Lunch with an Indian Engineer

We hired a PhD student as a summer Intern. I'll him "PK".

PK was educated in India. During a talk last week my boss told me, "He has a degree in Lean Manufacture". We're talking of going Lean so I decided to ask him about it over lunch

Turns out he doesn't have a degree in such things, though he has a Master's Degree in Manufacturing Engineering, from a University in India. The school is located "right next door to a Toyota factory".

He did admit that he and members of his class helped to "optimize" Amazon.com's warehouse. I replied that they used to take "forever" to send books. "Maybe they're doing is faster, so hope so". He said they probably were better now.

We talked a bit about Lean. He said, "It's hard for Americans to embrace Lean. We have similar problems in India with it too. To achieve Lean you must have a change in the culture of the workplace. Lean is a state of mind as much as a way of doing things. You have to be vigilant for opportunities to reduce waste"

We talked a bit more. About Unions and about rigid "I got mine" managers. I admitted that many Americans were "not hungry". He agreed, though he said many Americans were eager to compete.

He wondered who the leaders were where I worked. I suggested a few people, but he said he wasn't sure. He's working on really advanced stuff, which I wasn't too interested in working on. My forte is more electronics and not bizarro materials stuff.

He told me that Toyota is a "wonderful place to work". He has classmates who work there now. They are "very happy" to be there. He said that the lines "roll off one car every fifty five seconds". He said that the emphasis is upon fully using everyone, all of their skills and enthusiasm.

He said we had a good chance of going Lean where i work. I sure hope so, considering who we're competing against these days.

Gene

Take him to South Philly for a Cheezesteak

That ought to straighten him out...

Take him to South Philly for a Cheezesteak

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It's not clear from the description whether this guy is Indian or was simply educated in India.

If he's Hindu, be aware that they're vegetarians, and would not be inclined to down a cheesesteak

Heck there's a pretty good Indian restaurant in south philly, too, though the name escapes me at the moment. You have to know it's there, not obvious from the exterior, go up and knock on the door. then go in and wander up through several floors. Been there for a couple decades. Think they started to advertise recently. smt

If he's Hindu, be aware that they're vegetarians, and would not be inclined to down a cheesesteak

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No they're not, some hindu sects are but by and large the majority are'nt..... just dont offer him a beef steak since the cow is sacred in India

Boris

How lean is Indian manufacture??

A Harris press erector came back to the states with this story.

The Indians enbargo foreign paper. The Harris web offset that went in used a web that was not a size available in the country at the time. So, they had a couple of guys take wider rolls and use a two man saw to cut them to somewhere near the right width.

Neeless to say, running the press was way more fun that it would be here in the USA.

[ 05-25-2006, 12:51 PM: Message edited by: JimK ]

" just dont offer him a beef steak since the cow is sacred in India"


Hi Boris.... I can see that youve not watched QI recently...

Sacred is a christian concept and has no meaning for Hindus...And the cow is not one of the animals the worship or revered in india..its a UK fallacy...Kind of like Buffalo in America...Should have been Bison Bill..

Rob

some hindu sects are [vegetarians] but by and large the majority are'nt

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That may well be true. I haven't met everyone in India. But all of the dozen or so Indians that I've worked with over the years have been vegetarians.

Now that I think about it - the 2 Indian customers and 1 Indian CEO that I know are all vegetarians as well.

I am a Sagittarian and sometimes I feel like a vegetable, does that count??

Funny how there things get off topic.

Back to the Print Shop!

When I was working in the shops I found that materials handling was the thing that most stubbornly resisted moderniation. Sheet-fed pressmen had to flop loads and even with clamp trucks, rolls still had to be man handled out on the web press line.

Some of that "bizarro materials stuff" would be in order in shops that sre going full speed ahead with electronic controls that only relieve the press crew of the delicate motions.

Now, boys and girls, how many other trades and industres are quite far behind in the rough stuff of handling materials and could use Our Gentlemen's engineering assistance?

I spent 2 months in India a few years back. The only places I was offerd meat was in forgiener hotels, and at the Wimpy in Conought Pl. Every where else was 100% veg. When I went up to Pakistan that changed rapidly. I'm not positive that it is a religious thing, but I've not met many Indian meat eaters either.

What is Lean exactly?

B

If he's Hindu, be aware that they're vegetarians, and would not be inclined to down a cheesesteak

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Ya dont tell'em that before !!!!

He'l LOVE them...

Fast story,
Me from the midwest and young and dont know much of the world's ways yet. We installing a new machine in customers plant when the owner and our Co salesman come over and take us to lunch at a fancy place. Every one gets a drink, I get a beer, got to go back to work installing ya know. Then the owner says "oysters on the halfshell for everyone?" lots of yeah, ok ,sure.... then me, uhhhh...well ok. not knowing what the devel they are. Then out comes these slimy raw oysters looking right up atcha... yikes, that is what my Mom used to get once in a while and I dont see anyway to eat them raw, but I look at the others and they like'm so I take a swig of beer and down one, umm, dam, there good, from then on I loved'em.

When I went up to Pakistan that changed rapidly.

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Pakistan is Muslim. That's the whole reason it exists. The Muslims and the Hindus couldn't live together, so the Muslims set up a new country, carved out of the edges of the Indian sub-continent. It used to be East and West Pakistan. Now it's Pakistan on the west and Bangladesh on the east.

Ok, if ya dont wana introduce him to the Philly Cheezesteak, take him down to Baltimore for some Crabs..

They do like beer I hope, or he might not like the crabs either, well....dats ok to maybe,,, more for you ..

If the Indian doesn't eat meat, then how the heck would he know what 'lean' means? I think there is a fraud here someplace.

If the Indian doesn't eat meat, then how the heck would he know what 'lean' means?

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Indians are skinny. skinny = lean kapiche?

He's from India. I am not sure where in India, but he's pretty dark.

I'm on the other side of the state from Philly. I am not sure if he's vegetarian or not, but he smokes. Camels or Marlboros.

He also played Cricket. Caught him tossing a ball with an overhand pitch, mentioned it and he said, "Yeah, I played that". He's probably well to do at home.

Gene

What is "Lean"? Best I can tell it's a way of making things that tries to minimize waste - waste of time, people's abilities and materials. I am not sure if it works or not.

You organize the job so that everything you need is at hand or easy to find. The ownership plans and helps you organize your work area.

I'm dreading when they take Lean into the development lab. Development is not manufacture, things don't go in straight lines. Sometimes what an Engineer draws or creates isn't how reality is gonna go.

My boss wants to toss out all of the electronic parts we use for development. She says, "We need something we'll order it". When I informed her that Engineering is not a deterministic discipline, that you have to occaisionally improvise and adapt, she says I am not thinking Lean.

Today the Electrical Engineers came to the Lab for 5S Red Tag. Almost no parts were Red Tagged. They insisted that I keep most of the parts - "We might need them".

OUght to be fun watching the boys 'n girls scuffle.

I've worked for two major companies which use 5S in R&D. One used to toss out stuff right 'n left. One of my best friends still works there and enjoys doing exactly what the boss tells him to do. One time he tossed out thousands of dollars in semiconductors - I was sad. They were even more sad when they needed those parts a few months down the road. Stupid is as stupid does - not my friend, who is very bright, but his bosses.

The other employer would keep useful stuff but organized their lab according to whatever projects were most important. You brought out what you needed for the job at hand. Things were carefully planned out so you could count on being able to plan your work space.

We had a three story tall storage cage to keep the "low use" stuff. This is somewhat contrary to 5S, but when it's Sunday night at 5pm and you have to have a heating element within an hour and you have it around you've saved a lot more money in Engineering Cycle time and shipping costs than you would have spent in "muda" because you weren't quite a slave to Lean Fashion.

Deming used to harp on "total cost". Total cost means how much it costs at the end of the day, not at this moment.

My boss is shaping up to be a real Lean Partisan, or maybe she's trying to impress our boss. She's gonna learn the hard way, I guess. You gotta THINK and PLAN - there is no substitute for your brain. Maybe we only need half of t hose parts, but none of them? No way!

Gene

Indians are skinny. skinny = lean kapiche?

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I never heard someone walk up to the meat counter and say, "I want a piece of skinny meat."

I think 'lean' means 'lack of fat', and you wouldn't know what fat was unless you cut up an animal. Compute?

'Lean' is just another one of those buzz words. I don't see how you apply it to manufacturing. What are you going to do? Make a sofa with no cushions?

Twenty years ago the buzz was 'Japanese Management Techniques'. Americans always fall for that foreign stuff. Dutcher motors came to Hagertown Maryland at its peak. They wanted to make some sort of vehicle for wheelchair bound people.

A friend of mine got an engineering job there. I went to visit several times. I asked, where are your bosses? There were about five of them. 'They're in New York" or chicago, or Boston, or someplace, "attending a syposium on Japanese Managements Techniques."

I never did get to meet the owners of Dutcher Motors. They lasted about a year and half. Never did make a vehicle there. But I bet they had that JMT down pat.

Concerning parts for engineers; at Watkins Johnson, they put a curfew on engineers, they couldn't stay after five. The management accused the engineers of taking parts for personal projects.

Contrast that to Hewlett Packard. HP encouraged engineers to engage in personal projects. Let them use any stock part they wanted. Even would purchase parts for them if they weren't in stock. Some of HP's best innovations started out as a personal project.

When I worked at WJ, I would sometimes peer through a vent hole into a piece of HP equipment. Then I would say, "Look, HP uses all those resistors, and capacitors, and transistors and stuff just like we use. Wonder why their stuff works so much better?"

It's no wonder they kicked my a$$ out of there.

Ordering a part for engineering, when you need it, gives Federal Express a lot of business.