Kaizen, even in air!

I asked for a window seat on the aircraft.

She allotted 31-F.

Found that it was not a window seat.
Moreover it was the last seat that couldn't be inclined hence uncomfortable!

When checked the on-board crew clarified that the old aircraft had 30-seats. The new one was redesigned to accommodate one more row in order to improve productivity of the space.

Perhaps the ground staff on the check-in counter didn't know that the new aircraft having 31 rows of seats didn't have window for the 31st row. Also, even if she would've known it, there was no guarantee that the ground crew would've checked with passenger if it was OK if it's a non-inclining seat.

What does this imply?

Improved productivity by value engineering of the aircraft had improved value for business but not for the customer in same proportion. 

May be the ground staff had captured the Voice-of-Customer correctly but failed in execution due to the following.

There was lack of training... Lack of 'screen' on the computer showing the corresponding information, visual map of the seat layout I mean.

The scope for Kaizen!

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

Strategise To Achieve Targets Daily

Make It Simpler, Rest Will Follow 
How To Make A Difference 
Big-Be Or Bug-Be ! 
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? 
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?
Do you know a Best-Career-Plan 
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

How To Make A Difference

What do you do when a dog barks at you? 

IQ, EQ or SQ: What is more important

Do you exercise your choice meaningfully

Success Or Failure: What Do You Like?

Ridiculous Poison-culture versus Maverick Kaizen-culture

You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable

Tolerate Once, Twice, Thrice?

Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy! Why? 

Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !!

Nauseous Communication Gaps 

In a Problem?: No Problem ! Dwell A While !! 

Succession-Plans In Fast Lane!

Functional-Aesthetics

"Almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression." Evelyn Waugh English Writer. 

The concept in this blogpost was triggered by a picture that I saw painted on a wall of Rail Museum in Mysore.

It said: Way to Maharani (Queen) Saloon!

At its first sight, I was reminded of a term usually misspelled in India, Saloon for Salon: the term for a barber's shop.

I wondered what had the painting to do with the rail exhibits. In the wildest imagination, I could think of its links, if at all any, with the hairdressing of Queens of the dynasties in palaces of Mysore and around.

I found myself wrong after looking around for a while. I found the real Saloon. A part of the rail carriage was exhibited there. It was devoted to seated relaxation combined with a dining table: The Saloon!

Anyway, let me take an about-turn now. Let me expand on the thought that occurred to me at the sight of this picture at this site.

Why do people go to a salon: a barber's shop?

Some go for their Functional 'Needs'.
Some go for their Aesthetic 'Wants'.
Some go for "Functional-Aesthetics": This is the term & the concept that had instantaneously occurred to me then at the sight of the painting.

I 'googled' for the term "Functional-Aesthetics" and giggled that it didn't exist.

What is Functional-Aesthetics?

Typically a haircut that's acceptable with reference to military norms is functional.

Actually long hair can be unhealthy as well as dangerous, both in military as well as in other contexts. In military setting in particular, additional reasons of their typical haircut could be to preempt accidents due to long hair, its maintenance, distractions or undesired attractions due to them if stylized, as the case may be, in the warfield. The functions that it is expected to serve makes it a functional haircut.

A funny haircut acceptable only to a small group of trendy people as a fad could be termed as purely aesthetic one. It's generally acceptable as a style for its funny aesthetics more than for the function that it's expected to serve if at all.

On the same lines, a haircut typically acceptable to school norms could fall in the category of Functional-Aesthetics.

In short, 'needs' that stand the tests of an acceptable system's logically acceptable judiciously balanced norms or standards or criteria could be termed as Functionally-Aesthetic.

'Wants or desires' that go beyond such logical norms or criteria could be termed as Aesthetic more than Functional, with reference to a given system. 

A style that adds substance to the function (that it is supposed to serve) without any extra cost to the offering nor to the ecology may also stand the test of being Functionally-Aesthetic: A shirt for instance bought for its extra-large pockets or additional pockets unconventionally located on its sleeve, say, in order to eliminate carrying an extra hand-bag. 

Paradoxically, a functionally-aesthtic offering to be on the right path of evolution should truly lead to multi-functionality in its usage with minimalist use of resources while at the same time simplistic-to-use, maintain & facilitate eco-friendly disposal as a part of its total lifecycle. 

Functionally-Aesthetic offering in general should 'sell' more in the longer run than purely Functional or purely Aesthetic one. Because it offers value; because it offers Total Quality to all its stakeholders. On the contrary, rest of the offerings necessarily need marketing 'push' & overselling too. Or in its absence, the purely Aesthetic may fail to exploit its full potential. 

A Lesson!

If you mindfully observe, you may find that the Mother Nature and its every design itself is Functionally-Aesthetic both in its form-and-fit. It's intelligently crafted Aesthetics! That's why everything natural from food-to-fossil is pure, beautiful, lean, value-adding and valuable. Hope human race strives to maintain it that way. Hope it draws a lesson or two to learn from (it) and invests its finite time in adding value to life rather than destroying it by incorporating the unwanted waste under the disguise of so-called Aesthetics.

Only way to do so is by arresting unneeded human activities and unwise choice/s for want/s that create a materialistic world. Spoiled choices in particular take one away from being Functionally-Aesthetic: The choices that are far from being sustainable!

Here's a MaiKu© poem while on the subject:

On way to queen's saloon
Imagination took off in balloon
Finally landed Saloon in Salon

©MaiKu Is My-Haiku
Freely ideate it's poetic rhymes
Any objective topic it chimes

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder:

Do You Celebrate Mean-or-Green

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-1)

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-2)

Should one care for value? 

Do you exercise your choice meaningfully

What You See Isn't What's Made

You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable

Wish To Be Planet-Friendly?: Save! 

Less With More And More Gets Sore

Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation

That's How Morons Work

Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass 

WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling

Eternally Happy

Eternally Happy: परमानंद

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-2)

While I was forced to challenge aesthetic-design of the cup in Part-1 of this blogpost, incidentally I was heading to conduct a workshop on Value: Value-Engineering and Value-Analysis.

Value-Engineering And Value-Analysis

On one hand, increased cost to deliver same-or-reduced benefits-or-function in an offering implies that the value is reduced. On the other hand, offering the same-or-enhanced benefit/s-or-function/s at a reduced total cost to customer or end consumer means value is increased.

Making improvements with realisation of this re-actively (i.e. after the design is already in commercial use creating trouble for customer) though is about the concept of value-analysis. Realizing this proactively (i.e. making all-round improvements while testing the design itself keeping customer in the loop adequately) is about value-engineering.

Modifying the design of the cup after a customer faces difficulties (as in Part-1 of this blogpost) is about value-analysis. Launching an offering with well-tested trouble-free design by listening to unspoken voice-of-customer and the impact of the design on ecology is about the concept of value-engineering.

Both lead to enhanced value but the later generates more value by preempting the costs that otherwise tangibly incur in case of the former. The round shaped cup for instance preempts the COPQ (Cost-Of-Poor-Quality) incurred by the square-cup design (as in Part-1 of this blogpost).

Look at the shape of the ice-cream glass in the picture. It's an example of value-engineered judicious balance of the aesthetics-with-function. The value created in terms of the aesthetic shape of the glass without interfering with its function is designed-in into the offering.

Need Spills-Over Want

Function is a need: the primary requirement a customer expects an offering to serve.

Aesthetics is a want that is desire-based and is actually secondary requirement or in some situations even tertiary one as in case of coloring hair in VIBGYOR shades or colouring food-grains. I've seen color-coated groudnuts especially in some parts of Gujarat!

A judicious balance of 'needs' and 'wants' is the need-of-the-hour. Rather eco-friendly design of the offerings revolving purely around basic-or-primary 'needs' is actually the 'Survival-Need' of the warming-planet itself.

Most costs to the customer, society, and the planet get designed-in due to inadequate designs of products, services, processes, policies, etc.

So designers and leaders should value the value-engineering more. They should promote corresponding Kaizen improvements so that need for value-analysis at the cost of the COPQ incurred by the customer gets reduced if not eliminated.

In fact they should steer their organisations towards finding and marketing the 'needs' rather than 'pushing' consumerist attitude and habits towards desire-based 'wants'. Such leaders are the real friends of the planet. Those who nurture excessive wants are in a way a burden on the planet.

Greedy-wants push-up unnecessary human activities (non-value-activities). Unnecessary human activities be those at personal level or at corporate business level lead to over-consumption of resources. Over-consumption of resources is like raping the planet if I may say so!

An Exercise

Look at the picture for self-study at a little higher level of difficulty though.

It has five different designs (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) of a nose-mask. Different designs are expected to serve different functions in different situations. You may like to attempt answering following questions:

1/ Which product-design is designed to serve what function in what situation?
2/ Which product-design can serve what function in what situation as an alternative? Justify the "how?"!
3/ In that case, which product-design offers maximum Value? Justify the "how?" with its likely COPQ?
4/ Which product-design is a case of Value-Engineering and which one is of Value-Analysis? Justify the "how?"!
5/ What kind of greed-based 'wants' make the corresponding product a necessity?
6/ What are the 'needs' in the above context? And with what alternatives can we move towards satisfying the 'needs'?

What are the lessons¹?

1/ Let's change our mindsets to value 'needs' more than 'wants' while designing products, services, processes, and policies.

2/ Let's go beyond the myopic vision of running businesses for the sake of 'profit only' as its moto! Visualize the 'profit-for-planet' by viewing life-cycles of products, services, processes, and policies as subsets of the evolving need-cycles.

3/ Unnecessary aesthetic sheen while doing so is a want that does increase unnecessary cost. Enhanced cost does force a compromise on functional quality.

4/ Desire for Wants spills-over Needs and in turn spills-over the planet.

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need !

Unwanted Aesthetic-Sheen

With a desire to be seen
Maketh a Person Mean 

Hi-Cost-Lo-Function: The affair routine 
Defies the very purpose of Lean
That of making the planet Green

Footnote-1: Reader may add tips and suggestions from own experience.
Footnote-2: The recommendation under Five-S's practice in Kaizen.

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder:

Do You Celebrate Mean-or-Green
Functional-Aesthetics

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-1)

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-2)

Should one care for value? 

Do you exercise your choice meaningfully

What You See Isn't What's Made

You seem Reasonable if you appear Un-reasonable

Wish To Be Planet-Friendly?: Save! 

Less With More And More Gets Sore

Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy

Can-changing-thoughts-change-a-nation

That's How Morons Work

Smart-Moron Who Breaks Your Glass 

WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling

Eternally Happy

Eternally Happy: परमानंद

Aesthetics Spills-Over Function, Want Spills-Over Need (Part-1)

Look at cup in the picture carefully!

Can you see tea marks all along the rim? Can you guess the reason of the tea spilling over all along the rim? 

It was due to square shape of the cup that it's content tried to find it's way across the rim while trying to take a sip. In fact it spilled over my shirt since side of the square is longer than opening of the mouth. In case of a round cup however, the flow narrows down over smaller width.

As you may see, the soccer too is so shallow that cup finds it difficult to hold on to it's feet over the soccer. Cup ends up shaking as a result. 

I got delayed for my appointment due to spillage over my shirt that made me rework my 'make-up': a mini crisis!

The idiosyncratic miser in me tends to tangiblize everything specially in case of waste.

Why not? Time as also other resources are money! So the resultant COPQ (Cost-Of-Poor-Quality) of Poor-Design that resulted in such rework, that you may also be able to estimate, bring forward a few lessons.

What are the lessons¹?

1/ Designers should take care not to let unnecessary aesthetics spill over functionality unlike an interior designer for instance. In order to make a guest-room 'look' well-appointed, a poor designer doesn't allow labeling² of utility switches even if it means a guest struggling for the one s/he needs: be it a light, a fan, or hot-or-cold water-tap in a wash room. In fact, some fittings have so fancy looking designs that the user looks like a farm-fresh villager who struggles to use them.

2/ Aesthetic design short of adequate functionality may be able to generate  initial affinity towards a brand but won't be able to create brand-loyalty that is long-term. Although aesthetics may appeal emotionally, without functionality it won't be able to appeal to rationality of the buyer. S/he looses interest in the offering because it fails to deliver value that s/he was looking for.

3/ It's always a good idea to test designs in order to make them simple and user-friendly by seeking customer feedback.

4/ Merely pushing sales numbers by taking disadvantage of emotional behavior of buyer's desire to grab 'wants' is an age old marketing tactic. Marketers should reset their mindsets and refrain from such overselling.

5/ Buyers should counter marketing tactics by basing their buying decisions on rationality rather than emotionalism.

6/ Buyers should buy because 'it's good in serving their purpose' rather than because 'it's good-looking!'

The example that I began with in this blogpost looks trivial. But the message it gives is not.

In order to know the larger purpose that it serves, you may read Part-2 of this blogpost.

Footnote-1, Reader may add tips and suggestions from her own experience.
Footnote-2, This is the recommendation under Five-S's practice of Kaizen Culture.