Quality Fables Competition 2018

Mahesh was on a train journey to his hometown. He happened to get into a conversation with his fellow passenger named Dinesh. Mahesh introduced himselfas MaxLife Insurance employee. Hearing this, Dinesh said that he recently bought a life insurance policy from XYZ company. Topic being from same industry, Mahesh got curious to know how was Dinesh’s experience. Dinesh complained that he got the policy in 15-days which is not expected in this digital age. Every industry be it e-commerce giants like Amazon, Dominos, banking, everything is instant. Even in insurance sector, general insurance is available Instant. Without being in a defensive mode, Mahesh tried explaining as to why it takes so long to issue a life insurance policy. He added that issuance of life insurance involves, risk assessment, underwriting, tele-verification etc. and hence it is a time intensive process. To which Dinesh said if it involves so many steps, if not instantly, it should not exceed 1-2 days.

However, Mahesh’s mind was stuck on the question which Dinesh had raised “Why can’t we issue life insurance instantly”?

After returning, he had a long discussion around this with the Policy Issuance Head who appreciated his idea and took it forward to the senior management. The idea was well accepted by all and with this MaxLife embarked on a journey for issuing life insurance policies in 1-day. This project was sponsored by Chief Operating Officer (COO) of MaxLife.

While the journey was kicked off, but the reasons cited by Mahesh to Dinesh were the actual road blocks in achieving the vision of 1-day issuance and a lot of work was to be done.

With the help of brainstorming, team came up with possible causes of delayed issuance viz. movement of application in physical form, incomplete documentation and delay in closure of customer verification call.

Core team was formed and Maheshalong with the team started working on arriving at solutions for all possible causes.

One major roadblock was high discrepancy rate for customer’s identity and address proofs etc. To resolve this, MaxLife introduced online validation of PAN and Aadhar card.

Another roadblock was delay in completion of pre issuance verification call. There were many customers who were non contactable.Digital modes of verification were introduced, like resolving pre issuance verification though SMS (iSMS) and introducing the feature of inbound call, i.e. customer can call up MaxLife at his convenient time to complete pre issuance verification process.

One big roadblock was that the application used to travel physically. To address this, MaxLife brought in digital application submission workflow. This was another big step for faster issuance of application.

MaxLife was issuing 37% policies in one day that too with no structured approach.With the help of above initiatives, MaxLife was able to issue 63% more policies in 1 day.

This also helped in improving the customer loyalty index and MaxLife moved from 6^th position (2016-17) to 1^st Position (2017-18).

This initiative gave a boost to Mahesh’s morale. Now company is working on issuance of policies in 4 hours. This initiative also helped the sellers to spend more time on new business sourcing instead of spending time on resolving discrepancies.

There were three friends Tom, Dick and Harry. They lived in same street, identical houses and they all had the same problem. Each wanted to put up shelves in an alcove beside the fireplace. Not so difficult, you might think. But the standard shelves did not fit and this would mean some awkward measuring, cutting and fitting. As you might expect, each chose a different method and that forms the crux of our story.

Tom talked to a relative & her advice was that the measurement was extremely important. This seemed sensible enough to Tom, so he sought out a piece of equipment that would be up to this precise job. After a little effort, he came across Sigma Saws. That had assurance of max. 3 out of every million pieces would be the wrong. This looked perfect and he ordered for it. Dick searched the internet for the solution to his shelf cutting problem. Everyone was blogging about Japanese saws. He was drawn in by the popularity of these saws. He placed order for saw. Sometime later, the three friends were sitting drinking coffee at Harry’s house. The conversation turned, enough to the problem of the shelves. Tom puffed his chest out and stated proudly that he was training to become a master of Sigma Saws. “But where will you put your saw? Those things are huge.” asked Dick. Tom answered, “I am clearing the garage. I never used that place anyway. Before Harry could ask anything else, Dick launched speech about Japanese saws. “Did you know that Japanese saws are not like normal saws? There is a whole art to learn about these saws. I have signed up with a Japanese sensei, who will guide me through the process towards becoming a Japanese saw master. There is so much to learn, that this will take at least 18 months.

Tom and Dick turned to Harry as if to say, “What have you done?” Harry seemed a little sheepish, but said “Oh, I have not tried anything near as complicated as your systems. I remembered that I had a simple tool, called a hand-saw, in my toolbox. I was not sure how to use it or what to do about the shelves, but I found a book that showed me a simple step-wise process. I may not have the precision or the fancy tools, but my shelves are up.

Do you want to see them?”

The three friends went to other room, where, true to his word, Harry had installed the shelves. Tom and Dick inspected, trying to fault it. But the shelves looked good and were obviously strong enough to hold up all the things that Harry had put on them. Harry had solved his problem using a simple tool and a simple step-wise method. He turned to the other two, “I have a few other simple tools in my toolbox and I plan to use them to fix some other problems that I have around the house. Once I do that and move on to more complicated problems, I may need your Sigma Saws or your Japanese implements. But that will be some time in the future.

The project started with much fanfare!!

Month 1:

Time started ticking and as usual, devil was in details. Signed for a fixed price, budget started burning with little progress. Some of the keystakeholders in the customer side were imagining and were not helping the cause. Each of these new directions added to ambiguities. It was important for Brillio to focused on eventual impact that be focused on a tight process. Life moved on

Month 2:

Some clarity started emerging. Team had already started spending long hours in office, project manager trying to scope the features and changes, also wondering if we have a possibility to work from Mars, so that we get longer days. Delivery manager is helter-skelter between team and customer. Coach who is guiding the team on excellence is now convinced that this is not the way to work

Month 3:

Team was lagging way behind where they should be. Project manageras usual thought that the team can slog it out at the end. But coach believed this cannot be the case this time. Given that the team is lagging, any effort by coach to show case the chaos will be counterproductive and push the team to defensive approach. Thinking of this coach left the office. He was ignoring calls from his wife and on the way, he picked and blurted that he will be home in 15 minutes. But google map was showing 45 mins. Anyhow coach didn’t meet the commitment, but this was a good enough spark for the coach. He worked on this to show the future state given the progress. This projection made the leaders realize that the team is way behind and cannot be overcome by the slog over tactics.

Convergence came in. Action started flowing. They identified that a separate team must take up backlog work and the primary team should be focused on value creation features so that they can converge. It was tough times, but this timely intervention helped the team to keep the value stream intact and helped to reduce the spill overs.

Month 4:

Voila!! Backlogs started decline, burn ups increased, customer started seeing value sprint on sprint, from average of 16 hours of effort per day, teams started leaving by 6 PM!! Happy customer, Happy teams!! Happiest Project manager !!, Coach smiles as he watches on.

As a bunch of unknown and unfamiliar persons got together, the only thingthat we knew was that we were on a New Journey, unknown to the  Division. The employees in the plant murmured in hushed anticipation.  “Something new is about to happen”. In the ‘more than two decades’ no one had dared to step into the areas where we were about to tread, modifying the existing ways and traditional systems, rejuvenate the processes and infuse fresh thinking into the mundane process. “Do you really think this bunch of guys can do anything at all?”, many asked, mocking us more than really supporting us.

Indeed, over the past few years small incremental improvements had been done but flittered away over time with no significant impact. Market demanded not just being reliable but also cheap, sustainable and process-oriented. A pensive Head of Operations, Shekhar got into ahuddle with the unfamiliar faces under the guidance of Supratik at Jamshedpur and Rashmikant at Mumbai. “The stakes are High and we have a mountain to climb” he quipped. “Can you guys give us something different?” he asked the sombre group. Mail exchanges soon turned to frequent VC session as the project steps unfolded one by one. Indeed, we had to bring down the Flue Gas Exit Temperature, ensuring better combustion in the boiler and lesser atmospheric heat up. The challenge was huge.

The Team was enthusiastic right from the word GO and meticulously went through the process of the Define and Measure. It was here that with some small elementary improvements itself our target got closer. This gave us the necessary adrenalin in the dark forest of mystery. The cloud of uncertainty slowly started moving away and the sun seemed to shine brighter. Having gone half way, the Team now focussed on the root causes and interrelated factors that contributed to the High FGET. Each of the members from different backgrounds,Mohit, Santu, Tapas, Nitin and Mukesh put their head together to come up with the ultimate solutions. “Boss you will be surprised very soon” they told Namjoshi the Head of the Division.

Indeed, God helps those who help themselves as our shutdown was just when we needed it to be. One by one the screened ideas were implemented, and our refurbished baby was set to roll. As the first megawatt whizzed past into our customers premises, we all kept on looking at the Graphs of the multi display screens before us. We were on the verge of an important milestone. The whole division along with our Corporate Team waited and waited till it was established that we were well on our way to permanent glory, having established the system without any extra cost, just by the steely determination and the wonderful process we followed.

We implemented the solution to bring down the hot flue gas exit temperature from the furnace which resulted in reducing most vital parameter of Heat Rate and enhanced efficiency of the unit through the Six Sigma methodology. “Go and celebrate”, Namjoshi said breaking into a wide grin as he went through the before and after figures. We not only created history but also made a bunch of very good friends who stuck together during the hard trials and uncertain ups and downs of the process. The success became history and we were hailed as heroes in our own right.

One day as I was browsing through the TV channels casually I came across a program where Scientists were seen monitoring some of the endangered species,particularly the penguins.

Not only is the aerial tracking of the penguins difficult but even the traditional method of tracking adversely affected this animal.

By making use of high-quality satellite imagery,Scientists have been monitoring the travels of king Penguin groups and identified an additional ten colonies of penguins previously unknown to the conservationists.

Einstein is quoted as having said that if he had one hour to save the world,he would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only five minutes finding the solution.This observation triggered our understanding of the problems.

It was on one summer afternoon, we were in a monthly business review with the MD and the Departmental Heads.Weather inside the boardroom was as hot as it seemed outside. I still remember Boss coming out of the room with an anxious face.

We were hesitant to ask him about what had actually happened in the review. Rohit,the new management trainee couldn’t resist himself.He said,"Boss,Is everything ok? Why do you look so worried?" Mukesh replied,”Team,we are failing to manage performances of our TPAs,it is having an unfavorable impact on our toplines, customers are unhappy.Don’t you think this is a sign of worry?”

Next day,we met to discuss the problems ,reviewed the existing status of 3-key metrics of medical process-Customer TAT,Reports TAT & Quality of Medical Reports.All were showing a downward trend.Later,we did brainstorming followed by affinity exercise to broadly identify key-focus areas.

"Take a chill-pill guys! It won’t happen overnight.Let’s go and have some fresh air”Guess who said this?None other than Rohit.His words prompted us to look at the time.It was 10:30pm.With the weather being sultry all of us opted for a cup of fresh homemade icecream in a café near Bandra and headed towards our respective destinations.

In next one month we had almost completed 60 small improvement projects. However,to our utter dismay the monthly review revealed a negligible improvement in the graph.

That evening Mukesh again summoned a meeting and said,“Team,lets partner with Business &Service Excellence team and analyze the root causes of each metrics”

This led us to initiate RCA(root cause analysis)of 3-keymetrics for identifying root-causes.

Factors like manual activities,delays in customer connect & customers not willing to visit the DCs(Diagnostic centre)were impacting CustomerTAT.

Factors contributing to the Delay in ReportsTAT were manual upload of medical reports,user-error while indexing,unavailability of scanning centres.

Image-viewer issue, Manual MIS,Delay in report visibility were adversely affecting Quality of Medical Reports.

In a rather unconventional approach,we thought of leveraging technology to address these issues and implemented automated self-servicing tool, automated registration process(using BOTs)to improve customer-connect. Introduced video medical examination @home so that customers don’t visit the centre.

Manual reports upload was eliminated through Robotics Process Automation thus reducing user-dependence &saving time.Implemented Automated Indexing tool and paperless flow to reduce Reports TAT.

Introduced OnlinePDF tool,Automated Dashboard(MIS) & Flodox access(for users) to improve Quality of reports.

In the subsequent months we witnessed a considerable improvement in the key-metrics. Rework and overtime got reduced. At floor-level we implemented approximately 145-small improvement initiatives(Kaizen).Entire process resulted in improved cross-functional collaboration and overall team development.

On a warm sunny summer afternoon, Sabu, our strongest superhero, was sitting in a verandah, extremely depressed. Deeply preoccupied in his thoughts, he didn't notice Chacha Choudhary walking upto him. Sabu was generally known for his jovial, exuberant nature and his love for Chacha Choudhary was paramount. When Sabu didn't exhibit his regular jolly greet to Cha-cha Choudhary on his arrival, a concerned Chacha Choudhary enquired about Sabu's depressed mood.

Chacha Choudhary asked ‘Kya baat hai Sabu? Aaj ukhada ukhada lag raha hai!”

Sabu opened up to him and shared his concern about the sudden and steep rise in the price of the special wheat. Sabu being a Pehelwan consumed 40 Special wheat rotis made by Chachi everyday. He was extremely worried because unless he consumed those 40 wheat rotis made by Chachi, he would lose his strength without which it would be impossible for him to help Chacha Choudhary fight the goons and he didn't have enough money to buy so much wheat.

On hearing the problem, Chacha Choudhary, whose mind worked faster than a computer, immediately made a plan. He went around with Sabu looking for alternatives of wheat but with equivalent nutrients that would suffice Sabu's needs, keep him strong as well as would be affordable enough to satisfy his massive need of food. Chacha and team collected samples of all the crop type he saw and came back home with truck load of crop types and nutrient chart. Seeing this, Chachi struck the head of Sabu saying “Itne tarah ki roti main nahi bana paungi!”

Understanding the condition and time it will take to try all possible roti combination, Chacha started to think for an alternative. He saw a child doing mathematics on abacus where he was struck with an idea. He used abacus theory to successfully create a model using the flour type and amount used for the desired quality of roti. He tried with a combination of barley, wheat and soya bean on the abacus. Then Chachi recreated the same roti using the same proportion of grains. Seeing the uncanny similarity to what the model had predicted, Chacha made some changes to the abacus and was successfully able to find alternative ingredient combination for rotis which was affordable and could feed the furnace of Sabu. Now, Sabu could decide what to add in his flour to fill his appetite without relying on the wheat roti. The alternative grains satisfied Sabu's nutrient requirements in an affordable price.

Once again Chacha Choudhary proved himself to be the smartest man on earth. Accompanied by the strongest Man, Sabu, and the dedicated Chachi they became an unbeatable trio.

In the world of Max Life, is a magnificent dynasty (Agency Channel), led by a powerful king, who possess the “Magical Spell” (AWS), that transforms his soldiers (Agent Advisors), into one of the most superior, and successful armies, that is responsible to secure the financial future of the population through sale of insurance plans.

The magical spell comprises of 3 powerful ingredients; Discipline, Skilling and Technology that lead to higher Productivity and Retention. To receive this spell, the soldiers need to fulfill the ‘Criteria’, which convert them into a ‘Qualifier’, who delivers better results.

Soldiers must ensure to consume regular dosage of the spell given by their leaders and trainers, by visiting the base camps (offices) of the dynasty spread across 203 cities, divided in 6 provinces (zones).

For soldiers, the benefits include; personal grooming, skill enhancement, avenues for long term career in the strongest armies and additional earnings on being a qualifier, while for the dynasty, the benefits include; establishing superior army that aspires to deliver quality advise, and serves the dynasty for a lifetime, to maximize growth and revenue.

At the onset of financial year 2017-18, Rajguru and Pitama called the King and said, “Son, we are relying on your magical spell, which is a key strategic pillar to drive the steep revenue of Rs.700+cr. required from your dynasty this year. Soldiers, who consume the spell and become qualifiers, contribute 50% towards the revenue generated by your dynasty. However, the current productivity of your qualifying soldiers is Rs.79k. Son, time has come to improve the power of the spell, for improved productivity inorder to achieve our goal.

The King called the Mahamantri and Tenali Rama, his trusted men and said, “I am giving you both a critical responsibility of improving the per qualified soldier productivity to 1Lac, go and find the success secret to improve the magical spell”.

Mahamantri and Tenali Rama formed a team of ministers from all six provinces. This team of experts studied various parameters impacting the power of the magical spell like, attendance at the base camps, sales meeting done, soldier demographics. Team also visited base camps to conduct ethnography.

On completion of the study, a detailed report of the impacting causes was prepared, and jointly the team identified ‘Success Secrets’ (solutions) to enhance the magical spell thereby improve productivity. The team led by Tenali Rama, under guidance of Mahamantri worked hard and implemented solutions across the dynasty.

The relentless efforts improved productivity from 79k to 1.12Lac; 32k lift per qualifying soldier. As a result, the dynasty contributed Rs.66.55cr. incremental revenue and 50% growth in productivity of the army.

Control measures helped sustain performance, and productivity touched 1.20Lac, resulting in 118cr. accrued benefit by financial year end.

The phenomenal results achieved by the team were shared with the King, Rajguru and Pitama. They were extremely delighted and rewarded the team with the highest honor, given to those who deliver quality work towards the dynasty growth.

The King felt immense pride on seeing his qualified soldiers’ rise to new heights, keeping alive the glory of the ‘Magnificent Dynasty’ and the ‘Magical Spell’..!!

Cast

• Rajguru and Pitama: Project Selection Committee
• King: Sponsor (Head of Agency)
• Mahamantri: Champion
• Tenali Rama: Blackbelt
• Ministers: Project Team

Piramal Enterprises Limited was requested by a Big Pharma Customer with a proposal for manufacturing a Compound (A) in quantities of 5 Kg followed by a 100 Kg. The team submitted the proposal based on previous experience gained during PoC (Proof of Concept) sample preparation. Piramal Ennore site team got the project to manufacture this critical compound. Previously there were about six stages of this product and overall yield was very low (X %).

It was 9’o clock in the morning when the initial discussion was planned. Site Head started briefing about the project and then turned to the team for something more important-

“Is it possible to choose any shorter synthetic route?”

“Is it possible to optimize the manufacturing friendly reagents for all the conversions?”

“Why can’t we improve the overall yield for the existing route?”

“Why can’t we reduce the consumption of high cost contributing reagents?”

Challenged the Site Head.

Team was in dilemma on how could such a feat be accomplished, the day had just begun. While all the members were trying to find the ideas, a strong voice was raised by R&D team who proposed some points for all the questions raised by the Site Head. R&D Head accepted the proposal and started deriving an action plan with team.

Site Management team wanted to explore the plan, it was suggested to work on Process Development to reduce number of stages which can add additional revenue to the site. During this project, it was important to keep in mind that development activity should not impact project deliverables.

From that day onwards, cross functional team worked around the clock for the task. They formed the design for the experiments and executed lot of runs, explored some alternate reagents. Exactly after six weeks, R&D Head received a call,

“Boss! We made it, Please check your inbox quickly” said the R&D Manager with utter joy.

Finally, all the challenging (not easily scalable at commercial scale) reaction conditions were tuned/optimized as per commercial scale requirement and the consumption of high cost contributing reagents was also reduced (optimized) in lab and then successfully executed in plant. Days were moving faster and then arrived the review. Everyone was looking at Data Analyst for yield numbers.

“Fantastic! Our efforts have paid off!” announced the Site Head.

A remarkable improvement of 27% from the baseline was recorded. The new yield was now (X + 27%). This was a very proud & satisfactory moment for the whole team; all these targets were achieved without affecting the quality, safety and deliverables. Leadership was very happy to see that the team thinks beyond the boundaries and Piramal again created a happy & delighted customer.