Partners Value the Skills Each Brings to the Table
eClerx Services

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”?

Peels and Meals
Sample with Video

Once upon a time officers had separate canteen facilities to that of workers. Two decades ago the Earthmoving Equipment plant of a major auto unit in South India was no exception. A large workers’ canteen was operational, on a three shift basis, on the ground floor and a neat compact officers’ mess was designed for the floor above. The latter was also the regular venue for entertaining national and international visitors.

So what was the problem? The staircase leading to the officers’ mess was a challenge for the nasal system of the sophisticated visitors! Polite handkerchiefs partially came to the rescue. Why? The garbage containers were placed under the staircase and they chronically overfl owed! Quality was certainly not a way of life in the vicinity of the canteen.

The new President of the plant, who was a quality enthusiast, questioned the volume and cost of garbage. A key piece of information was that the local municipality refused to shift all the garbage, resulting in the daily rental of private dump trucks. These dump trucks cost the plant Rs 7,000 per day. Over and above this was the cost of wasted food. Collectively, we refer to this as Cost Of Poor Quality (COPQ).

A management team was appointed by the President to solve the problem.

In order to understand the situation the team set up two types of bins; one for avoidable waste (such as cooked food) and the other for unavoidable waste (such as peels and packaging). Avoidable waste accounted for two-thirds of the total canteen waste.

The team then embarked on a diagnostic journey, interviewing workers at meal time (remember, the plant worked three shifts). Here is a fl avour of responses to the question “Why do you waste food?”

“We are in South India and you serve us North Indian food.”

“The meal break is only 30 minutes, and the lines are too long. So I pile up food.”

“The ladles are too large. I could do with smaller servings.”

“The ‘thalis’ are much too large. So I pile up food.”

The remedial actions involved:
1. Inviting a team of wives, by rotation, to set the menu and supervise the same.
2. Scrapping the large ladles and ‘thalis’, and replacing them with smaller ones.
3. Investing the saved COPQ into worker welfare.

The workers canteen now doubles up as a recreation club with facilities for table tennis and carom. The walls are sparkling white and adorned with paintings done by the children of the workers. In fact they even published a calendar that showcased 12 of the best of these paintings.

Predict like Google Maps !!
Brillio Technologies PVT LTD
A high-profile customer in automotive segment is gearing up for its major digital transformation. Their ambitious plans were to reach their customers digitally. Naturally such an ambitious and high visibility project is also accompanied by high expectation, tight deadlines and complexities. It was a celebration at Brillio when our customer chose Brillio to develop the solution for them. Great so far.

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.

Project Ratnadoot
Amol Kulkarni

Winner - Quality Fables Competition 2020 for Individuals

Once upon a time there was a district named Sansanipur with 30 villages,which had sizeable population of farmers.Major source of income used to come through supplying vegetables.The villagers use to carry the supply to district markets every 15 days using bullock carts.The distances between villages and the district market was approximately 60kms.Before sending it to district market the vegetable stock had to be examined by competent authority named Sukhilala.This also lead to delay in starting their journey to market.Sukhilala used to take Lagaan for the rejected lot from the village farmers as he used to enjoy monopoly and was appointed by District Collector for this work.The saddest part was one had to travel 15 Kms to reach Sukhilala and get their vegetables inspected.

In one of the Village Panchayat Samiti meeting of Vistarpur,all the village farmers went to the Chacha Chaudhary,who was the mukhiya of Village and voiced out their dastaan.Mukhiya’s Daughter Ratna,who was a Final year student in Agricultural College in Buddhisthan,had just returned to Village,on a vacation break.Out of curiosity she came to observe this panchayat.Mukhiyaji also gestured Ratna that she can also participate in this panchayat.The discussions progressed into arguments and protest.Looking her father being cornered Ratna jumped into the discussion and came out with million dollar worth suggestions.

No one needs to go to Sukhilala henceforth.Each village will install Lalameters,provided by Agricultural Research Institutes.Lalameters will help examine the vegetables in terms of Quality.Most important,we farmers will directly go to Retailers instead of reaching the District market. Suddenly villagers started agitating and said,how will that be possible?We don’t even know how to read electricity meters,how do we understand this new animal?Do we have any kind of Support?

Ratna addressed to villagers that we are born farmers and we are the best people who know their Crop better and there was no need to be dependent on Sukhilala’s of the world.She also gave confidence to the villagers that Agricultural institutes will provide training to the farmers who will be nominated by the panchayat.These meters will be authorized by Senior Farmer before sending the supply to market.The rejected lot will be used for feeding animals.

Soon there was a proposal submitted to district collector.This idea seemed to be in alignment with the broader agenda of'Atma Nirbhar Bharat' and was named as Project Ratnadoot.It was decided to experiment this idea in 3 villages.

Due to implementation,the villagers got quick access to examine their vegetables with no cost.This also eliminated entire transportation efforts to district market and the delay in receipt of information on rejected vegetables.This resulted in increase of cash flows due to which the farmers were also able to procure more Lalameters for quick inspection of vegetables.The success story was soon replicated in other district villages.

Farmers: Sales Staff | Sukhilala: Branches| Lalameter: YES, AIM (Digital Platform) | Vegetables: A/C Opening Forms| Senior Farmers:  Authorizer |Agricultural Institutes: Start Ups

Promise to Liberate – The Transformers
eClerx Services

Imagine a world where humans are enemies of each other, and seeing them prepare for a war is a nightmare.

Humans always make mistakes and this gives advantage to others to win over them. Can we ever imagine a world without mistakes, without so called human errors? Every service provider uses its human intelligence to win deals and show their expertise as human to attract new customers. But is it only the manual work customers are interested in? Are we even thinking of addressing the actual need of faster, better, cheaper and different type of service?

We at eClerx had to challenge this situation, we had to take the giant leap, may be a step close to the future. We had to rise from the plain vanilla business to something more exotic and focusing more on customer delight.

The villain and its empire had to be conquered, no more survival of the fittest. It was time we had to show the world we are The Transformers with a promise to liberate.

The combat was approved by the steering committee and it was decided to work on the transformation. Thus raised the roboworx structure, all the manual and repeat work was taken care off. The perfect coding for roboworx built the best armor. There were no more errors, no more manual repeated efforts. The three basic coded layers for roboworx helped all to enter data and enjoy the output. The robot was skilled enough to generate the required output within minutes.

Trained with all skills to filter data, understand the logic to be used and process what is pending and deliver all the output well before time was like a new dream coming true every day. Minimum involvement of humans made the entire process extremely swift and error free.

Yes it was true, there was no error no human miss outs. It seemed we were dreaming but it was time we celebrated the victory. There was no more pain in the industry, no hue and cry any more. The roboworx rose and was similar to the statue of “Colossus of Rhodes”, we now had to stand tall and celebrate the victory over the villain.

Now it was robots working and not humans, the feelings itself gave a relief to the customers who were delighted with the performance and not compromised even by 0.001%. Now that was transformation to faster, better, cheaper and different type of service to the customers.

Qutuhal: A Journey towards Curiosity
Global Indian International School

 A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Qutuhal was a well-planned goal with defined strategies and rubrics. Introduced in the year 2018 in collaboration with external service providers which later was taken up by team GIIS introducing more sustainable hands on learning experiences, critical thinking opportunities and ideation of real time challenges. Under the concept of Design Thinking, the whole idea was developed and deployed through various stages. 

The entire journey of Qutuhal started by empathizing the problems faced to achieve the 21st century skills. The challenge was deeply learned to understand the scenario and possibilities that can be introduced to overcome the situation in the best possible way. This was initiated by our Senior Director Operations by brainstorming the ideas with the Principal, Management, and the Academic Supervisors collaboratively and collectively. Each ideas were discussed with the pros and cons to invent the unique and smart solution for the challenge. Qutuhal was generated from the best solutions as a prototype which was agreed by the school management, Senior Leadership Team, GCIE (Global Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship), a visionary venture of the Global School Foundation along with the staff of the institution.

The launching of Qutuhal was taken forward in the initial days as weekend activities that developed into a more sustainable and continuous activities both within and outside the school hours. This was focused on each and every student of GIIS irrespective of the financial background.

Qutuhal became backbone of school with products that met the next generation necessities like Robot making, Automated task completion, coding development, Flying drones along with the entry towards the International competition MAKE X and the UAE’s most famous educational fare the MAKER FARE. The product played a vital role in reaching the minds of the parents and engraving in the responsibility list of teachers as its derivation from the most ancient language Sanskrit which means Curiosity.

The year 2019 marked Qutuhal with a Big Bang by winning the MAKE X trophy of the year, which created a high demand in the course and extended the skill development workshops within the school hours to reach the services to maximum number of students. Apart from the student benefits, the product started to focus on the skill development of the educators. School gave an opportunity for teachers to avail training free of cost this helped teachers to incorporate the activities into academic and classroom learning in school. One particular result has been a noticeable improvement in participation of girls in the program which is against the trend worldwide. Inculcating the program within the curriculum has helped GIIS Campuses in UAE to ensure that no child is left out of this program.

Taking a glance to the financial development of the product Qutuhal  has helped in capital enhancement as it focus on paid after school and weekend activities for GIIS and Non GIIS students under the ADEK approval. The customers were financially satisfied with the selling price of the product as we have been successful in convincing the product advantages and worth of it. Marketing of the product was carried out in a wide range through various social networks such as hubs spot, Facebook, Instagram, My GIIS both by the institution and collaborated organization. This has made the publicity of the institution in well renowned manner. The enrolment of the students has increased to more than 50 % compared to 2018. Qutuhal has also demonstrated a remarkable increase in the academic admissions. The product has satisfied the school legacy and the brand enhancement through high quality learning experiences that exhilarated the 21st century skills.

Ready on D Day
HealthCare Global Enterprises

HealthCare Global Enterprises Ltd., the specialist in cancer care has its headquarters in Bangalore, India and is known to be the only dedicated cancer care network. Triesta, a subsidiary of HCG, provides world-class diagnosis at its pathology labs. The laboratory decided to “change for better” based on patients (Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy patients who came from outside Bangalore) and clinicians feedbacks….delays in receiving reports, increased length of stay and more.

Process challenges for laboratory included.

  1. Large pre analytical waiting times due to lack of organized work flow and work cell, sample batching, lack of standard work and,
  2. Staff challenges due to inefficient level loading and poor motivation.

Patient grievances and clinicians complaints combined with staff attrition made the laboratory management take stock of the situation. The laboratory management presented and discussed this project with the hospital management. The hospital management approved the project in view of its effect on improving service quality, reducing risk exposure, improvement in employee's quality of life and optimum utilization of laboratory space.

Patient’s feedbacks (such as the ones given below) were analyzed, that triggered the management to evaluate the situation further.

Feedback: Patient, for chemotherapy, had given the blood sample towards the end of day and was informed that the report would be ready on a ‘D’ day. The patient planned everything including a follow up appointment with his doctor, stay at Bangalore (Patient, outside Bangalore) with a hope that treatment would start soon and he will be relieved from pain. The patient arrived at the lab claiming for the report on the said “D’ day, only to be informed that ‘report would be ready only tomorrow’. ‘Why???’, The sample was received after cut off time of the laboratory and was taken for processing only the following day and estimation of ‘D’ day was wrongly misinterpreted. ‘Can you make the report possible today? We have come a long way’. Laboratory staff had a ready answer, ‘As per our laboratory policy, this report takes time. Nothing else is possible’. The patient said, “Do not hide behind your policies. Your policies are not helping us”.

That’s when the management realized that policies are only written for accreditation purposes and are not patient friendly. Thus the leadership team decided to address the issue of patients and staff and played an active role in implementing the required changes.

A project team formed. Regular meetings happened between the management and project team. A team of six people was formed to take the project forward. The team lead by the laboratory director also included the lab manager Mr. Vinay, quality manager Mr Rajendra Kumar, two technical staff Mrs. Saroja, Mr Devendrappa and the hospital nominated Dr Prathiba who is GM operations HCG hospital.

Results: In-depth analysis of every process step related to patient samples helped correct the work flow and 30 % reduction in TAT, staff shifts and recruitment of skilled staff to fix vacancies. This helped achieve good level loading and staff morale.

Reducing Waste, Improving Efficiency
P.D. Hinduja Hospital and MRC

When the Senior Administrator was reviewing the quarterly activity reports, he was perturbed by the report from MRI. Recently the hospital had installed two new state-of-art MRI machines when the earlier single MRI could not handle the patient load. It was expected that the case load would double with easy appointment availability. However the numbers had not increased as per expectation.

So he decided to make a surprise visit to check the facts. Was he in for a surprise!

He went to the MRI at 11:00 pm and there were two families waiting in the MRI lounge. At first he dismissed it thinking they were emergency patients. However, on questioning the staff, the response was casual ‘these are appointment patients…you know how busy we are na?  It’s like this every day Sir!’

When he spoke to the patient relatives he was even more astonished. Mrs. Khatija told him ‘we waited for more than a day for an appointment for my son and still got only a 10.00 pm appointment! The doctors says there may be a brain tumour, so what choice do we have but to take whatever appointment was available at the earliest, even so late at night!’.

 This was also the case for Mr. Mehta. His doctor suspected a spinal cause for his back pain. Mr Mehta explained,  ‘I have difficulty is sitting for so long, so the MRI team has kindly offered me a stretcher to lie down, but I am still waiting for my turn and it is not very comfortable. It seems there is a delay of 30 minutes but what can I do? I will wait!’

So in spite of 2 MRIs it seemed the problem of appointment availability was also not resolved!

Lessons Learned:

  • Delay in performing scans lead to patient dis-satisfaction
  • This was adversely impacted the hospital referral base and in turn was limiting future revenue opportunities
  • This also generated patient loss to outpatient diagnostics

The management reviewed the case and the main question was “Is underutilization of MRI machines because inefficiency on the part of our staff, doctors, and technicians?”

A detailed study using Lean Six sigma methodology was done wherein monthly volume and available time (based on available working hours) was studied to understand the underutilization of the resources, namely, manpower and equipment, with an aim to improve utilization of MRI.

The daily working hours were reduced from 32 hours to 30 hours with a reduction in average MRI time from 74 minutes to 60 minutes.

We were successful in reducing one manpower requirement by re-scheduling staff shift timings without hampering departmental functioning.

The patient load increased from 650 to more than 700 per month with changes.