I started with a joint venture with a British company. My first challenge was to transfer technology from UK to India for my company and develop the products (water pumps) here.
I was in-charge of product development, technology transfer from 1982 to 1985-6. It was a large pump manufacturing unit and over nearly 4 years, we transported technology for over 160 pumps.
It was a real challenge as my collaborators insisted that we gave the same performance parameters as designed, as achieved by them.
There was one person handling the design part of it. I was handling the entire project from the time the drawings were handed over to product manufacturing & getting it tested. There was another colleague who was making what we call – the patterns. So after the drawings are made, the patterns are created, then the castings are made, followed by machining, making the pumps, testing them, & making any corrections. After that, we talk to our collaborators and find out of there are any deviations – find out what are the possible causes, improve upon it and see that we achieve the same performance as the Britishers have achieved.
Since this was a joint venture, there was already an existing plant. They gave us the part drawings and pump drawings. Our job was to make the parts as per the drawing and the pumps as per the specification. And out of the 100 pumps, nearly 50-55 pump components we had to send it back to the principal company in Scotland where they would assemble it and sell it across Europe.
We did not have any constraints in terms of either technology or facilities in order to manufacture such pumps. We were based between Chennai and Coimbatore which were the pump hubs of India. So there was no problem on the execution part of it.
The most important factor in ensuring we met the expected standards was of attitude. We have got to accept that you want to make the best product and have that confidence in yourself – that you won’t compromise.
There are times when the people would say. “Ye design hai, bana dete hai” or “just de dete hai”. But I would always know what was going on as I was constantly interacting with them – checking that the designs are verified and that we were absolutely confident that it can be manufactured. If we accept the ‘chalta-hai’ attitude, then we are gone. I have seen this in other companies where people just accept things! It is not because of incompetency or lack of capability. If you are determined to achieve, “That yes, I will achieve the best; then you can do the best”.
Even on the process side and on the testing side there are these issues. They would manipulate the test results, they manipulate the dimensions and send it to our partners.
I would say if you have made a mistake, it is a mistake. If instead of 79 % efficiency if I am getting only 78.2 then I ask them to tell me why are we falling short of 0.8 %. Then the collaborators would ask us to send us different kinds of information, data, dimensions etc. After we send, they would tell us that you have probably gone wrong in this aspect. The dimension is 8.99mm but it should have been 8.33mm so correct it.
It was this constant interaction and honest commitment that led us to achieve this. We would keep exchanging a lot of information, until we achieved it.
In fact in certain cases, we were able to get better performance than they got in Britain. For example, we have basically sand casting and investment casting and various such types of casting. In some cases, we would feel that the losses can be improved if go for investment casting instead of sand casting (something they haven’t done) but if we went for it and it reduced the losses and gave us the benefit of another 1% on efficiency. Such decisions were entirely left up to me and my boss was very co-operative and trusted me on all such factors. So that was a big help.
Even I am not sure what motivated me to do all this, but till today I have this approach that I won’t compromise. Even the team I picked was like that. I hand-picked 3-4 people with such an attitude from the shop-floor. That helped us succeed.
In the long-term such an attitude pays back. In an industry like the pump industry where it is basically B2B sales and you have customers who are big corporate customers who use your pumps and you work with big industries. It pays back.
Even when you are selling, you don’t have to really compromise when you start talking of about your product. And ours was a well-known brand in water pumps and to some extent process pumps. And it was when we established that, and we have all big time consultants coming in for inspection. Then when we started selling it in Indian market and we could easily achieve what we have committed. It was a big plus point for us. In the long run it pays off. But you make short run compromises; you will struggle in the end. That’s what my experience is.
Contributor Dimension: Striving for quality & improvement in one’s work. The following aspects demonstrated in the above example: - Adhering to specifications with precision & accuracy. - Working with a sense of pride in one’s work, doing a great job with excellence - Raising standards of quality for ourselves https://contributor-context-library.illumine.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/01-LSahoo-Transcript.pdf