World Class Manufacturing

Corporate Angle

Mr. Ruddradev Roychoudhary Developer at TCS Research & Innovation, Kolkata

Shifting to A New Normal: An Insider Story

When May rolled around the corner, there was a sudden announcement of Lockdown that did not scare many people. Partly because it was only for ‘21’ days at that time. But the IT industries knew what was f ollowed in other countries – A lockdown of at least 2 months till the daily cases goes over the peak and starts to decline. So, they started the biggest movement operation in the history of Sof tware Industry.

It started with a small request that those who had laptops to share the work of their co-workers while the Associates with desktops can put in a request to get their machines shipped. But the impact was in more areas than imagined.

No more 9 hours

Gone were the days when the Manager used to point out when you went f or too many tea breaks. Now you could sip tea all day in front of your machine. The main aim was to get the work done. Sometimes that meant extending your workday to meet a deadline. But that was easy since you didn’t need to stay back at of f ice to complete the task. Surprisingly that improved the productivity as a whole. Where one could just work as much as required.

Ergonomic Nightmare

At of f ice, we took the ergonomics f or granted. The reclining chairs, and the sitting posture. When work f rom home began, most of it began with laptops on our laps semi reclined on our beds. Soon the back began to hurt, and people started taking leaves for back pain. The unluckier ones had their spondylitis f laring up and had to seek medical attention. To counter this many organizations provided of fice chairs and tables f or work. And some people brought their own. Af ter all, f or them it was a small price f or working f rom the comfort of their home.

In-human connect

For the introverts, the lockdown was heaven. No more partying, no more socializing just f or the sake of it. But af ter a f ew months, the ef f ects of long-

term isolation started to show. Meetings became more heated because of misunderstandings over email. Surprisingly those small issues were solved easily over tea earlier. But when it comes to remote work, it is dif f icult to communicate emotions in the correct way. What we don’t notice is that 90 percent of our communication happens non-verbally. Only 10 percent is via voice. To enhance bonding, many organizations started weekly or monthly online get togethers so that people don’t feel left out and that helped bring in the human touch to our work. working hours, and you’ll get the same deadlines again. Hence expectation management is an added responsibility f or the managers now. It is even more dif f icult to assess the ef f orts taken because you can’t see the work. For this reason, the ownership has to be taken by both the assignee and the assignor. And if any one feels that it can’t be achieved within the timelines, it is important to communicate well in advance.

Conclusion

Enhanced Expectations

There is a common saying in the corporate world –The f aster your work, the easier they think the work is, and the more work you’ll get. This is even truer during remote work. Nobody sees that you burnt the midnight oil to meet the deadline on time, they will assume that it was f inished within regular In Conclusion, work f rom home is a great opportunity to make the most of the time we have during our weekdays. But that privilege only comes if you can manage the physical health, mental health and expectation issues that arise f rom it. I hope that as you go into the corporate world, you also f ind the right balance between work and lif e.

Author Bio:

Mr. Ruddradev Roychoudhary

He is currently employed with TCS Research in the Domain of Vision, Graphics, and AI - using learning-based methods to make robot navigation systems faster and more reliable. He has worked to develop Computer Vision algorithms with OpenCV.

Competitor for International Aerial Robotics Competition working on visual Odometry, target recognition and collision detection algorithms for autonomous indoor flight.

The Corporate Angle

Dr. Pranjal Kumar Phukan Honorary Director - Strategy ICTMAE

Impact Of Big Data In India

On the technology side, several developments have converged to radically expand what analytics can do. The volume of available data has continued to double every three years as inf ormation pours in f rom transactions, social media, sensors in the physical world, and billions of mobile phones. Data storage capacity has increased, while its cost has plummeted. Data scientists now have unprecedented computing power at their disposal, and they are devising ever more sophisticated algorithms that can instantly sif t through troves of data to f ind patterns and reveal insights. The upshot of all this innovation is that decisions no longer have to be based on gut instinct, or subject to human error. Algorithms can make them instantly and consistently, drawing on a mountain of evidence. Systems enabled by machine learning can provide customer service, manage logistics, analyze medical records, or even write news stories. Analytics capabilities are now the basis of corporate competition. In many industries, a small group of technology leaders are consolidating major advantages. Daunted by the speed of technological change, many companies are hesitating. Still others have invested in data systems but are struggling to realize the returns they expected. Keywords: Analytics, Innovation, Algorithms, Systems, Inf ormation

Introduction

Data and analytics could transf orm multiple sectors in the years ahead. Banking and insurance could dramatically improve their risk assessments by building massive data integration capabilities.

Digital platf orms that of f er large-scale, real-time matching with dynamic pricing could make labour and energy markets more ef f icient. Granular data about individual characteristics and behavior can be used to customize products and services—and even more intriguingly, to re-imagine the way healthcare and education are delivered. Above all, data and analytics can improve the accuracy and transparency of decision making, a capability with f ar-ranging potential in everything f rom managing complex urban environments to making public policy decisions.

The big data revolution is not just a story of Silicon Valley. It represents a major shif t in the way business is done globally. Developing nations with f ewer deeply entrenched legacy systems to overhaul can take advantage of this moment. Data and analytics could provide an injection of transparency and ef ficiency that spurs commerce, builds more inclusive economies, and makes government services more ef f ective. The age of analytics is already beginning to unleash creative destruction—and that may open the door f or young, tech-savvy companies f rom anywhere in the world to propel themselves into the ranks of the new global giants.Data is the world’s newest natural resource that is changing the dynamics of global economies. Today, we are generating about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. By 2020, there could be f our times more digital data than all the grains of sand on earth. This data is being harnessed through Big Data Analytics to catapult corporations and the world economy by providing valuable insights and enabling f ocused decision-making.

The public and the private sector are already making ef f orts in the right direction to harness the potential of Big Data in the social hemisphere. Aadhaar is the largest biometric project of its kind in the world capturing demographic and biometric data of a billion Indian citizens. The database could quickly grow to as much as 20 petabytes and used to identif y and address important societal issues community wise. This has already been used f or f inancial inclusion using mobile, Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile (JAM), and enabling direct benef it transf er f or LPG. India needs to take several measures to f urther accelerate the role of Big Data in social innovation. Organizations such as the World Bank are moving aggressively to open such databases to public. Further, ‘big’ data sets in private sector could be adapted to help f urnish social impact. Second, ‘Citizen Science’ projects in the social arena can help policymakers tackle the issues ef fectively. As more open-source data platf orms come into picture, communities can help to create and analyze these data sets, and f urther contribute through innovative ideas and products.

Understanding of Big data

To better understand and appreciate "Big Data", we should go back to what Diebold (2012) talks about Big Data being three things: the term ("f irmly entrenched"), the phenomenon ("continuing unabated") and an "emerging" discipline. Thus, Big Data is many things to dif f erent people and it is imperative to understand it deeper bef ore it can be put to use. Towards this end, we look at how Big Data is changing the paradigms of social science research (and thus the lenses through which we perceive the world) and f ollow this with how Big Data tools and techniques are being used to make smart policy and business decisions. This is f ollowed by a deeper look at Big Data in the Indian perspective and the road ahead.

Big data in Public sector

The public sector is a ripe area f or applying the tools and techniques of Big Data to increase the ef f iciencies in the sector. This can happen in two ways: by using Big Data to improve programmatic outcomes, and to improve decision making. The underlying premise behind using big data to enhance decision making is providing f eedback loops that allow citizens to engage with government and thus reveal pref erences that are not revealed through the traditional polling process.

Impact of big data on supply chain

Supply chain management is a vital component of minimizing a company’s risk of fraud, bribery, and corruption, and new tools can help organizations looking to limit their exposure to these risks as modern technology works its way into even the oldest of businesses.

Big data is still a point of intrigue f or many businesses looking to take advantage of digital analysis to create more ef f icient and f ool proof operations in their supply chains, but data analytics tools should be f ar f rom enigmatic for supply chain managers. Bloomberg suggests that data analytics tools and big data are two elements that can help businesses identif y problem areas within a supply chain bef ore those areas actually do damage.

It is well known that errors in a supply chain can do massive damage to a company in a host of ways. Indeed, supply chain management is seen as one of the f oundational blocks of corporate social responsibility. Transparency is a must f or ef f icient managers, and big data provides insight into clearer amounts of inf ormation a company can use to make its supply chain more ef f icient, and to minimize risk.

Big data comes f rom a wide range of sources: • Today’s technologies and social platforms allow businesses to get direct customer f eedback in the f orm of ratings, reviews and blog comments. • Data f rom mobile, social platf orms and ecommerce are being integrated with data f rom enterprise systems. • Manuf acturing is changing f rom event-based planning to real-time sensing with the introduction of the Internet of Things and machine-to-machine communication. • Evolved sensor technology provides real-time equipment and product conditions data resulting in automated maintenance and process adjustments. Big Data, as is with most of disruptive technologies happening at the moment, has at f irst an impact on organizations. The innovators and the early adopters among the organizations are already embracing Big Data. According to the Technology Adoption Cycle this group represents approximately 16% and with 12% having implemented a strategy we are almost bridging the gap to the rest of the organizations. Only when the technology has crossed the chasm, the rest of the organizations, the early and late majority and f inally the laggards, will implement a Big Data strategy.

Big Data Technologies and Challenges

The open-source project Hadoop (by Apache Sof tware Foundation) is a primary Big Data analytics platf orm which is built to operate on large distributed (high perf ormance) compute clusters. MapReduce, the most popular f unction, is essentially a two-stage f ault tolerant analytical routine which distributes the data and task at hand, f irst, to various compute nodes, and integrates the results obtained later. This is done using the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) (adopted f rom Google (distributed) File System or GFS). IBM's Inf oSphere, BigInsights and Inf oSphere Streams are commercial platf orms f or analysis of big data at rest and in streams respectively. Kambatla, Kollias, Kumar, & Grama (2014) point out that due to the scattered nature of Big Data it is dif f icult to store, process and analyses it at one place. Hence, it needs to be segregated and processed over different servers.

But with such distributed databases there arises the complexity of privacy, f ault-tolerance, security and access controls. Chen & Zhang (2014) highlight that the lack of awareness pertaining to Big Data poses serious threats to the nation's cyber security and is also a barrier to country's socio-economic development.

Big Data poses a serious challenge in regard to data complexity, large scale data integration, sheer volume and lack of availability of supporting high perf ormance computing cluster (HPCC) hardware and sof tware platf orms to tackle the af oresaid challenges.

Big Data: The Road ahead in India

Substantial Big Data is being generated (and stored) by Government departments in India already. Department of Science and Technology, GoI has announced plans to take Big Data research f orward in the Indian context, including f inancial support f or teams taking up such projects (http://dst.gov.in/scientificprogramme/bigdatainiti ative.html). However, continuous ef f ort shall be needed f or a long period of time bef ore some success stories of big data studies and their results are visible.

Prime Minister's f armer soil health card is an initiative which could provide extremely valuable data in f uture contributing to the nation's food security. Similar schemes are also needed f or our other national natural resources, such as: (i) monitoring (underground and surf ace) water availability, usage, and its preservation in India, (ii) rainf all harvesting activities and potential, (iii) land and its (current and possible) usage across the country, (iv) f orest areas monitoring, (v) wildlif e data, (vi) air quality data f rom, (vii) wind f arming potential. Ef f ort is needed to tap the potential in big data starting with: to identif y, support (such as through f ully f unded academic scholarships), develop, and employ special talent to tap the potential of big data.

Conclusion

Big Data platf orms and technology have crossed the chasm of mere interest. Across the world, scientif ic, academic, research, businesses, as well as, government communities are aggressively charting plans and paths to benef it f rom developments in the big data f ield. The issues pertaining to policy and existing f rameworks developed over the last f ew years in some advanced countries have been identif ied and critiqued to identif y unresolved issues. We anticipate much action in the business and government domains in the years to come, and one such potential arena would lie in big data which spans national boundaries.

About the Author:

Dr. Pranjal Kumar Phukan

Over 25 years of experience in Supply Chain & Operations Management across top firms and global brands and has a strong background in network design, distribution, logistics, planning and supply chain transformation activities. Consistently demonstrated leadership abilities in achieving operational improvement by working closely along with the management and plugging the loopholes in the system by setting up systems and processes in place. An effective communicator with excellent problem solving and stakeholder management skills.

Corporate Angle

Mr. Sumeet Rajan Program Management Executive at Flex, PRINCE2 Agile

Going Lean

Nowadays, competition in the global market is tough. Companies need to constantly enhance and evolve. Implementing Lean Manuf acturing and Tools are a proven methodology to improve business and beat the competition. Lean Manuf acturing is a business improvement philosophy that f ocuses on the true needs of the customer by preventing waste from being built into the system. Waste also know as Muda is regarded as non-value adding operations such as transport, inventory, motion, waiting, over-processing, overproduction, and defects that are irrelevant for a customer. Studies has suggested that added value takes place around 5% of the time within operations and the remaining 95% is waste. Going Lean or Lean manuf acturing, or simply “lean,” is a systematic method designed to minimize waste in a manuf acturing system while productivity remains constant. The power of lean manuf acturing lies within its ability to f ind

processes and actions to reduce or eliminate. In turn, this creates a balanced process that reduces cycle time and waste, increases quality, and enhances customer satisf action. Originating in Japan in the Toyota Production System (TPS), Lean manuf acturing strives to minimize waste within a manuf acturing operation, with the idea being to clearly portray what adds value by removing what doesn’t.

What does “Going Lean” means? Lean Tools

Lean tools are designed to reduce Muda (Waste) in organizations and improve quality control. Though there are several dif f erent types of Lean tools, a few of them are mentioned below.

Five steps to Implementing Lean

Step 1: Identify Value

Def ine value f rom the perspective of the f inal customer. Express value in terms of a specific product, which meets the customer’s needs at a specif ic price and at a specif ic time. Thus, one needs the critical starting point. Def ine value from the customer’s perspective and express value in terms of a specif ic product.

Step 2: Map the Value Stream

Identif y the value stream, the set of all specific actions required to bring a specific product through the three critical management tasks of any business: the problem-solving task, the inf ormation management task, and the physical transf ormation task. Create a map of the Current State and the Future State of the value stream. Identif y and categorize waste in the Current State and eliminate it! Map all the steps that bring a product or service to the customer. Include: Value-added– Activities that are of value to the customer. Value enabling– Not valued by the customer but required f or the process. Non-value added– Create no value and are avoidable.

Step 3: Create Flow

Make the remaining steps in the value stream flow. Eliminate f unctional barriers and develop a product-f ocused organization that dramatically improves lead-time. Also, create the continuum of product movement, services, and inf ormation from beginning to end. Eliminate batch testing. Nothing is done by the upstream process until the downstream customer signals the need. Hence, it is necessary to eliminate unnecessary inventory build-up.

Step 4: Establish Pull

Let the customer pull products as needed, eliminating the need f or a sales f orecast.

Step 5: Seek Perfection

There is no end to the process of reducing ef fort, time, space, cost, and mistakes. Also, return to the f irst step and begin the next lean transf ormation, of f ering a product which is ever more nearly what the customer wants. Perf ection is the complete elimination of waste so that all activities create value f or the customer.

Thus, this is a continual (never-ending) process.

Benefits: Lean manuf acturing improves efficiency, reduces waste, and increases productivity. The benef its, theref ore, are manif old:

• Increased product quality: Improved ef f iciency f rees up employees and resources f or innovation and quality control that would have previously been wasted.

• Improved lead times: As manuf acturing processes are streamlined, businesses can better respond to f luctuations in demand and other market variables, resulting in f ewer delays and better lead times. • Sustainability: Less waste and better adaptability makes f or a business that’s better equipped to thrive well into the f uture.

• Employee satisfaction: Workers know when their daily routine is bloated or packed with unnecessary work, and it negatively af f ects morale. Lean manuf acturing boosts not only productivity, but employee satisfaction.

• Increased profits: And, of course, more productivity with less waste and better quality ultimately makes f or a more prof itable company.

About the Author:

Mr. Sumeet Rajan

He is currently working with Flex as program management executive and has 7.5 years of experience in project management.