Quality Fables Competition

Once upon a time in a very beautiful forest lived an independent inventive lion. He was very honest and generous. The royal lead used to sit with his team, took their views to unravel any trouble. Everything was running fine until one day a serious problem arose. There was a huge fish pond in their kingdom. Everyday ten fishes were found missing. It was un-natural. “Where are our fishes going?” said the small squirrel. The worried lion called all the animals for a summit. Everyone came nervous. What will we do? What is the lion thinking? Will all our fishes get vanished like this? Many questions they had in mind. “The kingdom needs our help, we need to save all. We need to find a solution together. We will fight, we will win“, asserted the king. Everyone applauded and felt a new ray of hope. “Yes! Together we can,” they cheered. The lion now made a small team of the best specially dedicated to fight for this new challenge. They worked day and night to find out every small root of their problem. One day while working they saw that a huge murder of black crows rushed to the pond picked up few small fishes and flew away like the wind. This continued to happen every day. The number of fishes were getting reduced. It was very challenging for them to curb this. They went to meet the fish queen. She said that every day these big ugly crows fly away with the fishes. The baby fishes are so scared that they even stopped playing. That night everyone slept anxious in the forest. “Can’t we fight with the ugly crow gang? What can we do?” Said the deer in the meeting next day. The smart deer exclaimed, “Why don’t we scare them off?” .The squirrel replied, “That’s a great idea! But, how? They are so huge. ” The sparrow team gave an excellent impression, they planned to build a small statue made of twigs and placed it on the shore and waited for the next day. Everyone was nervous to see if it would work. Finally, the wait was over and the D day arrived. The gang of crows arrived. Their leader came near the statue, he didn’t look at it at first. He looked around and suddenly when he saw the gigantic twig headed monster placed by the lion team, he screamed all his life out. The group of horrified black beasts flew away like a storm. The animals were very happy to see their plan succeed. The lion king was very pleased by his team. The emperor applauded the king and his team and the news of victory spread all over the dynasty. The emperor helped to make an even bigger twig head and it was kept placed permanently. The fishes danced in joy. The crows never came back. Everyone was happy as the most difficult problem was solved by the lion team. They lived happily ever after.

A real estate eCommerce giant from US, started with Brillio by outsourcing a small project with just 5 members.  Now the engagement has grown to a thriving 150+ member team.  This relationship had equal share of aha moments and challenges. 

A new CEO took charge and was gearing up for biggest digital transformation ever.  They were sure that Brillio could be an ideal partner but were also clear that Brillio should up their game as well. Customer was tightening the process of making every digital investment prioritized vis-à-vis its value and results. Expectations from us were growing day by day and so were the challenges.  More stakeholders were showing interest with multiplicity of perspectives.

Delivering right, on time with good quality did not seem to suffice as right measures to complement the progress towards the transformation.  How can we quantify the overall engagement maturing over time and how, we as a strategic partner were delivering business value consistently?

In today’s world, value is perceived and is also the ability to have a foresight.  This made us foray into measuring the unobvious.   What are the dimensions that value to customer hinges on?  What are the ground behaviours and levers that can be impacted to drive this value?  Can we consolidate these into an index?   GQM helped us narrow down to measure those unobvious.  Here are the key questions that helped unearth the unobvious.

• Are we delivering faster to end user? The standard velocity metric provides how fast I close. The unobvious is how fast the user gets it.   Flip the problem
• How much technological waste does my development generate? Knowing and creating visibility of the unobvious waste helps it getting removed
• Am I preparing for the future? To be specific, how much of my work is spent on AI and Blockchain blueprints in our applications?
• How transparent is my process? How do I indicate where I am and how much lag?
• People are the cornerstone. How is my overall skill index moving? Does this visibility assure in spurring the transformation to come?
• How well am I aligned to customer stake holders? What are the points of friction?

These questions led to some 40% of metrics being new that helped collectively indicate the progress towards transformation. Today, the customer can see where we stand, what we deliver and what’s coming and what are the impediments. These gave the platform to show how we are turning the tides and transforming customer business.

The enthusiastic project team have their eyes on the white board and once the project review is over, he smiles. Mr. Avinash Ray, Founder Chairman of the Global School Foundation is very clear about his vision to set up the first-of-its-kind Green Campus complemented with world class technology in Bengaluru, India. The objective is to facilitate seamless education with SMART technology in a pollution-free, calm and peaceful ambience away from the city limits.

All the 4 members exchange a sigh of relief because Mr. Ray’s smile means that he has finalized the location for the proposed new GIIS SMART Green Campus, the very first-of-its-kind International School for delivering global learning in the midst of a sprawling greenery. Mr. Ray says,’ The trees are the most trusted guardians of Nature and nurturing them along with our students creates a healthy and mindful sanctuary of knowledge, giving them access to world-class learning tools and free lifelong friendship with Nature.’

Mr. Vinoth and Mr. Navneet, from this project fly to Bangalore to supervise and get the plan into action. The plot survey helps them a lot to understand that the place boasts of more than 50 special herbs and shrubs with natural medicinal benefits as such. With the project plan already approved, the whole concept of the project was based on one big aspect – to retain flora and fauna as it appears. In fact, when the objective is to build a magnificent eco-friendly educational institution, Mr. Ray is very particular that no tree be crucified, and to make use of 100% of the green area in harnessing the most beautiful learning experience for every student.

The GIIS Smart Campus is ideally located away from the hustle and bustle of the city in a calm and serene address of Bannerghatta. Mr. Navneet and Mr. Vinoth - the team in Bangalore monitor the progress closely with the expert advice from the Principal – Dr. Ashima Mohan. She says, ‘The green breakthrough here emphasizes on fresh oxygen inflow gives way to developing very good ventilation facilities and the need for natural skylight inside the school has redefined the creative ideas in architecture in the corridors and the classrooms. The use of SMART technology in administration and teaching complements with the earthy colours of the interiors’.

Mr. Avinash Ray, the Chairman takes a tour of the campus on the day of inauguration, with immense joy of satisfaction. He stops by the medicinal garden, and feels that this and the huge trees guarding the campus definitely has a majestic role to complement the SMART journey of GIIS as an ace education enabler. Call it a good sign, it starts raining. He smiles to his team, ‘A green breakthrough in global learning at GIIS Bannerghatta is ready to nurture the perception of schooling with Nature’.

It was the time of Ganapati festival, entire office looked bright & colourful. Around 2 pm in the afternoon the commercial executive had just returned from lunch. He refreshed his email, there were six new messages and one caught his immediate attention. He looked disturbed and also saw a waving hand from his boss out of concern, the recently joined Head of Commercial and Logistics.

The email was from Director General of Foreign Trade of India.

“This is surprising, a duty liability of XX Lacs on 10 Advance licenses? This is quite a lot, what made this happen. I see it hitting our Budget.” exclaimed the boss with sheer concern.

“Sir, I am so sorry. There are more than 100 Licenses to manage and delivery site fell short of exports in these 10.” Executive replied in a nervous tone.

*For Piramal to prevent Duty payments on their Raw Material imports, an export of proportional quantity of finished goods was required. It was managed through Advance Licenses. Executive was responsible to manage this and prevent duty payments. If the exports fall short, a duty liability would be incurred. *

“We can’t let this happen again, Sites must get an intimation well in advance. There has to be a better way to manage it”. The Commercial head looked well determined to arrest the situation. The overall Duty Payments for past 5 years was quite high at around 6% of the total duty forgone, however the target was to keep it much below 1% considering the in-built wastage involved in the manufacturing process.

“Let us engage with our Process improvement team” added the Head Commercial.

The Operational Excellence (OE) team conducted the study of entire process from Lean perspective. Lot of Manual activities, duplications/NVAs were identified, which could be automated.

ECRS approach was deployed to generate ideas.

“Can we build a rock-solid tool which can give live status of all the licenses as and when there is an export or import? It should track & compare all Licenses and possible future liability. No, duplicate entries, no manual calculations!” Quoted the commercial Head. Expectations were set so high!

The task was challenging.

“We can try and develop a Macro Enabled program, it can automate transactions, do dynamic calculations and tracking.” suggested the Operational Excellence person. He had some background in coding but this was an interesting & complex challenge before him.

Days were passing and the lines of Code were increasing along with the expectations.

Almost after 3.5 months of designing, testing and feedback, there were only few pieces left to tackle. The question on how to crack them, had overly occupied OE member’s mind. He had to go into some thorough research for this.

Ultimately after one week, the OE member met with them and asked the executive to try it now.

“Woah!! Amazing”. The executive jumped with joy. “This feels like magic. Only one click and we can see everything!”

“Fantastic! We finally did it.” Commercial Head expressed cheerfully.

The executive’s monthly handling time was reduced by 85%. The duty payments were sustained below 1%, pertaining to a saving impact of 275 Lacs for the year.

The success story didn’t stop here, the project also became the Global Winner of prestigious Chairman’s Award in Service effectiveness category, with an enticing cash prize!

After all it was an innovative tool for the industry, easily replicable as well as self-sustainable.

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”.

Once upon a time, there was a kingdom Raghupur ruled by king Harshvardhana. When Harshvardhana was child, famine stuck Raghupur and hundreds of people died. When Harshvardhana was crowned, he initiated slew of activities for emergency preparedness and response. Agriculture and trade was given high priority. New palace was constructed with huge cellars, silos and armory. He issued a decree to store 25% of grains produced in a year in these cellars and silos, along with thousands of water and oil drums. A deep water channel was constructed around palace as defense and for storing water.

Ravindra, neighboring ruler, envious of Raghupur’s growing prosperity, attacked and besieged the palace. Harshvardhana gave shelter to common people and directed his chief minister to survey cellars, silos and armory to draw retrieval plan for consumption.

Chief Minister reported back in a gloomy tone - “An army of rodents and pest, along with seepage from water channel, have destroyed an estimated 70% stored grains. Gunny bags are stacked vertically up to 10 meters. Unfortunately, some bags fell on soldiers during survey and 2 of them died. Weapons and ammunition kept in armory have either rusted or become water-soaked. Some Oil drums have leaked and oil has find its way to water channel. I fear we may not survive for even 3 months”.

Harshvardhana was dismayed. He tried to keep it secret, however, it spread like wildfire. Soldiers got demotivated, ready to accept defeat. Sheltered people panicked.

But, the Almighty had different plans. Ravindra died after falling from horse and his leaderless army retreated. Harshvardhana thanked his stars and invited suggestions from his court.

A Japanese traveler, Isaaki, stood up and spoke - “In my country, housekeeping and safety are paramount. All the soldiers and courtiers are trained and engaged in problem-solving. Today, we have a huge problem bogging us down – an unsustainable defense mechanism. We must all come together as a team and solve it. I advice following logical sequence of 5 steps – it is nothing new, Just a Common Sense Approach.

1) Removing unwanted items/lost grains/rusted armory/broken drums
2) Allocating designed place for every item and keeping that item in that place only
3) Cleaning through inspection for any rodents, seepages, leakages, etc.
These 3 steps are nothing but housekeeping – we use muscle power. But, Can we use brain power to eliminate or reduce the need for housekeeping through problem solving?. It leads to Step 4.
4) Identifying projects, forming teams, analyzing issues, finding causes and implementing remedial actions

5) Finally, Maintaining discipline for sustaining remedial actions".

Harshvardhana readily accepted the wisdom of Isaaki and appointed him the facilitator. Harshvadhana himself led weekly reviews and provided all the financial and human resources.

Within few months, many problems were resolved – no more rodents, seepages, leakages and rusting. One of the teams innovated safe vertical stacking structure. Other initiatives taken were labelling, traceability, FIFO system, obsolescence and preservation system, etc. All teams were rewarded. The palace regained its true defense mechanism. 

“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.

Being a famous steel company, we work with a large number of vendors.With over 19 locations around the country, our company works with more than 30,000 vendors. The corporate playing field that our organization represents isakin to the battlefield of Maya that the Hindu scriptures refer to the material world as. Whenever a vendor wanted to collect his due payment from us, he would first have to reach one of our steel plants, submit an inquiry at the vendor desk of the plant and wait for the finance team to revert back with the update. Communication was solely based on word of mouth messages and there was no way in which a vendor could track the progress of his payments.  

This process of payment collection can be parasitic for an organization, especially when there are 6 lac invoices to be processed each year and about INR 50 crores traveling between hands on a daily basis. In this case, without a proper system to track invoices, as well as a lack of unique tracking ID for vendors, the management of payments was extremely difficult. Our plants, where truckloads of raw material were a common sight, now became a hub for “truckloads” of angry and confused phone calls and emails.  

In Hindu mythology, karma is the word that denotes the sum total of all the actions that a soul has performed during its time in the physical world. Depending on the actions that you do in this world, your next life will be determined, as a natural consequence for the decisions you make. Our karma in this case, was what one could call “bad karma”. For us, the future did not look so bright and any sort of organizational progress in its true sense seemed out of reach.  

This is when we understood that we would need to look for a solution outside the boundaries of the ordinary. Instead of focusing on developing our on-field operations, we decided to transcend the material world and use the powers of the digital realm to solve our issues. By building a digital platform for our vendors, we were able to provide them a customized and extremely intuitive interface which could be used to check invoice status at each stage of the process.In an attempt to reduce the number of calls and inquiries that we were receiving, the digital portal was equipped with call recording and monitoring systems. The portal also allowed us to implement a ticketing tool that would help vendors maintain a track of their queries and the responses that they get. The digital platform also allowed us to strengthen our internal follow-up system, allowing us to include crucial stakeholders as liaisonswithin the process.  

In the end, with a 22.9% decrease in monthly vendor queries, we had just escaped the unending cycle of death and rebirth that most companies experience, consistently having to face the same issues due to a lack of innovative solutions.