Enigma Solution

Last month I dropped in at a friends manufacturing plant in Pune recently. He was both happy and very busy, and why not? They were doubling sales every two years. He and his family reflected visible aspects of the India growth story. I was happy for him. We were having a cup of tea when a senior member of his team walked into the cabin. I was surprised to see that the gentleman was an old colleague of mine. We chatted briefly about things in the industry and also about former colleagues etc. I knew him to be a very good engineer and manager. During his tenure with my company we had undertaken many path breaking initiatives in technology and management. I asked him if he was still undertaking industry benchmarking studies like he had when he worked for us and which had been extremely useful for us. My friend immediately butted in and retorted; "we have a policy here not to concern ourselves with others, we are preoccupied with our own internal issues." I was aghast ...

It was 1984 and the third anniversary of us brothers joining of the family owned and managed manufacturing business in Pune, India. I was 26 and responsible for day to day operations of the plant. Excited to be given an opportunity to start working at last, with our enthusiasm and hard work we were able to double output each year. Initially growth came from taking up the slack in the system and then later from some capacity additions. Our efficiencies left much to be desired. Just keeping pace with volume demand was soaking up all our time, we responded with the main tool in our tool box, ‘HARD WORK’, which comes easy to the young, for youth loves expending energy. However there is a limit, to what senseless hard work can achieve. Demand was galloping, and there were no more funds available for capital expansion. We had already borrowed to the hilt. We simply had to become more efficient.Further progress depended on adopting a different approach. But what? Had we not been under pressur...