Digital COPQ

I went to the municipality office of a metro city for the birth certificate of my grand daughter.

Process steps that I'd to take were as follows.

Step-1, For enquiry, I went to a window that was closest to the main entry. They directed me to the ENQUIRY window that actually wasn't visible moment you enter the office.

Step-2, On my turn at the 'window' that I was directed to (by the ENQUIRY window) 'asked' me the date of birth of the newborn.

Step-3, The 'window' danced her fingers 'takaa-takaa-tak....' on the keyboard. Kept looking at the screen while 'she' sipped some water reaching out for a sippy-bottle kept on a shelf a couple of arms away. Fortunately, she got the details online.

Lucky that the information from the hospital had reached the municipality office digitally!

Step-4, She gave me a printout of what she saw on the screen.

Told me to go to ENQUIRY window and enquire 'what next'.

Step-5, ENQUIRY window 'told' me to go & take a set of forms from 'that corner', fill name details of the child if naming ceremony is already done & then submit it to the first 'window'.

Step-6, I did so. Filled the forms.

Step-7, Submitted the forms to the first 'window' alongwith the printout given by her earlier. The first 'window' then told me to submit parental identity proofs online. And, to collect the birth certificate online "after the name of the newborn gets registered" two-weeks thereafter.

(Add a few sanitisation steps in-between!)

Step-8, All the above in about a couple of hours; home-to-back-home via the municipality office!

This of course, followed by the ritual of sanitisation & a full bath (the second one of the day) ... in another hour or so!

An hours' nap induced by the tiring drive under the scorching Sun!

Step-9, After getting up, I tried to login to the website but in vain! 

Another, couple of hours wasted. 

Perhaps the website was taking a nap then. 

Step-10, Now, I'm trying to get in touch with an agent and keeping my fingers crossed. 

The labor of the mother was easier, I think!

Worth researching the NVA and the COPQ in this so-called supposed-to-be online digitisation process?

Meanwhile, I am unable to understand the following.

- What was the need for me to drive 40-kilometers to-n-fro under the scorching Sun at 44-degree Celsius?

- What was the need of the ENQUIRY window in the process for the work that could've been told to me by the first 'window' itself?

- Is it that the process-designer of this digital process forgot to consider eliminating such NVAs (which is actually an inevitable step if a Lean-Kaizen-JIT Gemba-exercise is undertaken before any such digital exercise)? Or

- Is it that the VOC & the 3-D in the process (COPP, cost of poor processes) was not 'heard' adequately? Or

- Is it that the additional 'window' step was 'intentional' and on that particular day the intention got skipped inadvertently?

- Why was the sippy-bottle not kept within an arms reach (application of the orderly arrangement principle of Seiton, the Five-S system) unless of course she wanted some exercise by-design? A good thought if the latter was true! 

But, why was the ENQUIRY window itself away from the main entry door? (Missing Seiton because missing Gemba approach to Kaizen and the PDCA-audit of the Gemba itself post any such change initiative!)

About the location of the window itself, good that I didn't dare to INQUIRE!

I wonder the costs (Digital-COPQ) associated with such poorly designed digitisation initiatives particularly being during the COVID times, when in order to curb it everyone is on the journey to eliminate every possible touch-point! The Digital-Corporate-Yoga in its true sense!!

Abbreviations:

COPQ, cost of poor quality

COPP, cost of poor processes

NVA, non-value-activities as Wastes

VOC, voice of customer

3D: Dirty-Danger-Difficult

JIT Just In Time

PDCA: Systematic improvement approach Plan-Do-Check-Act

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder:

Do You Force Customers To Quit
In-a-problem ? No-problem! Dwell-a-while!
Customer or Custo-Mer ?  
Experienced A Delightful Payment ! 
An Experience of Heart-and-Soul 
Do you keep curing your brand ?  
A customer gets what s/he deserves: Shoddy Quality!  
Listen to iceberg of VOC to acquire customers 
Less With More And More Gets Sore 
Should one care for value ?  
Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation
Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 
Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice?  
The Business Of Businesses 
That's how some business partnerships work 
Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 
Strategise To Achieve Targets Daily 
Does recognition really matter 
That's How Morons Work
Simplicity Of Theory Of Relativity

Difference between raam-&-krishna tactics

Digitally Lean, Physically Fat

Just heard from a marketer about Digital-Lean! that he was trying to sell. No wonder there's a pull of  IOT (internet-of-things) all around now.

Seems to be a new jargon though, like Lean-Six-Sigma that evolved while maturing the Six-Sigma initiative of Motorola, GE, et all.

Such jargons that evolve, rather 'revolve' at regular intervals confuse the practitioners.
That was a point of my contention in one of my books 'Stay Lean, Make Planet Green".

Proponents of various management techniques (under jargons) such as BPR, TOC, 6-Sigma, etc. in past advocated hardly anything different than the original JIT thinking itself of Toyota to attain Lean. Nothing is wrong with these approaches except a major difference that the same proponents tried to catch up with either under different jargons or under a few augmented versions.

Most of these approaches focused on working top-down on obviously visible problems (as the links of a steel chain, say, that had already given way) that had reached a crisis stage. Naturally such crises problems demand radical changes. JIT philosophy instead, as a preventive culture, exposes potentially weak (but so far ‘invisible’) links before they actually turn weak and before they give way.  

Apart from the above, the 'people' aspect of problem solving (the Hitozukuri) also got ignored in the former approaches in their enthusiasm to invent newer mathematical models, tools and jargons.

Behavioral part of JIT instead builds and nurtures an army of soldiers capable of exposing and fighting potential weak links. Thereby it preempts failure of the process of making and delivering (the Monozukuri) of the offering.

So, the Fad-of-the-day, Tool-focus is the culprit of confusion, if any.  

Only when it was realized that the 'Toyota approach' is 'much more proactive' and ‘heart-full’ than what met the eyes and gray cells of a few fly-by-night consultants on a study mission to Japan, that the ‘augmented’ versions of their management tools appeared on the horizon of  the management world.

After the Re-engineering as a tool; to BPR; to Re-engineering of Management, etc.; the latest example is the re-christening of highly digitized statistical '6-Sigma'! It was jargonised as 'Lean-6-Sigma' having realized that '6-Sigma' as a measurement was already in use at Toyota. 

Exactly on similar lines, Toyota already had its very own invented SIS, strategic information systems technology in the 1960s. Toyota did the IOT (internet of things) in its own way then. It had its own towers in order to telegraphically release management information so that they could respond to market needs just-in-time, JIT.

They knew that information systems with speed is an integral part in order to be a leaner company. So wherever possible and needed, it was a necessity to get over the bottleneck speed of  physical systems by installing digital systems in order to exchange information in real time as far as possible.

So to that extent, to the extent of available soft technology then, the lean journey at Toyota was already digital.

Today when I heard about Digital-Lean! I thought of cautioning the practitioners not to confuse themselves with it as a jargon. If they do, then the fate could be that the Digital! may get installed but the Lean! may still stay flat and Fat! or rather Fatter! to the extent of the investments made in going  Digital! without correspondingly justified returns (or benefits) over it.

Know that digital was always existing. It's its continual improvement and its development that the today's developed level of Digital! needs to be looked at. It is an integral part of the lean journey anyway.

For instance, going digital in today's context may call for aiding the physical Kanban by E-Kanban wherever possible in support of the physical Kanban (rather than to replace it). The E-Kanban is about the electronic information system about 'when and where to deliver what and how much, etc.' It was earlier existing anyway in terms of a physical card, physical stock management fixtures of needed material and corresponding visuals, etc. Both are supposed to prevent excessive stocks & the resulting wastes!

Another example of going digital in today's context is about the use of RFID tags to sense movements of physical resources during their flow across the supply chain or the value chain.

Or it's about digitally monitoring of the conditions and status of the resources like done using sensors to monitor equipment conditions on-line and using them for decision making (using advanced analytics and statistical analysis of big data) in real time.

But of what use the borrowed 'digital' brain (the digital analytics of data in soft form) is when the real brain 'walks over' (ignores) the real hard data: The data or the hard facts about the probable abnormalities in their seed stage that could be seen, heard, felt, tested (and also tasted) and sensitized in real time?

That's exactly where the caution is.    

                  

                    'Smile-day’ The October 2^nd: Smile!

That's where there's scope for the Digital! to get decimated to be a 'Fad' or 'Flavor of the month', 'Flavor of the week' or 'Flavor of the day', etc. It's much like celebrating such ‘fad-days’ as jargons if people celebrate going Digital! but in reality stay Fat! with problems surrounding them!

Rather than advocating 'fads', a good coach called Sensei in Japanese would handhold, guide and steer the learner to clear off anything that's unsustainable.

So let Digital Lean! evolve and get installed as a matter of strategic need rather than it getting installed to appear modern.

Otherwise it might get easier to digitally smile (as a typical robot would do) while in real world it might still be a physical frown. 

It happened once while I was flying on an airlines! The choice of seat with it's features was a 'window-seat', perfect as it was shown on the computer screen while booking the ticket. But in reality the seat did not have a window at all! 

The last seats normally don't have a window!!

Also read a few relevant blog-posts here-under: Please do consider leaving a comment or consider sharing this post.

Kaizen, even in air!

Digital Corporate Yoga

In a Problem?: No Problem ! Dwell A While !! 
Soon... Waste-to-Eat ! Sea-to-Drink !!
About my first book World-Of-Kaizen

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation
A customer gets what s/he deserves: Shoddy Quality! 
Listen to iceberg of VOC to acquire customers
Make It Simpler, Rest Will Follow 
How To Make A Difference 
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms ! 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Will It Work Here?  
Some Moron ! Some Great !!! 
That's How Morons Work 
You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable 
Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass  
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 
Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation
Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 
Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice? 
That's how some business partnerships work 
Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 
Technology in-place, security dis-placed
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important?
Customer or Custo-Mer?  
Experienced A Delightful Payment ! 
An Experience of Heart-and-Soul 
Less With More And More Gets Sore 
Should one care for value?  
ABCD of India Shining
Beware Of Political-Presentations 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Hoarders Of Filthy Hoardings

Digital Corporate Yoga

I was excited when I first read about Smart cities in India! 

My city Thane (with probably the highest floating population in India) was among the shortlisted ones.

With a caveat, I feel the 'local' or layman's understanding of the 'Smart' goes hardly beyond digitally automating and monitoring human and material activities. To some prosumers and politicians alike, it's about 'showing' that we also do not lag behind in IOT (internet-of-things), in digitally connecting (and networking of) everything (devices, people and resources) everywhere in real time. In Kaizen parlor, the IOT is supposed to connect each Gembutsu at each Gemba in Genjitsu time.

In reality, Smart city initiative is supposed to be much more than synthetically planting 'digital' over its current level of physical existence. It's supposed to go to the higher level of physical, social, political, economic, 'emotional', 'mental', and 'spiritual' existence as well. I call the initiative as the Digital Corporate Yoga of the cities or rather of the universe!

I think it's of no use to call such cities Smart unless the digital progress helps them, the people (all stakeholders) and the cities alike, to evolve and get holistic experience of value.

Smart cities are supposed to house smart companies as well: the ones that are lean, digital internally and digitally connected externally to their value chains upstream as well as downstream.

Yes; being digital and lean, or in short each constituent of the smart city being digitally lean, is important.

But it's like, crudely say, the Digital or Soft or electronic form of Monozukuri that can be facilitated only through Hitozukuri as in case of smart companies in Japan. Without human involvement nothing can work as desired!

Monozukuri is about making products (rather making great offerings of products as well as services that add value) through Hitozukuri. The latter is about involving and 'making' (rather developing) people without whom Monozukuri is nearly impossible. Implementing both Hitozukuri and Monozukuri simultaneously as integral and complimentary concepts (see book 'Stay Lean, Make Planet Green') is the essence for any improvement initiatives to be sustainable at that. It's no different for digital initiatives! 

Why is it so, particularly in case of digital initiatives? 

Why do some people can't go beyond using an advanced IOT-capable smart phone (only) for socialising at higher speeds rather than for improved productivity?

Rather it's about their logical sequencing: 

The answer is in the roots of the questions such as follows!

Why do people keep going back to using Excel sheets in spite of expensively installed ERP systems in place? Or 

The answer is: Lack of Hitozukuri! 

Any ERP system in a company (be it expensive or otherwise) finds it difficult to succeed in it's true sense (to deliver the expected  levels of performance, as initially desired when the same was marketed by the suppliers) in absence of 'involving and preparing' people for the same. Same would-be the case of smart (digital) cities too! 

It's like taking up a high-tech flyover to speedily 'flyover' the problems left unattended below it, back once again to land into the traffic jam at the other end. (Extract  from Book "Stay Lean Make Planet Green, The Toyota Approach" by Shyam Talawadekar)

Smart cities will happen if people learn to take care of every little thing just like they would do for their hard earned penny. They must learn to prevent waste of any resource however insignificant it may appear to be like, say, to care for even a drop of water! 

In short, they must learn to put basics in place!

So to me, Digital Corporate Yoga is about both the Monozukuri and Hitozukuri coexisting. 

The horse before the cart; 
The Hitozukuri before the Monozukuri; 
The Smart people before the Smart cities!

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or consider sharing this post.

Digitally Lean, Physically Fat  Kaizen, even in air!
In a Problem?: No Problem ! Dwell A While !! 
Soon... Waste-to-Eat ! Sea-to-Drink !!
About my first book World-Of-Kaizen

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation
A customer gets what s/he deserves: Shoddy Quality! 
Listen to iceberg of VOC to acquire customers
Make It Simpler, Rest Will Follow 
How To Make A Difference 
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms ! 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Will It Work Here?  
Some Moron ! Some Great !!! 
That's How Morons Work 
You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable 
Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass  
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 
Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation
Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 
Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice? 
That's how some business partnerships work 
Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 
Technology in-place, security dis-placed
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important?
Customer or Custo-Mer?  
Experienced A Delightful Payment ! 
An Experience of Heart-and-Soul 
Less With More And More Gets Sore 
Should one care for value?  
ABCD of India Shining
Beware Of Political-Presentations 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Hoarders Of Filthy Hoardings

Can you do it like the likes of Suzuki and Toyota?

What is common between Maruti-Suzuki and your workplace?

A car every 12.5 seconds!
That’s what Maruti-Suzuki did in the year 2010!
There are plants around the world who may be making one every 1-second!!

What is important is answering the question, whether the corresponding plant are agile and flexible enough to adjust to the change in the rate of the demand from the market.

Yes companies like Suzuki and Toyota do it.
In their parlance this is called as running the plant by adjusting it to the tact time.

TACT is about ‘Time Allocated (by the customer) to Complete the Task’. During the process of fulfilling the customer demand, produce just-in-time (JIT) i.e. nothing more, nor less than what is desired by the customer. While doing so, their employees look for day-to-day problems as opportunities to improve and uproot the causes thereof to prevent their recurrence elsewhere as well.

In fact, not only Suzuki but many other excellent companies run their business learning from the TOYOTA (Kaizen Management) Way!

You can do it too!
You can create similar benefits specific to your business, customers and in fact for all the stakeholders as done by Suzuki and Toyota!!

The Kaizen way¹ of running an organisation is implemented there in a structured way.

Like in Maruti-Suzuki, Kaizen has improved quality and productivity in many organisations like Mahindra, TATA, etc. Kaizen made their processes leaner and faster to deliver in response to the ever-changing and pressing customer demands. It improved efficiency of (man, machine, material and space) resources, pruned  their costs besides achieving near-zero break-down, near-zero defectives and thereby near-zero customer complaint levels. All this is achieved at improved safety levels, reduced pollution and improved employee morale, motivation & involvement.

The journey (be it in manufacturing or service industries, from pin-making to air-lines or from hospitals to hotels) involves three stages.

First, the companies have to benchmark themselves against their past performance.
Then, they have to benchmark themselves against the best practices and companies in the world.
Third, the companies themselves have to become benchmarks worthy of emulation by others.
To achieve such a transformation, what is needed is making a beginning by transforming thoughts that you too can!

Also read a few relevant¹ blog-posts² hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or consider sharing this post.

Footnote-¹
Prevention: The Best Cure! ... Is it really so? 
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms ! 
You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable
When Safety Becomes Sorry
How Many Times Do You Wash Hands
Judge If It's Paralysis-By-Analysis

Make checklists your friends 
Can-changing-thoughts-change-nation?
In-big-problem-wear-hats-to-solve-it 
Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 

Footnote-² ... Other relevant blogposts
Strategise To Achieve Targets Daily 

Old-Problems, New-Reasons !

Ant Knocks Elephant Down 
Will It Work Here?
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important 
Talent-Is-Latent: Enable It! 
Judge If It's Paralysis-By-Analysis 
Will It Work Here? 
Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy 
Does recognition really matter 
Who Comes First: Consumer Or Customer ? 
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms ! 
ABCD of India Shining 
Do You Ask Right Questions?
Am I 'Short-sighted' or 'Long-sighted'? 

Who Comes First: Consumer Or Customer ? 

Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy

Comprehensive-Strategic-Audits

Kaizen to overcome procrastination!

Caught a Kaizen
Delayed procrastination

Shunned hallucination

My above Haiku reminded me of the following quote....

Hallucinations are always evidence of cerebral derangement and are common phenomena of insanity. - W. A. Hammond

That's what the state of mind I used to experience whenever I used to step into my office-cum-library. My library is full of books, some bound photocopies, some box-files full of scribbled newspaper cuttings, and some full of case-studies, some manuscripts (including of my own), etc. spread all over the office in various pockets.

Let alone the sight of it, mere thought of visiting it, used to put my mind in disorder. It used to remind me of the pending work, literary in particular, and drive me insane. And then the shortcut used to be to procrastinate!

One day I thought of an instant solution... that of committing to apply Kaizen techniques to become leaner that I taught to others.

Few years ago, on this decision, the first thing I did was to make the office itself redundant over a few years.

In the first year, I forced myself to reduce it to ¹/3rd its original size and rent out the balance.
I did it by being ruthless on some documents that I hardly touched over a few years.
I got the rest of them all closer to each other to accommodate in half of the ¹/3rd space leaving the rest ¹/2 for sitting (and for packing our publications for onward dispatch).
That means so far I was wasting space utilization by almost 67 percent.

Next year onwards I stopped going to the office as a typical office goer.
In any case half my time involves travel in field. Technology made it possible for me to work rest of the month from wherever I was even from under a tree.
That means I was wasting time in logistics.

What did I do to my writing work...... The series of books that were in pipeline! My blogs! Tweets! Facebook, G+ and LinkedIn postings, Haiku, etc. etc.

That's what it was for which were all the funny collections in my library.

First thing I did was to remove all the etc. etc.
I decided 'to be' only on a couple of platforms in social media.

And of course to be Theme-based on that.

That helped me to prioritize the things that I 'must and need to do' rather than that I would 'want to do'. That gave me some time to allocate for writing the pending books.
Here's also an answer to why I 'hide' myself and avoid some non value calls on me.

I broke the writing work into a few palatable pieces. I compiled corresponding papers from the library into smaller files and brought them home. Scanned some for some focused writing that I could do anywhere during travel as well. Mission 'Zero laptop and desktop use' allowed me to use EVERNOTE app innovatively for the 'office under a tree' concept.

After completing the writing work (including publishing some blogposts) the papers and files were discarded.

In short, I applied 5-S on physical as well as on mental processes.
I learnt to 'Switch-On' and 'Switch-Off' at will.

I split work into small pieces that could be accomplished in bits and pieces each day, if not each hour, enjoying booster doses of small accomplishments at regular intervals.

Some tweets and Haiku poems that I could write instantly got converted into blogposts. Both together got converted into Facebook and G+ postings with relevant pictures that I took during travel. Some blogposts got compiled into chapters for the pending books.

In fact I started enjoying living in terms small bites of a few minutes together in order to 'just do it now and here' instead of being bogged down under the pressure of a large project of writing a book over a longer period of a few years say.

I didn't worry too much about mistakes and grammatical errors.
Kaizen approach created multiple chances for me to improve in next PDCA cycle. I could for instance always revise my tweets as well as blogposts.

The process is still ON until I make my remaining ¹/3rd office also redundant!
No doubt it was with some failures.
Although initially I feared failures, I learnt to get over them by working on their causes and committing to work upon failure modes adequately next time.
The PDCA cycle of Kaizen allowed me to forgive myself in the process!

In short,

Be leaner. 
Apply 5-S.
Use technology.
Focus on priorities.
Break work into a few palatable pieces.
Take and complete one piece at a time.
Don't fear mistakes and failures.
Revisit... Be a learner.

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or sharing this post.

Kaizen, even in air!
In a Problem?: No Problem ! Dwell A While !! 
Forgive Or Don't? 
Soon... Waste-to-Eat ! Sea-to-Drink !!
About my first book World-Of-Kaizen
Listen to iceberg of VOC to acquire customers 

In-big-problem? Wear-hats-to-solve-it!

Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 
Strategise To Achieve Targets Daily 
Does recognition really matter 
IQ-EQ-or-SQ: What-is-more-important?
Do you know a Best-Career-Plan 
Take your career in fast lane! 
Succession-Plans In Fast Lane!  
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms ! 
Nauseous Communication Gaps 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Raam or Krishna-Shyam: Tell me Hey Raam! 
Will It Work Here?  
Some Moron ! Some Great !!!   
That's How Morons Work
You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable 
Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass  
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 
Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy 
Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation
Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 
Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice? 
Make checklists your friends  
Make It Simpler, Rest Will Follow 
How To Make A Difference 
Big-Be Or Bug-Be ! 
A customer gets what s/he deserves: Shoddy Quality! 
Listen to iceberg of VOC to acquire customers

Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms !

"Green tax of Rs 20 crore in kitty, but pollution in Thane remains high!"

This news that I read while sipping tea after a long drive of over 100 kilometers across Mumbai and Thane, reinforced writing this blogpost and its title.

Actually I had already begun to write this blogpost on studying various signals over a few days. Only some of them had 5...4...3...2...1... 'Second-tickers' that indicate time in 'seconds' the next signal would show up. 

More than half of almost a hundred signals that I studied didn't have 'ticking countdown timers' nor were they visible except to the first row of vehicles.

Purpose of the 'ticking' is to provide transparency so that speeding vehicles could predict when to halt and stationary vehicles could 'start' their engines just-in-time. Former would prevent accidents. And both, the former and the latter, would save fuel as well as pollution by preventing idle running of engines.

So it's not necessarily the old vehicles that cause pollution. Attitude of drivers in spite of the infrastructure such as above (or the lack of it) also contribute their might. Even new vehicles holding 'pollution-in-control' certificate 'vomit pollution'. 

Causes may be many that need to be treated at root cause level. It's actually easy and less expensive to do so.

Lack of proper maintenance, for instance. 

Attitude of 'managing' to seek pollution certificate.

Fitting 'timers' at all signals or fitting them at visible level.

Marking an area at busy signals (as yellow box-1, 2, 3, say) that indicates those many vehicles within a maked box could pass through a given 'timer-setting' of the signal. So only one batch of vehicles within the yellow box-1 would pass within the fall of one signal. 

Vehicles within yellow box-2 need not race-to-chase since the timer-setting of signal-1 won't be adequate to get them cleared. See the idea in sketch. 

The denomination of the boxes can be standardized in steps equivalent to the units of signal-time so that signal time can be adjusted as per demand. This is equivalent to a 'pitch' in 'just-in-time' or 'lean' operations that bring in visibility. Thereby it will reduce costs such as fuel consumption and pollution in case of traffic.

Installing proper signboards and indicators. In absence of that, many a time a driver ends up getting stuck on signals while he could have easily taken a couple of flyovers to reach his destination without any waiting time. 

This is analogous to a 50-story building employing say four high-technology lifts: one each reserved for going upto 10th floor, upto 20th floor, upto 30th floor, and upto 40th floor respectively; but not having a few pennies worth signboards. A first time visitor might end up landing into a wrong lift and shuttling among lifts and floors. Murphy's law usually takes over in such cases!

Tackling habits of people pressing switches of all the lifts at a time without reading signboards if at all they are readable, is another story of course! 

Shear waste of energy! Many a time road-signs are hidden behind political hoardings full of birthday wishes. 

In short, root cause of pollution is the wasteful human-activity that adds costs rather than value. 

Unless there is a reward mechanism to recognise all those stakeholders who involve themselves in finding out non-value-activities, merely punishing at symptomatic level is not going to be of much help. 

Authorities must listen to their voice on their real time difficulties. Leaders need to go to corresponding workplace (Gemba) in real time (Genjitsu) in order to do so so that they can see the difficulties themselves. They must treat those difficulties at root cause levels rather than merely giving first-aids to symptoms.

In absence of doing so, many more 'crores' might get collected as 'pollution tax' in kitty, but abnormality levels will remain high in multiples of hundreds!'

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder:

Wish To Be Planet-Friendly?: Save!  

Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 

Hoarders Of Filthy Hoardings 

Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 

Technology in-place, security dis-placed

Do you know a Best-Career-Plan 

Customer or Custo-Mer?  

Less With More And More Gets Sore 

Should one care for value?  

Make It Simpler, Rest Will Follow

How To Make A Difference 

Ride To Hell 

Will It Work Here?  

Some Moron ! Some Great !!! 

That's How Morons Work

Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass  

WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 

Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy 

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation

Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture 

Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice? 

Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !! 

Technology in-place, security dis-placed

Will It Work Here?

Other day there was a friendly debate on whether mobile-money service will work in Indian demographics. Although I knew it was offered in India, some apprehensions such as ease of transactions, security, cost of service, etc. kept me away from it. 

One of the debating friends working with a phone-company demonstrated a transaction including registration process within a minute. That's the time I could experience relative ease of accessing it. I could unearth a few difficulties in the process though. But I was surprised why phone companies were yet to speedily target the middle and high income group segment of the market inter-alia which is more likely to adopt it speedily than the mass-market.

If it was "successful across Africa" (as quoted by one of them) with it's inherent diversities and difficulties, then a modified business model should work in India too, I said. It might call for adopting it and differentiating it for the segments within target markets. The marketing-mix strategies may vary depending upon the segments: Demographic, Geographic, Behavioural, Psychographic, etc. Selling would take place as a sequel anyway. 

In fact such a service is a boon to any developing country provided the service is localized, made easier and faster and at the same time needing lesser efforts-n-resources; in short if it was made leaner.

Demonstration to me for instance was done on an Android device. How could it be made user-friendly and agile for various devices with differing features and technologies?

Steps performed were displayed in English language. It called for memorizing a password too. How could it be made easier for the entire spectrum of demographics covering various levels of literacy (using fingerprint lock for instance instead of password), levels of income, population, etc? How could it be made easily accessible to geographical markets?

Based on voice of the target market such as above, 'push'-type personal-marketing like that done to tackle apprehensions of a typical prospective customer like me should have been in place. It is necessary at least until a product & process of using it and educating the customer is made simpler and leaner. Ultimate goal should be to create a 'pull' for the offer for enhanced sale.

Differentiating the offer by bundling it could be an added advantage such as that done innovatively by organisers of a music programme that actually prompted me to write this blogpost. One highlight boasted of in it's advt was: "Mr Tom, Dick and Harry coming together for the FIRST-TIME". The concert was at an inaccessible venue located far from city. So the second differentiation it highlighted was, "Bus service available after the concert".

Dynamics of the 'mobile-money' and the 'music concert' as offerings do differ. But the point worth learning therefrom as denominator for any offering in general is the meticulous removal of hurdles  specific to differentiate it, to reach it to and to grab a particular target market with a sense-of-urgency. One may be able source a lot many innovations to do so if internal stakeholders in particular are engaged in the focused thought process. It should be done ethically though *unlike the concert organisers. Only then it's more likely to work sustainably!

Footnote: *Usually very few customers read between the lines and fewer still catch the 'catch' if any. Knowing such a consumer behaviour unethical organisers capitalise on getting some audience that doesn't bother to read. For instance in case of the concert some do tend to attend for the novelty effect of "FIRST-TIME" without realising that it was of 'unknown' artistes Toms and Harrys. Some also miss checking whether the bus service was free or came with an *asterisk. The organisers in this case seemed sure of getting some such audience.

Here are a couple of mobile-money services in India: Airtel's Airtel-Money and Vodafone's M-Pesa.