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Textiledoctoronline.com, Rajapalayam (2026)

03/11/2021

Does serious appearance mean highly professional?
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“He is our manager who is sitting inside that cabin right before us”
The HR staff informed me in a hushed voice not to disturb other persons working in the room. I looked around and could see many staff sitting on their respective seats with grim faces.
“And please wait until he calls you”- saying this the HR person went into another cabin.
That was the first day at my new job in that company.
I looked the manager through the glasses of that cabin.
The eyebrows of that manager were lowered slightly and wrinkled. His eyes were squinting as if reading the small print or seeing through the haze of smoke. He had a straight face as if concealing the impulse to laugh.
I could see no laugh -line on the face. The face seemed to have lost its muscle memory of how to laugh and had forgotten to smile for years.
I could feel a chill running up my spine on seeing that serious appearance.
As I was scanning him, he slowly lifted his head and waved his hand at me signalling to come inside his cabin.
The chill at my spine, then, moved down to reach adrenaline to release epinephrin – a stress hormone- immediately.
No sooner I entered his cabin, he asked me, “So, you are the new supervisor selected at our head office?” The voice was so low-pitched that we must amplify the sensitivity of our ears to hear his voice clearly.
“Yes…. sir”, I replied, may be, monotonously.
I was standing behind a chair, which was in front of his table, as he didn’t signal me to sit. (I had been told by HR not to sit in front of him unless he says so).
“Anyhow, as you have been already selected,” he continued, “I don’t want waste time. My advice is that as you have just come from college, pack teenage naughtiness, playfulness, etc., in a bag and keep it at your home. Here, you must take the work as serious, understand? Now you can go.”
I nodded my head and thanked God as he relieved me without asking further questions.
Very soon I found out that working under him was like a hell.
He callously would push the people, would take credit when things went right, and would point fingers when they didn’t.
He was generally too stingy on praise and rewards.
However, as the company showed good results, our management admired him.
Even the serious looking appearance was considered as being professional.
(You could see only grim and emotionless faces around the company if you happened to visit).
Soon I lost my interest in working in that company and when discussed with my senior, he advised, “See! He (the manager) just hasn’t any talent. He just hides himself in that serious- look-appearance to show our management that he is working hard. Though the results what now he is showing are better, it will not be very long that he will be removed, or he will self-destruct. Wait and see”.
It happened exactly within next one year when some crises hit our textile market. He almost self-destructed by his bad decision and subsequently asked by the management to leave.
With my experience with him and subsequent managers and our Japanese customers, I learnt that in life, there would be situations in which being serious might benefit us.
For example, at business negotiations, maintaining the serious appearance will give us an upper hand. Giggling during the meeting or doing some funny things would certainly make the others think that we are not serious in the business.
However, we must keep in mind that seriousness has its limitations. From time to time we need to loosen up.
“People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing” – Dale Carnegie.
It’s a common perception that fun is something that happens outside of work hours and could potentially detract from our concentration, accuracy and take time away from our daily work tasks.
A sense of fun helps people to have a more positive mind-set, enjoy higher levels of wellbeing and better mental health resulting in lower levels of absenteeism and work-related errors.
When to be serious and when to be funny is an art and it can be learned through practice.
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05/10/2021

Info-obesity
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“Data for data?”

Asked the Japanese guy who had visited our mills from a big trading corporation in Japan.

He, along with his team had been auditing our group of mills to select and confirm the potential supplier for them. (It is needless to say that Japanese would analyse and evaluate the supplier before making him as their potential partner. And, once become partner, they won’t change their mind and the association would certainly be a long term one).

The incidence happened some 25 years ago. As they could understand English very little, they had hired a translator who could speak local language and nihon-go (Japanese language).

I had been enthusiastically explaining them about the enormous data what we were getting through various testing instruments in the QAD, after a small tour inside the departments.

After listening to me patiently, the head of the Japanese team, keeping his face innocent (for me, it seemed like that), asked me.

“Data for data?”

Though his English was poor, the three words with the perfect intonation conveyed a lot of meaning to me.

The translator didn’t need to translate, but the Japanese team-head’s posture and the intonation in his voice translated the meaning of the three words uttered by him as below.

‘Are you collecting the data for the sake of it; or doing any action on them?’

I gave him a perplexed look for a moment. I wanted to reply something, but my voice seemed stammering.

“Yes sir! I mean… no sir! We don’t collect data for the sake of it. We do take actions on them!”

The translator attempted to translate my answer, but the Japanese head, waved at him to stop and signalled him that he had understood.

Fortunately, the head didn’t check whether I knew the meanings of all the data on the test report. Realistically, to be honest, I didn’t know some of them.

Anyhow, we successfully partnered with that Japanese corporation and started supplying our products to them.

Though I had forgotten that incidence, as the days and years rolled, I started reflecting on that incidence when I felt the stress of enormous data which kept pouring on me.

The never-ending stream of e-mails, the endless reports from finance, marketing, cross-functional team through ERP, digital data from latest machineries, and external sources, overloaded me.
The situation got worsened when the digital social media such as Whatsapp, etc., started flourishing. Each department in my mill started their own Whatsapp-group, like QAD, Production, Maintenance, Sales, etc., and made me as one of the group-members.

Though, initially I was happy that I was getting all the data then and there and was enjoying replying promptly, little I knew that it had slowly started engulfing my precious time. I could remember waking up and giving replies in the middle of night.

Slowly our people started to report only complaints and faults they noticed inside the department. There was a rat race about who was making more reports (complaints?) to the management.

The torrent of information that flew seemed like a bad cholesterol which slowly builds up on our body, making us obese, clogging the arteries and finally slowing down our all actions.

To save time, I started skimming over most of the data. Many times, I took bad decisions by skipping some of the important information. The frequency of my visits inside the mill also decreased.

Literally, I was suffering with that INFO-OBESITY!

Cure?

Like for body obesity- eating less and exercising more, I found the cure from one of my mentors that the only way was to filter and manage the data.

When I started telling my people to post solutions along with the problems, one third of the data got reduced.

Then I identified what data was existing in the company and to whom to assign the access-rights to it.

Then, the information started to flow to the right people, at the right point in the process and at the right time.

Then, I slowly analysed each data from the business-objective point of view and found the real data which addressed the key business problems. This helped me to reduce the redundant data.

As there are many ways to reduce body obesity, we do have many diligent ways to manage the info-obesity.
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23/09/2021

Addition by Subtraction
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“Can you have increased value by subtracting something?”
The management coach asked us.

I tucked away myself from the view of the coach, behind a book to avoid the coach pointing and asking me to give the answer.

I could feel most of the other attendees were also attempting to hide themselves like me.

‘How can a value increase if we subtract?’- my friend sitting beside me whispered into my ears.

In reply I gave him ‘How do I know’-look.

After a brief silence, we all could hear a voice from the backbench.
“Sir? If we subtract negative number, we can get added value sir!”
“Well said! You are right” said the coach with an appreciating tone. “So, 5-(-2) is 7. Do you all agree?”, he asked.

We all nodded our heads. I felt ashamed for forgetting this simple mathematics.

“Now, can you think how to apply this equation in our work and personal lives?” -the coach asked again.

‘Oh, man! He is only asking questions!’-I murmured myself.
“Sir! With the reduction, that is subtraction, of dress size, now a days the girls are more beautiful.”, came a reply from a naughty backbencher.

Everybody laughed.

“He is correct. We can apply addition by subtraction in this case. Anyhow, we may still have better examples” the coach said.
An incidence happened in my work life flashed briefly in my mind and I got up and explained.

“Sir, When I was assigned to bail out a BIFR referred mill, I suggested the management to sell 6000 spindle capacity of old ring frames and recommended to use that amount to modernise the remaining capacity. Though, initially, management was hesitant, then, finally accepted. Now, that mill has come out of BIFR and is working well.”

“Good example. We not only subtract machines of less efficient, but we can subtract our people. Jack Welch, the greatest CEO of GE had it right: you should continually subtract out the bottom 10% of your team. Subpar performers drag down an organization. Setting the expectation with your employee base that you will be regularly evaluating and taking out weaker folks and promoting stronger ones is the foundation for a performance-driven organization and strong people culture. Remember, your team can get better not by adding more talent, but by shedding some people or practices that are interfering with or inhibiting your success.”, the coach explained.

“Does dropping a bad and unhealthy habit come under addition by subtraction, sir?” my friend sitting besides me asked with a hesitating tone.

“Yes, sure! Why not? It will certainly improve your health and other resources.” The acknowledgement from the coach made my friend happy. He grinned from ear to ear.

The coach continued, “You know, the 80/20 principle, which suggests focusing your time and effort on the 20% of things that typically determine 80% of your results is another way to apply the "Addition by Subtraction" principle. Evaluate how you use your time and be sure to delegate or eliminate those things that aren't significantly moving your program forward.”

“Sir, what about customers? Should we keep on adding them or do we have any reason to subtract some of them?”, one attendee asked.

“Good question. This can be applied to customers too. Having good customers is a strength to any firm. I have seen some customers who put on their efforts to grow together with the supplier, by giving feedbacks, introducing new items, helping in forecasting, etc. Be willing to fire the laggards, regularly subtracting out the least valuable 5% of your customers who buy small volumes and require allotment of more resources, time, and energy unnecessarily. I have seen many mills who sell their yarn case to case by adding many customers without analysing their worthiness ultimately failed.”

“I think, we need another CEO besides existing CEO”, one of the attendees suggested.

“Who is that?” I asked him.

“Chief Eliminating Officer!”, he replied.
All of us laughed.

Math was never this fun in my school days, nor this productive for me.
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07/09/2021

Opportunity cost- a boon or a bane
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My past life seemed wonderful, and ignorance was bliss, until I found the meaning and application of “Opportunity cost”.

If one is unaware of an unpleasant (!) fact, one cannot be troubled by it- I think.

The moment I started digging into my past life with the power- shovel of “Opportunity cost”, the happiness and blissful peace bid goodbye to me.

“What my life would be if I hadn’t selected Textile course? My father was very keen in persuading me to further my education in medical field. Did I miss that opportunity?”

“What my life would be if I hadn’t joined a mill in India and had worked in abroad like my friend who was doing relatively well?”

“What my life would be if I was married to someone else like another friend who was married to a girl from a wealthy family?” (Am I the only person in the universe thinking like this?)

There were so many “What-if” questions related to my personal life.
I also had such questions related to my textile job.

“What would be the performance of the mill if we (management and I as a manager) had selected imported machineries instead of indigenous ones?”

“What would be the profitability of our mill if we had supplied to ‘that’ customer instead of ‘this’ customer? Because the other manager in our same group had been supplying to that special customer in which there was a huge price realisation and as such his remuneration and name was better than me!”

“What would be the profitability of my mill if I had increased the proportion of value-added yarns from 20% to 40%?”

The list of questions continued boundless.

I had been lamenting about the opportunities that I missed not only in terms of money but also in time, efforts, and other resources.

This had become a habit that I started analysing other opportunity costs in every choice that I was making. And many times, I would stop taking actions on some projects as I could not take any decision on them, which aggravated my actual growth.

I finally sought for my mentor’s advice.

He laughed at first upon hearing my laments.

“See! We all have limited resources and certainly have to decide how are to use them prudently. Good decisions will only be taken if the correct information is available. The fact that there is an opportunity cost to every transaction means that we all certainly face trade-offs in the decisions we make.”

He paused for a moment and searched in my face for any sign of relief. But my face was still grim.

“Please remember, we cannot have everything we want and so to have more of one thing, we may have to have less of another. So, my advice is not to look for too much opportunity costs in every transaction of your decision-making process. The important thing is, never ever attempt to see the opportunity costs lost in the past transaction. You consider the past transactions as s sunk cost, which cannot be recovered.”

Now, I could understand what he was trying to say.

“Also mind that there is no perfect calculation to find opportunity cost. Mostly they are imaginative. We may be lured by the immediacy of promised benefits rather than a pay-off that we fore go years down the road. So, do make use of opportunity cost if you have authentic data of all the alternatives and be satisfied with the decision you made after a careful consideration and work on it continuously for further improvement and don’t search for other alternatives. This is helpful in your personal life also.” He winked at me while saying this.

I smiled and nodded my head as a sign of accepting his advice.
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25/08/2021

The NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome
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“We have tried it before.”
“This is the way we do it here.”
If the above sentences are familiar and we agree, ‘Yes, I have said the above in some or many occasions’, certainly it would have stymied our progress and growth.
Generally, after completion of our studies, and with more years of work experience added to it, we would think that we have achieved a peak in knowledge and wouldn’t budge ourselves to open our mind to learn new things.
I too had such kind of habit several years ago up until I had an eye opener by a Japanese technocrat who visited our factory for auditing.
When he attempted to suggest a new practice, not only me, but my team typically came back with the refrain, “We have tried that before, sir.”
It is so sad to notice that I had corrupted(?) my team members also with that kind of mindset.
We had the notion that we had perfect control of all costs and quality and had the best technology available, further obviating the need to seek alternatives outside the company.
Of course, we had implemented all kinds of systems like 5S, Kaizen, ISO, TQM, etc.
For a week or so, our Japanese technocrat was watching all our activities, noted many data and took many photos.
It was only at the final meeting with him that I could understand at what kind of bad situation my mill had been.
The Japanese technocrat started to present his prepared statement.
“I appreciate your kind efforts in managing the factory well”
(I knew all Japanese would start their statement with good points first and progressively become aggressive in presenting our bad points. So, I waited with my fingers crossed.)
The technocrat continued. “I would like to inform you that perhaps, you are thinking that it is easy to extol the virtues of best practices culture, but….”
He paused for a moment and looked some where to avoid our direct glances and then continued. “But… it is harder than you think to put them in place. In my opinion you have done a sort of sloganeering rather than fervently follow the best work practices. Wherever I looked, you had the posters on the wall which shout about ‘We believe in best practices’, ‘Best practices are good’, and so on.”
Then he showed his power point presentation which showed the system-deviations that he had found in our factory.
Literally, everybody in that room was knocked down by him.
He also showed about the details of another mill that he had visited a couple of months before. He explained that how that mill was better over ours in quality wise, cost wise and productivity wise. And, to my surprise, that mill was not as modernised as ours. I felt so ashamed.
Understanding our feelings, the technocrat attempted to cheer us.
“I didn’t say you are not good. I just showed you that there exist further ways for the improvement. The only thing is you to listen and absorb the best ones. It is quite natural that you are all focused too inwardly and in that process you all missed to notice that your competitors have built a better and cheaper product than you. My request to you all is to have an open mind to find the world of improvement possibilities.
“It is only possible if you genuinely hear the outsider views. The outsider may be a consultant, an adviser, your buyer or even a salesperson. They bring in lots of outside views. I have seen in many mills that the higher authorities just assign someone under them to meet such persons. By this actually they lose a precise feedback or news from the outsider. It is a bummer if they think they would get the information from their sub- ordinates who were assigned to meet the outsiders, as most of the information would be filtered. For me, nobody is not so much busy to not to meet at least some outsiders. I hope, I will see greater improvements in your mill in my next visit.”
As he suggested we changed up our habits and have started to grow instead of getting swelled with bad habits.
Now, you may ask, “What is the connection between this story and the title?”
The bad habit that I mentioned above is called by psychologists as NIH syndrome.
NIH (Not Invented Here) is a tendency for us to avoid things that we didn’t create ourselves. It is often the result of pride that makes us believe that we can solve a problem in a better way than by other’s ideas. This is to have reduced trust in things that we didn’t have personal involvement.
In fact, we create an atmosphere where there is little interest in using ideas from outside sources to improve how the things are done.
Having said that, we should not completely ignore NIH as it has some benefits also. With some of the strategic solutions being developed in-house, we will always be on the cutting-edges in today’s tight competition. However, for this, we should have well informed, skilled, and competitive employees, besides the best technical and technological infra structures.
If we can utilise some of the outside solutions readily, we can save the unnecessary time and efforts of our people being spent in reinventing the wheel again. Their precious time and efforts can well be used in other value- added items.
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15/09/2020

A lazy employee? Don’t worry!
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“See! How lazily he is moving! Its my fate to have such kind of employees in my mill!”, lamented that spinner.

He was taking me into the department to show a new kind of machine that he installed recently. We happened to see a middle management staff who seemed dragging himself.

“There is no reason for whining sir. Lazy people are born leaders!” I said.

He gave me a look which conveyed the meaning, ‘Are you insane?’ and let a sarcastic smile.

I looked him innocently. “It’s real sir! Do you know what Mr Bill gates said?”

Mentioning of an eminent personality for my defense made him to reflect for a while.

“Really! Does Mr Bill Gates support laziness? How could he build such a big monarch with lazy people?” He exclaimed.

“Not every people are lazy in his office. But he said that he would like to choose a lazy person to do a hard job, because a lazy person would find an easy way to do it.” I explained.

After a pause for fewer seconds he nodded. “Though it sounds shocking and crazy, it seems to be true”, he said. And with the same breath continued, “All the gadgets that have been invented are by lazy people for lazy people.”.

We both laughed.

“Those who don’t want to work harder, find out the ways to work smarter. Think of our spinning, how each and every invention and innovation make us lazy, that means makes our work easy!”, I told him.

“Yes, I know! Our mill is 75 years old. I could compare the works of initial and present years… and wow, how much we have developed! But, though they have made our works easy, I don’t accept that they have made us lazy”, he replied.

“Sir, first let’s remove the wrong connotation attached to the word ‘lazy’’”.

“What do you mean?”, he asked.

“Actually, we may divide the persons into four groups like clever, diligent, stupid and lazy. Usually any two characteristics are combined. With Clever and stupid in one axis and Diligent and Lazy in another axis we can have a four -cell matrix.” I stopped and draw that matrix on a paper.

He, on seeing the matrix, said, “Yes there are four groups now. 1. Clever and Diligent. 2. Clever and Lazy 3. Stupid and diligent 4. Stupid and lazy”

“Okay! Among them which group is the best?”, I asked him.

He fumbled for some time. Then, he told, “You tell me!”

“Sir, it is not my view, but, just the result of enormous studies around the world. The clever and Diligent people’s place in the office is the General staff. The stupid and Lazy people are suitable for routine duties. We need to beware of stupid and diligent people who must not be entrusted with any responsibility because they will always cause only mischief. Finally, the best which is the rest of the categories, is Clever and Lazy people. From the studies, it has been found that they possess the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. They are for the highest leadership duties.” I finished my explanation.

“Ok. Let’s all become lazy”, said the spinner winking at me. When seeing surprise marks in my face he concluded, “with an endeavor to become clever alongside!”.

We both laughed together. LOL!
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06/08/2020

A new strategy on compact system
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“I don’t want more productivity with the compact system.”
The spinner said.

I was literally aghast at the first place.

‘I wonder how come a man doesn’t want an increase in productivity’’- I thought looking strangely at him.

On seeing wrinkles caused out of confusion on my face, the spinner smiled and continued, “Tell me why we should increase the production?” He asked me.

“Then only we can reduce the cost per kg and get lowest figure of return on investment”. Though I had replied him about the universal truth (!), I thought I was gibbering on thinking that he would be having different answer.

Out came a laugh from him as an immediate answer.
‘Was my answer wrong or did I say anything hilarious’- I thought.
Instead of speaking further, he opened a spread sheet (EXCEL) in his laptop and turned the screen towards me so that I could look very clearly.

There were many calculations comparing the cost per kg of yarn and ROI among normal machine, suction compact system, and mechanical compact system.

When mechanical compact system was giving a positive and shortest ROI with same production to level of normal machine, the suction system started giving positive ROI only at higher productivity.

“Now, you see here”, he pointed some columns on the spread sheet and said, “The ROI is much better with mechanical system whose productivity is equal to normal yarn than with suction system whose productivity is 10% higher”

“How come?”, I wondered.

“It is all because of the associated costs with the suction system. The prime one is the additional energy consumption not only for the machine but also for the humidification system for the extra heat load. Others are some additional investments required for machinery and manpower for balancing the production and handling it, respectively. By handling I meant creating new market and selling the extra production. Though somebody could do, I accept that I cannot do it.

“On the electrical side, I have to invest on new transformer to handle the extra demand because our transformers have been already loaded to their brim. Again, in that case I need to spend on monthly recurring cost for the additional demand charges. But, in my calculations I have not included all these invisible costs. If I had taken them all, there will not be ROI for suction system at all.” He finished his explanation and looked me up for my comments.

“There may be some calculation errors, or this may be applicable to your mill only”, I commented.

“FYKI I started calculating this only after discussing with my friend who is another mill owner. He had installed suction compact system. He said to me that after installation he found shortage in preparatory which was the obstacle for increasing the production in spinning. He invested for machines in preparatory before finding another obstacle at winding. Again, he invested in winding. Then he found he had to do modification in humidification plants to handle the extra heat loads. Then subsequently he found trouble in transformer which could not handle the additional loads. So, he had to change the transformer and bought additional KVA demand. Ultimately now he is experiencing a cash loss.”

I just interrupted him. “What if there was no need for such investments, if everything what you said is plenty already…”

“It is our fault to keep more preparatory, winding, humidification and high capacity transfer in the name of flexibility to accommodate any kind of counts according to market demand. In my mill and in the mills that I know, mostly the product portfolio has never changed than what has original been designed for many years. If we have such additional capacity, it is sure that we have been losing so many years with the interest on the investments.”

He paused for some time.

I had no words to counteract with him.

Then he letting a heavy breath continued.

“Then I rechecked the compact strategy. I did many calculations. The most attractive one was saving in raw material. But the inferior raw material will affect other quality parameters not only in yarn but also on fabric. I know our buyers very long. There had been not much change in their demands for remarkably high strength. So, with reduced TM in Compact in which even I get higher strength, I am sure I can satisfy their needs. While reducing TM I maintained the same GPS by reducing the speed. This has resulted in 7% overall reduction in EB power in mechanical compact system as against 7% more in suction system. So, my final suggestion is to take the first step of saving the power cost which is significant enough to make the investment and then take on the possibility of increasing the GPS based on mill resource availability.”

Though I did not understand his concept fully, I thanked him for the new information and got on my feet bidding goodbye to him.

This might be the homework for me for the months to come for validating it.
---------------------------The end-----------------------------------

Textiledoctoronline.com

03/11/2021

05/10/2021

23/09/2021

07/09/2021

25/08/2021

15/09/2020

06/08/2020

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