Quality Fables Competition 2017

The best thing living in Silvassa is to get some soul satisfying moments driving just 25 odd miles to Daman beach. Sitting at the sea-side rocks, I watch and enjoy the playful waves. Rushing and gushing forward as they slow down their pace, moving back as to gain their energy to hit back with more force. Crashing and racing with each other … that … who will splash at me. I know that the perseverance of waves will eventually win and they will reach me certainly. Waiting for that ultimate wave, I got lost in thoughts-Isn’t it similar to our life?

Everyone is in race with one another… our suppliers, our competitors, our customers, etc. Expectations are always high. I recall, earlier our customers were happy with 1 break/MT while drawing copper at speeds of 20 m/s. Now 0.3 breaks/MT and drawing speeds less than 28 m/s is unacceptable to them. Courtesy a gigantic advancement in wire drawing industry and dumping of superior imported rods. To match that rod quality and sustain in market, we knew we had to improve our Piparia rod quality – To reduce high Surface Oxide values (SOD) in rod which has hindered its performance.

The waves bobbled many times before reaching the shore….

Last year a separate team already worked on reducing the SOD value but couldn’t succeed. So, we called OEM. According to them, Piparia plant design was the constraint. They said upgrade the plant which meant a long shutdown and capital expenditure of Rs.90 crores! However Senior Management formed a new cross-functional team to beat the unimaginable challenge -‘To improve the rod quality by reducing the SOD value in rods’. They showed faith in the capability of the team and said ‘’You run the plant! You understand it better! You’ll deliver, don’t worry!

I realized the waves just touched my feet, breaking my thoughts…I guess… they were advising me to forget the past and take up this challenge. With an extensive data analysis and statistical tools like dispersal analysis, stratification, MSA, Correlation and Regression, DOE, Test of Hypothesis, reference to technical papers, etc. , our team implemented some innovative Kaizens (without any shutdown or CAPEX) in the rod plant.

Like persistent waves, without any prejudice, oscillating between faiths and expectations of the management, our team took the challenge head-on! Finally our actions resulted into breakthrough in SOD values.

Yes, target was achieved and we were sailing on euphoric waves of success.

Now, the ocean is calm and serene like it has undergone some retrospection.  But deep-down, I know waves are restoring its energy to propel back for a new challenge… a new target…

Winner - Quality Fables Competition 2017

Empire of Max Life was ruled by the famous emperor Akbar. His soldiers were trained to sell insurance and secure the lives of its subjects. Max dynasty spread its wings across 205 cities and was divided in six provinces, East, West 1, West 2, North 1, North 2, and South. Hiring quality soldiers was a difficult task.

During the city visits, Akbar observed that one of his courtiers was offering the soldier’s job to a person who came to resolve his query and was convinced to take up this job. Akbar observed that quality of soldiers hired this way is far better than other sources.

The king called Birbal, his most trusted minister, and said “Birbal, recruiting soldiers from the subjects who come for query resolution is a fantastic idea. Go in the west province, implement the idea and come back to me with a progress report in 3 months. It’s an order “

Birbal tested the idea in West 2 and was delighted to see the success. Results were reported to the king who then ordered Birbal to clone this idea across all the regions.

Witty Birbal understood at instance that it’s not a easy job. He called the meeting of all six province heads for discussion. One of the heads from east province said “Your Excellency, idea is good, it’s working in West 2, but challenges will be different for all provinces. What worked in West 2, may not work for other territories. My lord, in East, very few people walk in to ask queries, people walk in from outskirt locations and go back to their towns once the work is done. It will be a difficult task to convince them “

Birbal, aware of these facts appointed a committee of ministers from all the regions and formed the team of experts. He convinced the east province head to implement the idea in east and assured that he will get all the support from him. These ministers then studied various aspects like type of locations in their province, type of people visiting for queries and presented the detailed report of observations to Birbal.

Upon the detailed study of each report, Birbal created a strategy where learning from West 2 was cloned as it is where applicable and also added some region specific solutions to help other provinces to maximize their results. Birbal and his ministers implemented all the ideas in their regions and shared the success with Akbar. 21% soldiers were hired collectively through this initiative across India with wealth generation of Rs 21.54 cr.

Birbal updated Akbar about game of clones, the team work and the relentless efforts of his ministers. Akbar was extremely delighted and declared the handsome prize to all who worked hard to make this idea work. Most satisfactory moment for Akbar was to see new job opportunities for his subjects through a career of becoming soldiers.

Cast:
Akbar: COO
Birbal: Black Belt
Ministers: Greenbelts
Soldier: Agents

Sometime in the third week of October last year, I was crossing the operations floor on my way to the desk. All I could hear was the cluttering of keyboards and occasionally, voice of a team leader interacting with an agent— usual environment in Chat customer care.

Half way through, I was called by Vaibhav (my manager) for a meeting. The team was waiting for me in a conference room. Vaibhav said, "I have an important update. One of our competitors has lost business to a new vendor in Chat".

We were not surprised as this was usual due to increased competition. Vaibhav continued, "Our client's business is growing and they are thinking about expanding Chat customer service. This is a good opportunity to get additional business, but how do we differentiate eClerx from competitors?"

The meeting concluded with an open-ended statement.

Next day, in the senior managers’ meeting, there was a heated discussion over Repsat, which had taken a hit in the last week. Repsat represents the positive responses in a survey triggered by client to customer at the end of a chat session.

After the meeting I asked Vaibhav, "Why not focus on Repsat? Our client has always wanted to increase customer satisfaction by investing in new technology and by upgrading their systems. I am sure that if we improve Repsat, our client will be happy. Moreover, it could be a factor that differentiates eClerx from others”.

After giving it some thought, Vaibhav said, "Let's aim for increasing Repsat."

A DMAIC project was initiated and a team was formed. The project was sponsored and directly monitored by Amit, Vertical Head of Customer-Service-Operations. In the ’Improve’ phase, we faced a few roadblocks— agents reluctant to follow the improved process, many changes in Workflow tool, and changes in training related activities. We grouped solutions into three buckets— software, process, and training— and assigned separate teams to these areas. The new process designed with Poka-Yokes, made it easy for the agents to follow process steps.

After we implemented the solutions, we started seeing improvement in Repsat figures. Needless to mention, our client also observed this rapid increase in eClerx Repsat figures.

About four weeks later, Amit called for a meeting and said, “I just received a call from client. They are so impressed and delighted with the initiative that we took to improve the Repsat numbers. Congratulations to Vaibhav and his team on the successful completion of this project. Hope we receive some good news soon”.

In our weekly review with client, we explained the actions taken at eClerx for Repsat improvement.

The client appreciated our in-depth analysis in the project and our commitment towards improving the end customer satisfaction.

Two weeks after our client review, we received the much awaited email from client proposing to increase the head counts by nearly 30% in a span of three months.

People see our VP as a levelheaded person. On that day all the staff members were shocked when VP lost patience. At that instance the team got restless and literally on the verge of knocking down the development team. As a team leader I was shrieking “Why the shade matching being done is not OK” .What is happening – Why the shade matching is not getting OK at First Instance. We cannot produce the yarn as per customer requirement and the order will get delayed again. We have to identify the reasons for shade matching not OK, analyze them and work on finding and implementing solutions to help increase Right First Time (RFT)

Continuous delays in delivery of orders attracted for a presentation on various reasons for such delays. Data of shade correction in melange mixing was presented to top management and its figures were consistently lower than standard for quite a few months. Also it was affecting the bottom line of the organization.

Shade correction in Melange Mixing was such a pain, which was leading to loss of potential orders in addition to financial loss .Everyone agrees in Spinning that the Shade correction in Melange Mixing is high as compared to the standard and has direct as well as significant impact on the bottom line of the organization. Also, it was leading to delay in execution of orders and problem of line balancing which directly affects the loss of production and customer dissatisfaction. Optimizing the cost of production was of prime importance to WTIL leadership team and to prove the aspects of growth, customer satisfaction without giving up the excellence in manufacturing by establishing new standards of performance

All the improvements that were done followed the 'Management of change'.
All relevant SOP’s were modified and on - site trainings were given to employees
Knowledge sharing was done through One-Point Lessons.
Do and Don’ts board prepared and displayed on site for better control over the gains.

Project closing survey conducted by the team to understand the fulfillment of the “Voice Of Customer” and share actions taken as per their requirement.

A project is only as successful as the people behind it. The person who felt the most pain in Shade matching Process was nominated as Project Leader (Mr. Sudeep Mondal) and team members were selected from different departments concerning the problem. In all CFT (Cross Functional Team) was formed to solve the problem

The top management reviewed the progress of the project in the Monthly Review meeting. Daily MIS being circulated internally for shade matching.

Project resulted in savings of Rs 32 lacs per annum, recurring.

This project team was awarded as the best TQM Project on the Annual Day by the Top Management.

The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep waters, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. 

Then God said, "Let there be Light"; and there was Light!

One Monday morning while we reported to work, we had more than half of the INDIA reporting network failures…the sites were down and the teams were in total darkness nobody knew what went wrong!

The operations team gave up saying “network down”!

The maintenance guys said, “ISP cards failure”

In turn, service engineers said “High down time “meaning high “Mean time to Repair” (MTTR)–more than six hours..! (The time when the Service was down...)

Also, business heads said, “High Customer Dissatisfaction...!”

Total disaster….Darkness…!

Everyone was searching for a ray of hope...!

The Centre of Excellence team came to the rescue. On investigation they theorized that the problem was due to the temperature rise, close to the cards, owing to improper functioning of Precision Air-conditioning (PAC).

The team along with the equipment manufacturer implemented the solution. They removed the root causes by reducing the hotspots in the server rooms and thereby saving the failure of cards. And, finally, restored the site operations and network...!

In the next three months the solution was implemented at all the 59 large facilities, resulting in zero card failures hence Zero MTTR, due to the card failures.

The results were amazing in terms of improved customer satisfaction; the power utilization factor has reduced from 2.0 to 1.5 now, and resulted in high energy cost savings. More specifically, more than 64.24 crores/annum (only for 59 facilities).

This was a winner for the long term. It will give optimum results even if we expand the network capacity.

Thus as God said, "Let there be Light" and……there was Light…!

One day a young boy named “Finance” read a thank you note from his Uncle “Blast Furnace” which was filled with immense gratitude honoring his father “Innovation”. He got curious and asked his father as to why Uncle Blast furnace (BF) was filled with so much of gratitude? Innovation said, Son, three years ago there was a major crisis in the steel industry and the income of Uncle BF had drastically fallen. As result of the crisis Uncle BF could not afford to continue with his lavish lifestyle. During the hey days, Uncle BF was  leading an extremely luxurious lifestyle which included consuming high iron content stuff and also relying on neighboring Karnataka for his consumables. Unfortunately, the situation was not that rosy since some of the furnaces were undergoing a slow death owing to the crisis and melt down.  Uncle BF was worried about his survival and approached me for guidance.

After introspecting, I realized that Uncle BF’s lifestyle had to be pruned to ensure he does not succumb in this race of the fittest. I advised that he immediately change his food habits and rely more on local food which would immediately give him an edge of 20% saving.  It was a tough decision as it meant lowering his standard and of course tougher to remain afloat given the economics of the market. I walked the tight rope with him in his endeavor to remain healthy and kicking. The various parameters that prevented him consume the local food were thoroughly analyzed and advised him to change his hearth volume so that he could accommodate additional slag generated due to use of low grade material which also resulted increase in distance between the tuyres and tap hold thereby reducing the turbulence near hearth area.

To ensure better   and efficient cooling of his body to counter internal thermal fluctuation which can occur while consuming low grade material it was  suggested to increase cooling member layers and monitored the  body condition regularly and provided indicators and software so that he can take corrective action in case of an incidence.

 That apart, many small changes were done in the functionality, operations and processes of Uncle BF.  Uncle BF could withstand all the changes that were systematically imposed which resulted in replacement of 90% of his material consumption by locally available low quality material and managed to give a competition to his peers and survive in the tough times and indeed and example that “Necessity is the Mother of Invention”. He was extremely grateful for the guidance and handholding in the difficult moments and compensated me which returns I have now transferred to my son “Finance”.

“Be as a tower firmly set; shakes not its top for any blast that blows.” – Dante Alighieri

Mumbai is not only the financial capital of India, but also one of the largest metros in the world. While the Mumbai local is often termed as the lifeline of Mumbai, over the years, mobile communication has become the lifeline of the city.

Indus Towers, with its widespread network servicing all major telecom operators, ensures that Mumbaikars don't face even a minute of network downtime. Even a minute of downtime in a busy metro like Mumbai can lead to thousands of call-drops and internet disconnections, leading to massive customer dissatisfaction.

In our journey as an organization towards challenging the Deming Prize. One major area that needed to be worked on was Policy Deployment of organizational objectives right from the top till the field level. One such organizational objective is to ensure by 2021 we have 99% of towers running at 100% uptime. In other words, telecom equipment installed on our towers should not stop functioning due to infrastructural issues for even a single minute at 99% of our towers. Automation was at the heart of ensuring such high quality performance, since it is not feasible to have personnel monitoring our thousands of sites 24x7.

Mumbai is known nationally for its excellent operations performance, hence with time the focus shifted towards acquiring new sites. This led to lowering in operations performance and despite a complete operations hierarchy; there was no awareness of how much problem the team was sitting with.

It was at this juncture that it was decided by the Circle COO, Process Excellence Mentor and the circle automation manager that a project needs to be driven which will deploy the operations goals of the circle, right to the last level of Field Support Engineers (FSEs), that will help achieve not only the circle's targets but also their individual targets so that they do not get penalized for lack of knowledge of targets.

A scorecard was created to assess the performance level against each parameter for each FSE and wherever there was a shortfall, the FSEs were encouraged to take up QCC projects to do RCA and solve the field problems. The common repository of RCAs and solutions would then form the basis for replication in case such problems arise in areas of other FSEs.

The project was reviewed along with the Circle COO and was also reviewed by national Operations & Maintenance Head and National Process Excellence Head. The results were very encouraging as there was phenomenal improvement across all parameters and for almost all FSEs. The circle automation score zoomed from a mere 68% to 86% within 3 months, ensuring the field employees achieved most of their targets which directly affect their performance linked incentives. The project witnessed complete teamwork, of 35 FSEs along with the Management Team, and continues to remain sustained.

During one of my quarterly visits to the client’s office my coffee break with my sponsor was interrupted by a call he received from the head of ecommerce merchandising team.

“We have to launch 350,000 new products and that too in only 18 months. Can you guys help us in meeting this deadline”? asked my sponsor.

Being the largest plumbing wholesaler in North America, our client, now wanted to grow their e-Commerce footprint by increasing and improving products offered online. Since our team was working on core product data improvements and being client’s preferred vendor in these activities, we decided to step up and move from a vendor to a partner and confirmed our involvement in the project.

It was not too long before we stumbled upon a major roadblock during process implementation when team started showing signs of stress as we have not handled such huge volume of data along with the complexity involved in the product types and it had an impact on throughput which became inconsistent and erroneous.

As expected, in the first review post implementation, our sponsor raised his concerns on project schedule adherence and quality. He ended the discussion on a worrying note when he asked - “Are you guys confident that you will be able to pull it off”? We assured him of some game changing results in next few months to pacify his anxiety.

After the conference call, I called my quality consultant and asked her to arrange for an urgent meeting to kick start a DMAIC project.

We went on with multiple brainstorming sessions starting initially in conference rooms and then spreading to even cafeteria. Whenever required, we also invited client point of contacts for discussions on project scope and how other supporting teams can help us achieve our target.

Finally hard work paid off as we achieved required throughput by automations, process reengineering and implementing an effective capacity utilization to ensure both eClerx and client were on top of schedule.

In the next review, sponsor was highly appreciative of the excellent work done by us to achieve project milestones and it was a rewarding moment when with a smile he offered more business – “will you be interested in taking up upstream and downstream activities as well”?