took this seriously and gave genuine feedback. If you say you are happy, you are let go there. But if you say you had a problem, then the harassment is more. They will arbitrarily call you whenever they want and ask for more information. In the initial days, I took it seriously and gave them further feedback. For one Servicing, you have to answer 3 Calls if you told them that you were not happy with something. If you don’t pick up the call, they will go after you. I think the calls are made by a Software program. The program does not get tired of calling you till you pick up. 

-       Now in the initial days in all my innocence I looked for feedback or addressing my issue that is given in the feedback. There is never any action taken and there is never any feedback on my feedback.

-       Since then I just stopped answering the calls. If they fool me by calling from different numbers, I just disconnect if they say ‘Volkswagen..’. 

-       Is this what Volkswagen wants? To harass their Customers? 

With my experience of local Dealer and the Company I have decided that I will never ever buy a Volkswagen product and avoid all Companies that this Dealer represents! 

I am not talking about the Dealer as he may be a Small company. I am hoping Volkswagen will learn from this case study. 

Quikr

I am trying to sell a Flat that I own in Coimbatore. I decided to put an advertisement in Quikr. 

You can put a free advertisement in Quikr. But once you put it, you are chased by their Executives asking you to get into paid section. That is not the end. 

Once you pay up, they keep bombarding you with calls to upgrade yourself! 

After we suffered at their hands with the first advertisement, my wife became smart by the second one. She did not pick up the barrage of calls that they were making after inserting the second Advertisement. 

Is this the way Quikr wants to treat its’ Customers? Is there no other way but to chase Customers and wear them out? 

Swiggy 

We got used to using Swiggy as many people have. Of late, there are many bad deliveries from Swiggy. When you order for Dosa it arrives without any accompaniments. Swiggy App has provision for taking feedback from Customer. 

We keep giving feedback. Neither the Restaurant concerned nor Swiggy takes any action on the Feedback! Swiggy App though says ‘Aaargh !! Not acceptable !’ when you give feedback. You may fooled to think that they will really take some action!! Nothing will happen! 

Swiggy thinks that we will never go away from them! We as a family are planning to prove them wrong! 

There are several more examples. Ola Auto Drivers routinely ask for adding more money to what is shown by the Ola app. Otherwise they will refuse to come OR delay it so much that in a panic you accept their demand or you cancel the ride. If you cancel, sometimes you have to bear cancellation charges. We routinely rate these Drivers low. But no one acts on your feedback! More Drivers keep asking for extra money! 

Is this becoming a norm in India? You aggressively go after the Customers for Business using the Technology and connectivity that is available. But you don’t use the same technology for taking care of your Customers? 

You give your Executives such an aggressive target that they go after the Customer as if it is a bounty hunt! 

Whoever is designing the Customer service in these companies and many more are getting it totally wrong! Customers will respond and dump these companies! 

Among these bad examples, there are a few good examples too. 

Anandaas Restaurant, Coimbatore

This restaurant genuinely cares about its’ customers. The whole Owner family including the 80 year old Patriarch are in their Restaurants. Talking to the Customers while they are in the restaurant. There are always enough Executives around to talk to the Customers and keep servicing them. The restaurant is always innovative with their menu. They keep bringing special items on the weekends. 

As the restaurant is a good one, the crowd is always heavy. But the restaurant’s service speed is very good. With this they try to minimize the waiting time of the Customer. 

They are truly focused on the Customers. They don’t harass us with the phone calls for feedback! They make sure they give good service by interacting with us while at the Restaurant.

Invest into the relationship with the Customer

Companies need to shift their focus on to medium / long term. They need to invest into their relationship with the Customers. They should not treat the Customers as Cows that should be milked continuously without taking care of them. 

The Targets to employees in the Companies have to be refocused. The focus should be more on the relationship and service to the Customers and less on the immediate results. They should believe that if they maintain good relationship with the customers, they customers will keep coming back to them for all their needs. 

Look at everything from Customer point of view: Companies need to learn to look at everything from Customer Point of view. Improve your service to Customers on every touch point. Eg. ICICI Bank gave us trouble on several specific services. When I wanted to pay my Brother’s travel in foreign exchange (as he had come to conduct a Training program for my company), they harassed me a lot. Finally, I had to fight with the Executive concerned to get it done. This is just one example. Companies have to understand the Customer point of view. They may respectfully disagree. But they have to understand first. 

Launch more services for the Customers: Measure yourself with the number of services that you launch for your Customers and how simple are the services that you already have for Customers. Eg. ICICI Bank shows a lot of aggression in terms of following up with the customers for more Business. I cannot see the same aggression in solving my problems. 

Have personal touch: Amidst all the rules of your Company, still have personal touch with the Customers. Eg. I keep asking the Volkswagen Dealer that I am having bad experience with the Vento car. If he takes out the expense that I had with the Car and tries to explain to me as to why I have spent more money on my car, It will help me a lot. Right now he never listens to me on this. He is just worried about the current bill. 

In Banks, today there are Customer Relationship Managers. You would think they have your interests at their heart! This is another designation for asking for more Deposits! I was very disappointed to be fooled!! 

Companies should believe that their true service will bring them the Business. They need to believe in this fact. 

I have spoken about few specific companies in this article. If anyone from these companies are reading this article and stung by the criticism, they are more than welcome to engage with me. But not for more Business!! I am willing to speak to them if someone senior approaches me and proves to me that they are willing to learn! Otherwise, don’t bother to call me! 

I hope Companies would Learn the true definition of Customer Service!! Otherwise they will disappear from the Business map sooner than later! 

We have been hearing about Industry 4.0 elements and the amazing change that it can bring in your Company. 

It is heartening to see a few companies getting into this game and trying to improve their efficiencies. Many more companies should get started with the Industry 4.0. 

Among companies that are getting in to trying Ind 4.0, there are at least two types. Those who are setting up new Factories. These companies are going in for across the factory implementation of Ind 4.0 and trying to define a new level of Manufacturing efficiency in the Company. Companies who are trying to do this are few right now. I am sure once there are a few case studies of Paradigm change in the industry, the momentum will pick up and more companies would attempt change in a bigger way. 

Many Companies are trying to wet their feet. They are trying to do one Project that would give them a feel for the Cost / Benefit. Many are trying out in the area of collecting more data from a Machine and trying to predict its’ Breakdown / Performance.

As we support Companies with the Industry 4.0 applications, we at IMA are able to see multiple applications and we are able to get a feel for the big change that Ind 4.0 can deliver. Can Ind 4.0 be the motivation for the Indian Manufacturing to turn to improving their Productivities and Efficiency? 

I am presenting here a bunch of areas where you can make a beginning. There are very few Companies and very few People who have really done something in the area of Ind 4.0 in India. But there are some good resources that can help you start off. Everyone will learn together. The provider and the receiver of the Service. 

01.  Assembly Lines: Companies are looking at ‘No fault forward’ Lines. Their goal in these lines is ‘Zero PPM’. Gone are the days when we say 99 ppm is our target. Now companies are trying to achieve Zero PPM! Assembly lines are getting designed that can deliver the Zero PPM. As many of the CTQs (Critical to Quality parameters) as possible are getting checked online. The Quality data is getting captured at each station with the help of Bar codes / RFID. Assembly stations are remembering the Operators who are working at each of the stations. These Stations also capture the information related to various losses at each of the stations. The Managers review the Lines using the data that is coming from this individual equipment. The Line keeps sending updates about the Production, Quality etc to the relevant people in the Management. 

02.  Machine shop: The Machine Loading Plan is being done with the help of a Software. The E-Machine Kanban is scheduling the Production across the machines in the machine shop. This itself can give a huge benefit to many companies. The Machine shops keep losing a lot of capacity due to the Scheduling issues. In addition, the Companies are monitoring the Cutter life with the help of sensors to avoid Rejections before they change the cutters. Many more individual applications are being tried out. 

03.  Predictive Maintenance: Another area many companies are trying out is in the area of Predictive Maintenance. The existing data from a machine itself can give several insights. In addition, more sensors are put to collect data on the condition of the machines like Vibration / temp of a motor to predict the condition and act before a break down happens. Companies are striving to create Digital Twins of their machineries and predict the performance of the machines. 

04.  Online Quality Management: The Offline Quality Plans are getting online. Companies are trying to collect data on the Quality of the Process & the Product and act on the Quality issues online. The Data on Quality parameters may be picked up from the machines online or sometimes the Quality data may be checked by the Supervisor. The Quality checks can be made by everyone in the Factory and not just the hapless Quality Inspector! As the Data on Quality is available online, a lot of analysis is possible to understand the process / people. 

05.  Sub-contractor Integration: A Company that has many Sub-contractors can integrate these Sub-contracting locations as if it is one big Shop floor. Schedule the Sub-Contractors close to the Point and Time of need that goes along with the Demand Planning of the Company. The online information about the Status of the Machinery, resources in the Sub-contracting locations can be available for the Company. The rescheduling of the parts can happen online on the basis of the condition of the machines at the sub-contracting locations. You can monitor the Preventive maintenance schedules at your Sub-contracting locations. You can help your Sub-contractors to plan the Maintenance schedules. Once you treat them as one big group of machines in your Shop floor, you can do a lot more.

06.  Supplier Integration: You can schedule your multiple suppliers for a Part on the basis of their Quality and Delivery on a dynamic basis. You don’t have to wait for the Supplier rating and correcting the Share of Business at the end of the year / half year. You can act in a more dynamic manner. The Dispatches from your Suppliers can be controlled online by issuing the E-Kanban Cards close to the Time of need. You can monitor the Final inspection of your Parts at the Supplier end online. You can monitor the ‘Approved Inspectors’ at your Supplier place online. Depending on the cooperation of your Suppliers and the need, you can monitor the Quality of Process at your Supplier end. You can give feedback on the Quality of their supplies to the Shop floor teams at suppliers directly from your shop floor. 

07.  Dealer Integration: You can go forward with your integration of Business Partners and integrate your Dealers into your network. You can have the online information about the Products that are moving in the market and keep adjusting your Production Plans. You do not have to wait for the Sales team to give you schedules. You can understand the Consumption pattern of your Customers more online using the connectivity. 

08.  Skill Development: You can make BIG changes in the way you train your Employees. You can train them on Micro Topics using Micro Learning modules on a continuous basis. You can use E-Learning for this. With a good E-Learning developing partner, you can improve the Skills of your Employees at a much more depth than the conventional training. Eg. If Lean implementation is your priority, you can train your Engineers on ‘Time and Method study’ after which they can carry out the projects in the shop floor. You can use the Partner to certify your employees on Skills and Results. This perhaps is one of the areas where you can get BIG results and transform the way you run business. Skills have not been at the Centre of the Business in India for too long. 

09.  Problem Solving: You can bring the Problem Solving in your Company online. The Problems can be allotted to the employees and the various stages of solving the problems can be brought online. The Employees can be taught to work in a systematic way for Problem Solving using an App. 

10.  Promoting Learning in your Manufacturing Process: Today the Quality Plans are put, and the Quality Plans are not getting updated with the learnings from the manufacturing fast enough. If you have a Process from which you are collecting a lot of data online, then you can let the Quality Plan learn from what is happening on the ground. You need to keep recording the Quality of the Product that is produced online or close to being online. Then, the Process parameters are captured as well as the result of the Process condition. From this, the Quality plan can learn using Artificial Intelligence much like how your Google maps app and several other apps learn from your usage of them. 

There can be many more areas where the Ind 4.0 elements can be used. Some of them may sound like ‘Hey, we could do this earlier too’. Does it matter if you haven’t done it earlier? 

Let us use this current wave of interest in Digitalization to improve Efficiency on your shop floor and that of your Partners to give better service to the Customer and improve our competitiveness in the market. 

But there are a few MUSTs for you to get on to this journey.

Come to a Basic level of efficiency: If your Company has never visited the Lean principles, you have never heard of Kanban and other Best practices, then you have some work to do before you go on to the Digitalization. Many companies did not move to use the Best practices so far. If current Digitalization wave is interesting you, that is good news. You just create a Phase 1 where you implement the Best Practices. The results that you can get from the efficiency improvement can pay for your investment in the Digitalization!! Let us turn the adversity of ‘low efficiency’ into a virtue to pay for your Ind 4.0 efforts!! There are very few companies in India that can say that they are very efficient! There may be huge scope for improvement in their own shop or in the shop floor of Partners or in the Market place. Exploit this inefficiency to pay for your big efforts in Ind 4.0.

01.  Have a BIG target for your Ind 4.0 efforts: Only a big target will help you adapt the Best practices using the technology. For 10% / 15% improvement in Productivity, you don’t need Technology. Aim at doubling your Productivity / efficiency. Then, there can be a challenge for you to find technology that will take you to next orbit. Disrupt your Company with technology. Don’t try to cut vegetables with Bahubali’s sword !! 

02.  Train your Teams: Please remember however much the Managing Director may know about Industry 4.0, you can’t implement it without an urge of your team. You need to educate your team about what the possibilities are. Current level of knowledge of the Engineers / Managers in the Industry is quite bad.  Let the thinking happen across your Company and aim at making the Ind 4.0 implementation an Organization wide initiative and not just the fad of the top man/team. 

When are you starting off on your Transformation journey?