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Ramblings of a citizen and experiences of an entreuprener

This is about my way of life. It has two parts, one is related to the world around me and the other part is my experiences as an entrepreneur. Check out our website www.shaktiindia.com

Monday, December 15, 2014

The Reluctant Entrepreneur: Travel


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


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