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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