Summer training report
The summer training at LPS Bossard has been a good experience. I came here and was allocated a guide, the SCM head. He defined the scope of the project flexibly. The target was to reduce the excess inventory the company is having(40% of the inventory) to zero (what was he thinking?). I did not realise how ambitious the target was then. I absorbed everything about the existing system talked to everybody on the scene( and behind it- unnecessary addition, this 'behind the scenes' part, but I couldnt help it) which took me close to a month.I had started out by thinking that it was purely a software problem. But over the period, I realised that it was as much about people as it was about technology.Then came the time to do something about it. I realised that I had not thought about implementation at all! I had just looked at the project as one of those mental exercises to find out what went wrong where. But using what I found out to improve things had to be done by me too! I remember feeling stupid( all the memories of my past failures in getting things done, like the NTMIS survey in 2nd year engineering came back).
I started with a heavy heart, overcoming a strong repulsion( the kind you feel when you are next up on stage, or like before my kannada play in primary school). I decided to plan better for risk buys and stop sales order deletions( and left out the software improvements part out completely after getting abused by IT) . I opeartionalised my ideas and devised an excel tool for making work faster and easier for the purchase team( which was a deviation from my target of devising a planning tool :-( ). I could not push it through! As luck would have it, not a single sales order( the document that would trigger the operation my tool was designed to speed up) came in two weeks! I also could not follow up on the promising statistical tool( time series forecasting) either the one that would solve their planning woes. I plan to push them to adopt my automation tool though, before I leave, and thus make something out of the big waste of effort.
As all this was happening, I also did an analysis of the existing inventory along with Prateek( Mote)and singled out quantities of 65 items that could be disposed off( worth 85 lakhs). Again follow up with sales( follow up is everything!). It resulted in 8 lakhs worth of items getting sold. Hurray!
That is a Return On Investment of almost 16000% for the company.
( 2 Summer trainees cost the company 50k)
I have, over the two months, lost all interest in learning theory and models. Bah!!!
I had some fun on the side- caught up on my swimming, visited Delhi on weekends so much so that I now know Delhi better than I know Bangalore, read 2 autobiographies( my tastes have become progressively tame and boring over time), watched lots of movies on TV and generally goofed around with the bongs and the hyderabadi.
And my hair is just four inches long.
posted by Rajesh @ 10:58 PM
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