Today, a budding entrepreneur came to
me for some advice. She felt that because she was starting small she
did not have to think ahead. It is at the start up stage that she has
more time to think, once the project is rolling there will be less
time. By sheer chance when I started I got a chance to travel abroad
for a conference. There was no doubt that in my mind thoughts that
this was wasteful expenditure were flying all over.
Once in Singapore during the conference
breaks, I contacted various moulders listed in the yellow pages and
got myself three invitations to visit their factories. The visits
were learning experiences. Consider this example. Back in India, I
had seen moulding machines set up each with individual spaces and
possible its own overhead crane. Here in a place where space was a
premium, they were laid out side by side, just a meter gap between
each, one crane serviced all 25 machines, similarly they was a
another line on the other side. The corridor in the middle was used
to service each machine, supply new moulds or take away ready parts,
above the corridor was a platform with the RM feeders. In a space
where in India I would have seen 6 to 8 machines, 50 were
operational.
We used this thinking to good effect as
we added machines in our factory. One vendor assuming we had no
space refused to quote when asked. Later, he came to see how we had
installed the machine we purchased from his competitor. The initial
expenditure considered wasteful was actually an investment.
Over the years, this has become apart
of my training. Visiting factories in different parts of the world
and even India. India is also up there with the best compared to 20
years ago. When buying a large machine my french counter parts felt
that we would have to also buy an automatic platform to load unload
the moulding arm as was done in Europe. These systems are known to
cost as much as the machine. A visit down under changed that
perception. Australians seem to be more like Indians, have a jugaad
mentality...they like us make it work with the most inexpensive
means. In Australia they ran even bigger machines without the
platforms, rather that climb up and work on an arm at a height, they
inverted the arm and worked on it from the ground, brilliant. So my
new machine does not have a fancy unloading station, we just work
from the ground.
On the same trip, I noticed that after
using a pneumatic gun to loosen the bolts, the nuts did not fall to
the ground on the other side. Curious, since I had worked on
retaining the nut in place without success earlier. These guys had
over come my problem, I had tried to hold the nut in place by
welding, however when the nut got damaged it was difficult to
replace. They welded a sleeve instead and put the nut inside the
sleeve, once damaged only the nut was replaced. Eureka.
Before I left for the Philippines to
study, to me a factory had to be dirty, wires hanging grease on the
walls floors, if there were pipes they had to leak and if there were
oil sumps it had to drip. During the course I had an opportunity to
visit factories practicing the concept of Kaizen. That was my moment
of enlightenment, and I have never been the same again. I saw
factories which were as clean as hospitals workers in white overalls.
The advantage of white overalls was that if your overall got dirty it
was a sign that there was a part of the factory that was not clean. I
came back to India with a different perception, “FACTORIES CAN BE
CLEAN”
The point I am trying to make to
budding or seasoned entrepreneurs is travel and when I say travel I
do not mean to sight see only, but travel to get a feel of how others
do it and adapt accordingly. Get to a new place and thumb the yellow
pages, there are always a few fellow entrepreneurs willing to host
you, all you need to do is ask. The moral of the story travel is a
great teacher. Bon Voyage
