HBS has been able to match the incredible experience that we have with some very aristocratic architecture and an extremely professional operations - that leaves nothing to chance, and to us - the participants, it seems a well thought out clock-work precision delivery. You cannot have any other feelings, but being over-whelmed with the magnificence of the buildings - opulence of the library and the serene (yet chip-on-the-shoulder) feeling when you go around the campus. Our accommodation, are a single room with attached washroom, in the Baker hall. Each floor has two sections, and we have about 7 floors - hosting about 125 odd participants. Each living group - about 8-9 people - have their own living room, meeting/work room - equipped with soda (and yes Diet Coke too) and snacks throughout the day and night. There is another refrigerator well stocked with "Beer and wine", that seems to be always full... So as you would expect, everything is pretty much as it should be... well almost.
The rooms, that we live in, seems to have been designed, by Japanese Airline folks. While, the room itself, is quite comfortable, lots of power points (yes - as you know, can never have enough of them), ample soft lighting for the study, one reasonably decent desktop with WinDoze on it [ chuckle, chuckle :) ]. The only problem is - had this room, washroom been any smaller, I would have had to sleep with my hands outside the door.... It is extremely cramped. The bathtubs, are tiny (even for my height levels; imagine what it would be like for 6feet+ folks), practically no place to put your stuff. It is fully functional and extremely efficient room - but then it does feel - your total room, is the size of a business class cabin - no more.
Anyways, they do claim, that the Tata Hall, will be ready soon - by Jan 2014 and things would be a bit better for our junior batches.... fingers crossed.
Andon (アンドン, あんどん, 行灯) is a manufacturing term referring to a system to notify management, maintenance, and other workers of a quality or process problem. The centrepiece is a signboard incorporating signal lights to indicate which workstation has the problem. The alert can be activated manually by a worker using a pullcord or button, or may be activated automatically by the production equipment itself. The system may include a means to stop production so the issue can be corrected. Some modern alert systems incorporate audio alarms, text, or other displays.
- Wikipedia
As we learnt today, Andon plays a crucial part in keeping the manufacturing plant's operations honest and empowers the workers, to stop the assembly line, is defects are found. The question, is have you created your 'andon' in your day to day operations (not restricted to manufacturing alone) - Do you have enough 'levers' built into your organisation, your situation, that allows the team members, to raise a flag, bring it to the attention of the management, and the entire organisation gravitates to solving that problem.
Learning of the day
1. Build your own Andons, without them, it will be too late to fix any problem.
2. Eventually, the only good growth is the 'profitable growth'
3. Learnt to draw the Value curve of my industry, company - as my customer sees it... and it was interesting to review how my competitors ranked on the same.
Value curve keeps the prioritized attributes of its vendor on the y axis (with the most important attribute on top, and customer's perception of my (company's) value ( say from 1 to 10) on the x axis. All of this from the customer's point of view.
Something to think about...
Several hedge fund corporations ordered live satellite images of several spots in US. They claimed, it would be a terrific tool to measure the accuracy of the financial forecasts of the chief executives of a large corporation.
Satellite images, Capital market, Financial forecasts ???? Now this is a long shot - think about this, and lets see, if you can figure out - how they are related and actually do the job - I will keep the answer ready in my blog tomorrow. :)
archi
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