• – At least 19 students died and 20 others suffered serious injuries in Surat
• – Huge fire in Faridabad godown kills 3 in a nearby school, including 2 children
• – Fire in Paper board plant in Ballabgarh killing 1 worker.

The above news becomes very common during summer seasons and creates huge losses of lives and money.

Recently a fire broke out in our factory too but thanks to Safety measures and the trained team we got control over it within 30 min without making any losses.

How did we do it?

Fire Audit
Audit your home and workplace for Fire Risk Assessment or get it audited from experts.

Preventive Measures and Safety devices.

• Keep your workplace or home clutter-free ( papers, wood, and other flammable items)
• Proper electrical fittings, no loose or damaged wires, panel area to be easily accessible to shut power in case of emergency.
• Keep fully charged safety Gadgets (like fire extinguishers etc).
• Keep heat producing equipment away from anything that might burn.
• Store flammable items with utmost care.

Team meetings are conducted to make the strategies, planning & find out the solution of challenges in the shortest time achieving the expected outcome.

To make your team meeting crisp, involving, and inspiring everyone – six rules must be followed –

• Brainstorming at least a day before the meeting and writing all agendas to be discussed.
• Write the outcome expected from the meeting.
• Update agendas and expectations a day before to all the participants so that they can come with preparation.
• Fix start date and end time of the meeting so that It gets completed on or before time.
• Don’t allow anyone to deviate from the agendas and ensure that everybody gets an opportunity to present his views ( especially the introverted person )
• Ensure someone is writing minutes of meeting .Fix target dates and responsibility and get it signed from all the participants and take timely updates.

Does this make sense to you? Please read the book “Meeting sucks” by Cameron Herold to go deep.

When this question was asked to me by someone, I realized that even I could not tell it properly. And the reason was simple: we have not created it, but we have designed it by checking & manipulating the mission statement of a few other companies.

Whys Mission statement required?

• If the Purpose of your company is just earning money (which it must be doing) then you don’t require any Mission statement. But will it motivate others?Will it not limit the growth?
• It Motivates and Aligns everyone in the ecosystem because it connects with the heart as well as the head.
• It Sets boundaries for decision making at every stage.
• Mission motivates team to accept changes.
• It helps in shaping strategy.
• It provides a benchmark for valuation and improvement.

How to Create a Mission Statement?

• The Mission statement answers the big question “why does your company exist”. The purpose must be genuine , transparent and relevant for everyone in the ecosystem ( Customers, Suppliers , service providers and all team members from top to bottom ) .
• Involve everyone in your team while creating a mission statement.
• It must answer the following questions
• What do we do today?
• For whom do we do it?
• What is the benefit?

Does this make sense to you? Please read the book “Start with why” by Simon Sinek to go deep.

The Growth of every team leader/ entrepreneur is directly proportional to the level of work he can delegate to his team and get the same or better results if he/she may be doing.

The Non-critical task can be delegated using the following simple strategies –

• Strength – Delegate as per your analysis of the strength and weaknesses of each one.
• System – Make complete process on paper including process flowchart, Instructions, and checksheets.
• Training – Train your team as per the system you created.
• Monitoring – Make a strong monitoring system to check the delegated task.
• Reward -Acknowledge/ Reward the performers and motivate & re-train others.

Although the above strategies were working well for me when I was delegating simple tasks, in the case of Critical tasks (like Production planning of irregular items, Designing of some critical machines) I was failing or work done was not 100% satisfactory. Then in addition to the above points, I designed 3 more strategies that created wonderful results.

Mindset and Questions – Your mindset and subordinate mindset are at different levels. When you are working on a critical task, your mind is subconsciously asking some questions and you are taking care of subconsciously while working. But these questions are not coming to the mind of your subordinate. Ponder upon all such questions and write them in detail.

Reporting & Hand-holding – Ask your subordinate to prepare a report of delegated tasks, taking care that all the questions have been answered in that report and send it to you. Help and guide him/her occasionally. Even if you need to devote a few minutes to it , it is better than doing it yourself completely.

Every business dreams of having customers zealously advocating for their brand with the same kind of steadfast loyalty that Apple and Google have proven is possible.

Turning a customer into a fan is not so hard if you can implement the following 7 steps.

Help Your customer

Help your customer to take the decisions which are right for them ( Be genuine )

Quality

Provide the product quality as per the specifications committed ( Try to give a little extra )

Be on time every time

Make systems to deliver the product on time every time ( Never over-commit ). if you fail once in a while Communicate with the customer, well in advance, ( Never hide )

Service

Give good after-sales service. It is the most important. Also, keep taking the feedback and suggestions for improvement. It will help you improve further and secondly, the customer will feel connected with your company.

Communication

Communication is a highly important and most ignored part of the transaction.

• Predispatch communication – Check for his urgencies , priorities or any delay or any added product required by him.
• Dispatch time Communication – Update him dispatch details ( Truck no,Transport no., Driver no. expected date/time of reaching etc
• After dispatch Communication – Check for quantity or quality (received by customer as per dispatch details).

Create Value

There can be multiple ways of creating value for your customer ( help him in arranging manpower, helping him in buying any raw material or in selling his product or anything you think it will help him).

Reference and Testimonial

Take Testimonials from customers ( customers will feel connected with your company and it will help you in attracting other customers ).

Don’t shy away from asking him to refer you to other customers.

A lot of people are not aware that India is the cheapest in domestic airline services in the entire world and the average cost per 100km is Just 2.2 dollars and still all airline companies are making a profit.

What we can learn from it?

Domestic airline service is the perfect example of Lean practices recommended in every type of Industry and service segment.

The Prime asset of any airline company is Airplanes and they ensure that airplanes should be in flying mode for max hours in a day.

Learning – Maximize utilization of your prime ( costliest ) asset.

2. All support activities like cleaning, fuel refilling, Air filling, inspection, luggage loading/unloading are done at the time of boarding and deboarding of passengers.

Learning – Save Time.

identify all secondary activities in your organization like searching for next change tools, cleaning, routine maintenance, etc that can be clubbed and done at the time of changeovers.

3. All the staff of airline companies is highly trained, they have a checksheet of their work. They have scripts for everything they speak.

Learning – Make systems, train the people for the system, and monitor it for efficient working.

4. On small airports where traffic is comparatively low they are multitasked to complete check-in formalities and after that, the same staff is used for boarding of passengers.

Learning – Do multitasking on workstations where work pressure is low.

5. Almost 10 Years back airline companies identified that India is a big market size and they made strategies to capture that hidden potential and now flying is cheaper than traveling in the first class of train.

Learning – Tap the market size. Think Big.

India and China are big markets and their cost of production can be reduced significantly by bulk production and we can sell to other parts of the world at a price even lower than their local cost of production.

Before clearing this confusion it is important to know how the pulse is processed to make Daal. I am splitting this letter in two parts to make you easy to grasp.

How Pulse is processed to get Daal

Step 1. Cleaning & Grading – Cleaning & Grading of pulse is done in two stages – size-wise cleaning and gravity wise cleaning.

Step 2. Pitting – Outer hard surface ( Husk layer ) is buffed to facilitate the penetration of water/oil in grain.

Step 3. Wetting – Pulse is soaked in oil or water or mixture to dissolve the natural gum between husk and Daal.

Step 4. Tempering – After wetting tempering conditioning is done to have uniformity of treatment throughout the grain mass. This process gives time for better penetration of oil/water beneath the seed coat to dissolve gums.

Step 5. Drying – Grain is then dried in the sun or through driers.

Step 6. Dehusking and splitting – Grain is then dehusked by passing through abrasive rolls ( two or three passes as may be required ) and split by passing through stone crushers or hard-hitting through elevators.

Step 7 Polishing – Polishing is done to increase consumers’ appeal and is a form of value addition, though not desirable. Daal is polished in different ways, such as nylon polish, oil/water polish, leather, and maximal polish. Generally polishing is done using soapstone, oil, or water. Polishing gives a uniform look and shines to each grain.

Polishing is generally done on the Pulse that gets split before the splitting stage.

The Disadvantage of polished Daal-

• Having lost its outer surface polished dal is inferior to unpolished dal in their taste.
• For the same reason polished dal takes longer to cook, thus adding to fuel consumption in the long run.
• The polishing agents used can be harmful to our health. The oil coating adds additional fat to the food, the water used comes from unreliable sources thus can contain any kind of impurities, and marble and soapstone powder are undoubtedly harmful to the intestines.
• Through the polishing process dal loses a lot of nutrients and fibers, thus polished is not only less nutritious but also harmful.
• In cases where dal isn’t sold for a long time, old stocks are usually sent back for re-polishing and then resold. Imagine what such food would do to your health.

Unpolished Daal is expensive as compared to polished dals and pulses. They have all the natural nutrients which are great for your health. This is the reason why unpolished dals and pulses should behave opted even if they are a bit expensive.

 

How to identify unpolished Daal

• Unpolished have their fiber intact, hence they don’t look as shiny and attractive as the case with polished daal.
• The edges ( Katori edge ) of unpolished daal are sharp as compared to polished daal because during polishing stage the sharp edges of daal become blunt.
• When you dip the polished daal in water they generally will lose the stone powder/oil added during polishing and the water will become turbid.

Poka-yoke is a Japanese term that means “mistake-proofing” or “inadvertent error prevention”

3 Steps of Implementation —

1) Make a list of all mistakes you/your team make – Make a list of all items and identify the low hanging one which is causing major losses.

2) Brainstorm – Do brainstorming with all the people involved in the process to find out the permanent solution so that it gets never repeated even if the operator/doer is totally reluctant .i.e. – remove the skill

3) Action and Monitoring – Take action as per the final outcome of Brainstorming. Monitor it periodically to check it for recurrence. If required visit point 2 again.

Apart from error proofing, other advantages of Poka-Yoke is

• Less time spent on training workers;
• Elimination of many operations related to quality control;
• Unburdening of operators from repetitive operations;
• Promotion of the work improvement-oriented approach and actions;
• A reduced number of rejects;
• Immediate action when a problem occurs;
• 100% built-in quality control.

If you keep taking action on only one challenge in a week, you will be able to come out of 52 challenges in a year and will get control.

Does this make sense to you? Click here to see the complete video

To know more please feel free to write to me at director@agromachengineering.com.

1) Make the Preventive Maintenance checksheet – Make a preventive maintenance checksheet for the machine.
Please open the given link: https://goo.gl/JMtDTT . Download this Sheet and modify it according to your machine. Initially, you may face some challenges in identifying the checkpoints for your machine. Don’t worry just modify it as per you and your team knowledge initially and apply it and keep on modifying every time of machine breakdown.

2) Apply – Stick or Paste this sheet on your machine and ask the Operator ( or your Maintenance team ) to tick the points for which he has taken the action. Give him the required training for each point.

3) Monitor – Monitor weekly/Monthly for two things. 1. Checksheet is filled properly or not. 2 Is the operator/Maintenance supervisor working on checksheet religiously, your few questions to him will reveal the truth.

Modify, Apply, Monitor, and get the control.
To know more please feel free to write to me at director@agromachengineering.com.