Quality Fables Competition 2018

It was January of 2018 and the talks for making strategy for FY19 were on. Everybody was happy with the current performance level they were achieving. However, looking at the current market scenarios, coming financial year was supposed to be more challenging for Pharma business.

Then arrived the Strategy Meet 2019, team was cherishing their achievements so far however the eyes were set on The President of Manufacturing, who is always passionate about new challenges.

“This year’s numbers are coming up pretty well. But, what yield number are you going to hit next year?” asked the President looking at the Site Head.

“Sir, Most of our yields are already in 90’s but we can try to attain some incremental numbers” responded the Site Head, with a confident smile.

“Since you’ve made an impressive change in the yield this year, I would like you to go 3% higher this time, after all, we are committed to improve on costs under our Cost Leadership Initiative too.” proposed the President.

“I know it’s a challenging task. However, this API Product A contributes significantly to the site revenue”

President further added.

“All right sir! We will give our best shot in this.” Site Head accepted the challenge. He knew it was quite an uphill task however he had confidence on his team.

The Site Head formed a cross functional team, the approach was chalked out & responsibilities were assigned. Last financial year batches were mapped for yields. Batches having higher yield as well as lower yield were studied for different parameters using Pareto, DOE & various other quality tools.

It took 4 brainstorming & review sessions for the team to derive a clear cut action plan. It was time to start implementation.

The days were moving & the implementation too. However, the yield number improved only marginally.

“Team, I think we need to do something more. What areas are we missing on?” asked the Site Head in quarterly review.

“Sir, there are certain fluctuation in vacuum & pH which we should control through automation” answered one team member.

“Okay! Let’s explore this area, but it should be a Low Cost automation.” responded the Site Head.

The Area Effectiveness Team of that block involving the shop floor employees and managers, came up with three best ideas related to Low Cost automation. It had strengthened the implementation plan further.

During the second quarterly review, the numbers were awaited & people were eager to see how they did.

“Brilliant! We have got 4.01% against the 3% target. We finally did it, Fantastic work!” announced the Site Head with joy.

Soon, during the next Reach Out session, where all the Site leaders had joined -

“Congratulations Team Digwal, Well Done! This is a great example of your commitment towards improvement. This definitely calls for a celebration.”  Appreciated the President.

The team not only achieved the target but also was sustaining the same for all batches in the monthly report.

“We are among leading Surface Condenser suppliers. How dare they could say that our designs are inferior?” yelled Mr. Desai, our Design head. The latest demand by one international customer asking for an improved Condenser design with around 50% lower pressure drop than our existing design was enough to cause stir. “This is the current requirement in international market. Customer signaled to improve our design to meet his requirement and take the order.” clarified Mr. Das, our Marketing head. After becoming segment leader in domestic market, this was our biggest opportunity to gain foothold into international market.

“Let us give them what they want. Mr. Desai, I want you to check our design and find out a way to improve it to meet specifications. Form a team of experts from various departments and come out with the solution” Mr. Mehta, our business head declared.

A multidisciplinary team was formed including experts from design, R&D, manufacturing, quality and marketing. Everyone was thinking how on the Earth can we improve an already refined design? Brainstorming session was conducted to arrive at some way forward, but without any avail. “This is going nowhere. We need to do fluid flow analysis and find out exact areas causing higher pressure drop along steam flow path.” suggested one of our experienced R&D veterans. Everybody liked this suggestion. R&D team carried out fluid flow analysis and found that indeed, there were few areas along the steam flow path which were contributing the most to the pressure drop. In these areas, the structural parts used for internal support and some functional components were obstructing the flow.

Despite knowing exact root cause, our progress had again hit a roadblock. The reason being, those structural components were essential parts of the equipment. “How can we reduce the blockage in the steam path without compromising the strength of structure and function?” a junior design engineer phrased everybody’s concern.

Few days went by and suddenly, one day morning, our Design head called for an urgent meeting. He was looking very excited. “Today morning, I was working in my garden thinking about our peculiar problem. I saw a honeybee hive and it occurred to me that this could be solution to our problem” Mr. Desai told enthusiastically. “I cannot think of any relation between honeybee hive and our Condenser”, Mr. Das echoed exact thought in everybody’s mind. “Relation is there. The hive has a unique character allowing maximum space for bees and yet it’s strong enough. Don’t we want the same in our Condenser?” Mr. Desai explained.

This was an excellent idea and was discussed in depth by team for its merits and demerits and fine-tuned based on the suggestions from manufacturing experts. Design team came out with the modified design of internals for target areas. R&D team carried out fluid flow and structural evaluations.

Results were astonishing. The pressure drop in the steam flow path reduced by around 90% as against targeted 50% compared to the earlier design, at the same time providing better structural integrity. Our international customer analyzed and accepted the modified proposal and we bagged the prestigious order. This development placed us among very few suppliers worldwide, who have capability to provide such designs. It was decided to use modified design in all future Condenser orders.

It was mid-May-2014. Mumbai was burning in the unbearable strong summer. Sustainable growth and greener autofuels were the catch phase of the time. One mega project in Mumbai Refinery(MR) was at its peak.

The Director(Refineries)D(R) & ED(MR) was taking a round of the refinery. Suddenly, while going through the diesel producing units, D(R)asked, “Am sure government would bring in BSIV autofuels into the country anytime in near future. Mr. ED, can you take expeditious steps to ensure we are able to produce greener fuel immediately when required?”. Following the same, the project team lead by GM(Projects), commenced the pre-project activity in Jun-2014. The anticipation was so true, Government of India announced the Autofuel policy in Jan-2015 directing that 100% BSIV autofuel are to be supplied across nation.  

An interdisciplinary taskforce was formed to find answer to the biggest question, where to fit in such a massive 2.6 MMTPA(million-metric-tons-per-day) DHT in space constrained MR?The taskforce identified a tank farm containing five operating hydrocarbontankscatering as product tanks and intermediate buffer tanks, without which operating units would not be able to carry on day to day operations, as the best fit place. Under normal circumstances no one would take the risk of dismantling the same. But DHT was an exception. In a consensus meeting, joint decision was taken and ED exclaimed, “This is just the beginning. We have to do everything in an exceptional way like this to not only succeed in the project but create an industry benchmark”.

Though DHT projects of similar nature took around 36to44 months from zero-date in other Indian refineries, the BPCL Board gave a stringent target of only 25 months.

DHT project apart from installation of Diesel Hydrotreatment unit, also included installation of utilities & offsite facilities, revamp of existing CDU-3, HGU, SRU, SWS etc. units to support DHT operation.

Back at a project meeting, ED said, “We have to complete in much less than 25 months if we want to make some good extra bottomline”. The project team immediately took on the meticulous task and started microplanning and execution hand in hand.

During the start of the activities, GM asked, “Since the new team hails from multidisciplinary streams, it is important that the team efforts are aligned. How do we do it?”

The planning chief suggested “Sir, let’s go for a Visionary & Leadership Program for BPCL project team & consultant’s representatives and let them come out with a shared vision and team operating principles to be followed throughout the project”.

A two day brainstorming session was organized away from the hustle & bustle of refinery at Lonavala. The team came out with many ideas and plans to execute and ensure adherence to stringent timelines. One of the significant non-technical outcomes was installation of reverse clock in all the team-member’s computer to remind of the residual time available.

With meticulous project management & execution, on bright sunny day of 15-March-2017, the project was mechanically completed in just 19 months i.e. 6 months ahead of schedule. The unit was commissioned on 27-June-2017 as against a target of Dec-2017 i.e. 187 days ahead of schedule thus contributing additional benefit of Rs. 561 crore(3cr/day).

After the closeout, the vendors were felicitated for their support and a book capturing the lessons learnt published for the budding project managers of the organization.

Khattackkkkkkkk!! A loud slap landed on my surprised back.

I shouted, “Maa, whats wrong with you? It hurts!”

With equal irritation she replied, “What is wrong with you? Why are you wasting so much food?”

She pointed at the leftover cabbage, chilies and some cardamoms I had kept at the side of my plate.

“Its waste” I said. “Who eats that”.

This time with a patient tone she replied, “Son, food is precious. The food you called waste is completely edible, you just need to change your taste to ensure that you complete your food in the plate.”

To drive her point she told me the story of her workplace Vedanta Limited in Goa.

“Earlier we used to dispose Blast furnace dust which is not usable for them and which is called waste which was having hidden energy in it, we searched alternative to reduce the monthly spend from our pocket , Therefore, we decided to adapt and innovate. We analysed our process, reviewed our customer quality requirements, we brainstormed, we changed the way we operate our machines process thus we were able to use the waste (hidden energy) converted in to useful fuel which was considered ‘bad’ till now.”

I was impressed. I decided to finish the food I had left.

Mom said, “ Son, remember, nothing given by nature is waste. It is for us to find the right process and means to fully utilize it”.

Winner - Quality Fables Competition 2018

As the Lady was full of wisdom, the children used to ask a lot of questions to her, all of them will ask different questions at the same time, every child was keen to know the answer to his question, as a result, the atmosphere used to turn out into a chaos and very few lucky ones will have their answers.

The Grandma was really worried that she was not able to help the children, and share her wisdom with them effectively, a solution was urgently required, otherwise the children were losing out on learning, and there was a strong possibility that, she will also lose out on them. She discussed with Village seniors also, for their support and commitment for funds.

She wanted to increase, the number of questions handled per day, so that the response time comes down and more children can be satisfied by her answers. Next day onwards Grandma started collecting data.

To get more organized, she asked every child, to first write their questions on a piece of paper and put them all in a jar. Then she started taking out one paper at a time, and answer it, which all the children will attentively listen. Then she will ask the children to make a decorative chart paper, on which they will write some of the important questions of the day and their answer, and paste it on the wall of the temple compound for other children to see, who missed to come that day. She found that the number of questions answered per day have now gone up.

Still from the data collected she found that volume of question coming daily was much higher than the time available to answer them, so she identified some children who were hearing to her answers from long time now and had become smart learners. She gave names to these children as “Web_Portal”, “Mobile_app”, “sms_update” and “chat_bot”. She gave them the responsibility to filter out the questions that they can handle. This way, she made her time available for the new questions that were not covered by these four. She asked another two children to collect and allocate the questions, she called these children by the name of “software” and “skill Mapping”.

Further Grandma categorized the questions, subject wise and proactively informed the schools of the locality to make improvements in their curriculum, to address the children needs.

After making these changes, she found that, there is a reduction in the total questions being asked each day and also in the number of questions left unanswered. She started making a list of questions left unanswered, so that she can answer them on the next day. Now she was able to cater to much higher number of children with very few direct question coming to her.

In the spare time that she generated, she started sharpening hew wisdom further, and in order to extend her services in the neighboring villages as well, she started training selected grandma’s there to replicate her success story.

The Name of our Beloved Grandma was GBS_Vendor_Support_Cell