After the Nepotism outrage we have moved to the Boycott Chinese Goods rage. Had already tweeted about my brief honeymoon (11 years) with the manufacturing / product development industry 2 decades back. There was a valuable lesson i learnt then. BE PREPARED FOR THE LONG HAUL

There is a reason why I emphasise it. Nothing comes easy in the product development. Why this now?

We are talking of boycotting Chinese Products. To me there can never be two opinions about it. We should. But are we equipped to do a 100% boycott now or in the foreseeable future?

NO. But as i said earlier we cannot afford to continue this way. Even without the recent fracas this boycott or at the least a large scale reduction in the trade deficit was an absolute necessity. Now it has become a matter of survival.

If that is so why i am a little

circumspect?

It is because of what i see as a lack of ethics and a culture to stay honest and achieve our goals at what ever cost.

In early 2000s when i had got the confidence to take on product development i read a book on Japanese innovations.
The standard stories were on

how japan built its products and hence companies from the war torn economy.

To name some of them -

No metal to make rice cookers - used war helmets and empty bomb shells

Audio cassette tapes - News papers cut into thin strips joined and coated with magnetic material to make

audio tapes.

But there was an interesting story on a chemical - even the book said Japan was never known for its chemicals - as i did some background study for this thread learnt the scientist in question got the nobel prize for that - Gallium Nitride.

People from the 70s and 80s will remember the LED based calculators. The colour blue was never used. It used to be mostly green. There was a race to make them blue. The effort started in early 80s. The book says the scientist could not afford a thermometer with very fine readings

so the scientists used to project the thermometer onto a large wall and further divide the markings to achieve more accuracy.

At the same time i was seeing what was happening in my environment. It is anecdotal. One can take the argument you cannot make a conclusion based on the same. But unfortunately I come across any degree of professionalism in any field. I have worked subsequently in hospitality /

Pharma / Hospital / Wind Power / Realty industries. every time i went into details i was discouraged. People in responsible positions were no where near knowledgeable leave alone in control of their field. But they knew how to manipulate.

But to go back to my original thread

At one stage we were developing a product for a large customer who had bought the technology from a German Company. The German Company had told them we could buy the raw material from us as we had bought the technology from their suppliers.

But this product was essentially like

sambhar. Each sambhar had its own taste. Like that each version of this product had its own qualities.

So this customer had two main tests and we could *cook* our own version of the product and would be accepted as long as we passed these 2 tests. The first test

was a simple one - the product when taken in what is called a Ford Cup has to pour out in a particular time period. This is called viscosity test.

The second was a slightly complex test and was very difficult to achieve. We had our own product development center where we had

highly qualified science graduates. I was responsible for this product but i had no control over these scientists. They used to claim every time that their product met all specs and will go to the client. They will fail spectacularly and i would take the blame.

Finally i stepped into their domain. Their work culture was the first problem. A huge team was divided into three groups. First group would source the raw materials for the batch, ready the equipments, second group would actually run the batch, at best a 4 - 5 hour work

third group will do the tests. then the top scientists would discuss the results and change parameters of reaction. each step was done on one day so a cycle would take atleast 4 days. If everything happened on a clockwork basis

On a regular basis someone or the other would be on leave and the process would get delayed as no one was expected / allowed to do someone else's job.

The group leader could control the team members who had no access to the top management and so not only could but also

actually fudged results. He was just hoping that providence would give him the results the customer wanted. He was not taking any efforts to go in that direction.

So with little more control from my side we approached the customer again. This time our man called from the

customer place after the first day trials and was very confident. The second parameter called Heat distortion temperature was a little complex. We had to make a cubic rod out of our product and them measure the length and breadth. Substituting it in a formula a

weight had to be arrived at. Then the cube had to be placed on knife edges inside an oil and the weight arrived at placed over the rod. The temperature had to be slowly raised to a particular point and the rod had to hold for a minimum time. (Not distort)

Our man was very confident. He said in the formula we use the constant is at least (x) times more than the constant we use. And as we have succeeded with this high constant we should breeze through with this low constant

But the failure was so dismal the customer made me come to their factory and they took classes for me on basis lab running. My man had taken a single reading and the vernier caliper was not even held properly. OTOH they said they took all precautions but still

took 5 readings and only the average was used. From their every act of his was a disaster. The constant we later realised changed because they were using PSI and we were using metric scale (KMS). We were able to reconcile the two constants once the conversion factors for

Pund to KG and inches to Metres was substituted. Then after honest efforts we were able to produce the product and got approval from the client. But it took nearly 4 years for this and the customer never launched his final product.

But why i say this - as Barkha Dutt

would put it as a community we lack certain standards. I never openly criticise but i am deviating from that here. We need to be very rigorous in our standards, never accept poor quality work and strive for 1 generation to reach where China / Japan are today.

If we are loathe to

do that we will never survive. The time to change is now and we HAVE to.

As @ramkumarchari commented on my last thread we need *grit and determination* in long doses. other skills can be acquired but character is something that needs to be inborn and strengthened at an early stage in life

If we fail to do this we would still be alive but only as a distant shadow of what we are capable of.

For long we were a *Cost Plus* economy. We could make a product at whatever cost our inefficient mechanisms could produce and then load a large profit and sell in a protected market. So only the rich could afford most indian products. The super rich imported better products

after paying high duties.

But with the liberalisation starting in 80s and later real opening up of the economy in 90s required a change of mindset in the manufacturing sector.

In some cases it happened. Maruti Suzuki in a tangential way brought in a better manufacturing

culture in the Indian Industry. Interestingly @ksmkkbookscom was a big part of this change. In those days when internet was not available this company was where we would go to get any information on these topics.