The Monkey's Paw

“Your father is in the hospital”. He was playing caroms with his friends. Bappa was trying hard to put the “queen” into the pocket. His fingers became numb. He eased the fingers. The striker ricocheted at the corner rather directionless. He rushed to the hospital. He was late. He is only twenty years. He saw his mother sobbing. His sister was still in her school uniform.

 

Bappa got twenty lakhs rupees as life insurance coverage of his father. How to run the family? He sat at the locality roadside tea shop --- wandering what to do. Some construction workers asked him the way to a particular construction site. Bappa murmured something incoherent. They laughed. One of his friends joined. “I won’t stay in the house.  My mother has made my life miserable. Is it my fault if I do not get a decent job?’

 

Bappa and four of his friends pooled in all their resources. They decided to become builders. They started looking for joint families who on  the verge of breaking; dilapidated old buildings – crumbling due to lack of maintenance; land owners – tenants ever sour relationship; Novo rich trying to sell off their ancestral property and settling at a “posh” locality. Bappa had his hands full. He found a lot of people wanting to sell of their property. In other words handing over the old building and building a new one for them with some extra flats.

 

“Paramount Constructions” in which Bappa is one of the partners has constructed ten projects so far. Bappa has earned an epithet for him--- “building shark”. He has amassed a lot of money but still he buys his jeans from pavement shopkeepers at Esplanade. He does not own a car and prefers the public transport. His wife feels like a piece of furniture in the home. Bappa comes late. Eats quietly and retires to bed. Sometimes wakes up, scribbles something in the pad and goes off to sleep. Wakes up early before other members get up, rushes to the construction site to oversee the work. 

 

Those who had purchased flats from Paramount Constructions have a lot of complaints. Bappa has promised the moon to the prospective flat owners but did not keep his ever flowing promises. Bappa intentionally forgets simple things like fixing a letter box, an extra circuit breaker, installing outside lights; gates in the entrance of the building. These small things irritate the flat owners. Many a time people are seen quarreling with him. No one recommends his name. Once bitten “thrice” shy.

 

Bappa works on a ‘forward integration plan’. He had teamed up with a furniture making shop, an electrician, a painter and an interior decorator. People buying flats often look for these things to complete their “decoration “of the flat. He supplies the men and materials on an agreed commission from them. Bappa is quite popular among his peers. He gives business to them and they are happy.

 

Bappa’s excellence in work has diminished over the projects. The materials, workmanship, architectural style has all nose dived but still his flats are being sold. Other builders are more than willing to create a market for themselves in the upcoming middle class locality but couldn’t find success. The recession did not have an impact on Paramount Construction. They trudged on. It is a riddle which remained unsolved.

 

Note:

This is really an intriguing case so wonderfully told by Mr. Sitendu De. Thanks, Sitendu, for your your contribution of this lovely story. Hugs!

Unchallenged Complex Problem for past 4 years!!

Here is a complex problem. I played with this ‘live’ problem for quite sometime and challenged many to solve this problem – verbally of course. Fair to say, it remains unsolved or unchallenged for the past 4 years. This is the first time I am writing it out.

Would you love to challenge your brains on this nagging problem? Here it goes for you:

A certain factory producing goods made out of rubber decides to raise its productivity. The rubber products are made in moulds that are placed in a hydraulic press and kept there under specified conditions of temperature, pressure and time for proper curing and formation to take place. The hydraulic operated presses have one mould cavity to place one mould at a time.

The owner comes up with a simple plan to improve productivity. He decides to increase the number of mould cavities in the hydraulic press allowing him to process multiple products at the same temperature, pressure and time. So, he goes for ‘two mould cavity’ presses and quickly replaces the old presses by these two mould cavity ones.  

He then calculates the possible output if he does that. Let us say that he would get 100 products by changing from single mould cavity press to double mould cavity press.

But he is dismayed when he finds out the actual output. It is less than 50% (acceptable products) of what he expected to get. How is that? He thinks that something must be wrong. So he decides to increase the number of presses accommodating double mould cavities.

What is the result? Again less than 50% (acceptable products) of what he thought he must get.

Infuriated, he goes for ‘3 mould cavity’ presses. He then increases the number of presses to 10. And also increases the number of operators and workmen to run the operation. He backs it up by increasing the number of supervisors to look after the operation. He also increases the number of overhead cranes from one to two. 

How did that turn out?

Again less than 50% of what he calculated would be the output.

Baffled, he then thinks to improve the system and institute a system of quality culture. He also thinks of training the workers and the supervisors to do their jobs better and pay close attention to the performance of the machines and moulds and the way rubber is injected into the mould cavities -- trying to lessen the time and the apparent wastages in the system.

What happens?

The output refuses to move even a percentage point above 50%.

Can you crack this stubborn, nagging and chronic problem for the factory owner? He would be indebted. What would be the right thing for the owner to do?

 

Note: I first published this problem in Anveshan, Vol III, '11 edition (April 2011) a technical magazine of NIT Durgapur, my alumnus

The Power of 3 - Changes in Management Thinking.

This great story demonstrates a fundamental emergence in our lives. The old ways of thinking and managing simply wouldn't work any longer.

The 'science' and practice' of management as we know of it today were originally invented to solve two very important problems, which were:

a) How do we get ordinary folks do complicated and repetitive tasks to achieve a standard of efficiency and standardization to optimize profits?

b) How do we make our way through a complex web of processes to deliver goods and services to our clients? The complexity arose from scaling up of operations meant to generate ever increasing volume of goods and services that could provide more profits and subdue competitors.

In order to do that we created lot many logical rules and regulations. The number of rules increased with the degree of operational complexity. Then we trained and made people follow those rules to achieve the magic numbers that could produce more profits that are constantly under squeeze. 

With our present thinking we understand that such management thinking does not work well beyond a certain degree of complexity. Why is that?

So far we focused on objects that played any role within business cycles of production and consumption. Sometimes we focused on machines while at other times we focused on people or customers. And yet on some other occasion we forced our attention onto suppliers and quality or we looked at increasing inventory levels. We never quite saw the whole in one breath. What we clearly missed out was to observe the relationships between objects in a given context. What we chose to do instead was to focus wholeheartedly on objects and their functions and properties without taking into consideration the context in which they operated. We failed to realize the importance of interdependent relationships between all things that simultanteously arise and abate in the system in a "wholistic" manner.

What happens when we fail to see relationships?

Let us take two objects that are related to each other. Then the possible relationships that can exist between them are four [2 to the power 2 gives us 4]. As we keep increasing the number of related objects it keeps following the same power law [2 to the power of n, where n = the number of related objects].

It is then easy to imagine the exponential rise in the number of possible relationships as the system becomes more and more complex. How can such exponential behavior be controlled and regulated by a set of linear rules and regulations? Since that is clearly not possible to do so it exposes the unscientific nature of our so called 'scientific' management thinking.  

This flaw is clearly depicted in the video. As the number of cars increased along with the rise in the number of pedestrians and cyclists the system soon reached a critical point of complexity beyond which it was not possible to regulate the traffic flow, reduce the number of traffic jams and keep accidents in check. Even the logic of operating traffic lights represents a part of the growing rules and regulations to contain the menace of slowing traffic, snarling jams and terrible accidents without much success ofcourse.

So, what did the new management thinking do? They drastically reduced the number of rules and regulations to one simple rule - "give way to pedestrians and cyclists first". The result of such a brilliant move is amply demonstrated in the video.

What lessons management can learn from this? Probably these:

1. As the system becomes more and more complex reduce the complexity of the jobs ordinary folks are called on to do in all possible ways. One of the simplest way to do that is to reduce the number of irrelevant rules and regulations that bind and blind people from performing better. Forcing people to keep their eyes on so many rules is enough to make anyone crazy and make mistakes. For example, by simply enabling drivers not to pay any attention to the traffic signals and policemen but to keep in mind one simple rule greatly simplified their job of driving safely. This then left the drivers free to focus on their goals without getting distracted by a host of unrelated issues. Ease of traffic flow, reduction of jams and elimination of accidents are few of the by-products of making jobs easier and free of unnecessary clutter. 

2. Redesign the system so as to reduce the number of relationships one has to negotiate in order to achieve the desired results. This was done by redesigning the roads at critical traffic intersections.  By reducing the total number of relationships within a system we can easily convert complex processes to much simpler ones. 

3. Managers are then left to keep healthy communications going within the system and focus their attention to fine tune the existing relationships and also think of simplifying the processes further through redesign.

Aren't these three universal management lessons simple enough?

Let me know what you think.

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