Vitalizing PLM initiatives in India

The news item “Cognizant, Invensys forge alliance” (18 Jul 2009; Saturday; The New Indian Express) shows how manufacturing and technology management is gaining ground as a strategic alternative for driving growth in many verticals. While Cognizant has forged an alliance with Invensys, it is yet to be seen how they are going to create an ambience for Indian manufacturing to absorb PLM solutions wholeheartedly.

Being a strong believer in design thinking, here is my view about “Why PLM initiatives do not take off smoothly in India?”

It has been hypothesized that most Indian firms (educational institutes included) have a certain design deficit. As proposed earlier [see the research proposals by K. Sahu and B.P.Panda (2007, 2008)] the design deficit makes it hard for organizations to absorb soft technology. While research is underway to prove this hypothesis, PLM solution providers have to cover significant extra mile in developing viable partnership programs. Doing business through VARs (value-added resellers) as business partners may not be the right solution for most developers of PLM solutions. One key ingredient missing in these partnership programs is healthy collaborative-leadership governed by design thinking. As a result MoU objectives are pursued more in letter than in spirit. Hence they don’t yield the dividends that are expected.

The framework suggested in this paper titled “Using Meta Objects for Enhancing Supply Chain Collaboration” (Sahu et. al. 2002) can be extended to capture the Voice of the Stakeholder (VoS) and then subsequently augment the quality function deployment (QFD) process by facilitating collaborative involvement of the supply chain partners. This will vitalize the PLM initiatives for effective outcomes.

Realizing Prof. Yashpal’s Vision

While the Yash Pal committee has been quite candid in highlighting the ground reality in the Universities of India, the Government cannot and should not think of doing away with the upcoming Deemed Universities. Rather it should create a conducive environment to promote the higher level thinking made explicit in the Yashpal committee report – that of encouraging multi-disciplinary interaction with greater autonomy for free academic thinking. It is important to have greater autonomy in a self-regulatory framework with a competitive environment taking care of the quality needs of the education sector – independent regulators will help to a certain extent in ensuring transparency.

Reengineering the academic processes in old Universities would invite a lot of resistance. The old regulations have always inhibited schools, departments and individuals from looking beyond their parent disciplines. Having created water tight disciplinary silos, it is difficult for the old Universities to adapt to the new mindset of promoting multi-disciplinary interactions.
Unlike the old Universities, however, the new Universities are like clean slates where the idea of a University (as espoused by Prof Yash Pal) can be genetically coded right from the start. Thus instead of making them conform to old regulations, a new innovative regulatory framework should be quickly put in place for promoting free and unfettered academic thinking.

Each individual academic entity in such a University should have the autonomy to look beyond disciplinary boundaries in support of the larger University objectives. Resources ought to be deployed accordingly. The old regulations never encouraged individuals to be growth engines – their ideas were never appreciated. Click on the figure alongside. People with ideas have either left or have withdrawn into their shells. Such situations should not arise in the future Universities of India.

In this connection I would like to highlight the IFEES-GEDC declaration which is a reflection of the changing times where engineers have to proactively participate in promoting a flat world. While this body is promoting the role of engineers beyond borders, there are similar bodies in other disciplines as well (e.g. doctors without borders).

Here is an excerpt from the Paris Declaration of the Global Engineering Deans Council:
1) To provide a world-wide forum for exchange of information and discussion of experiences, challenges, and best practices in leading an engineering school.
2) To provide a means for engineering deans to partner with one another in curriculum development and innovation, and to collaborate with industry, government, and other stakeholders.
3) To build a network that would support engineering deans to play a leadership role in developing regional and national policies to advance economies.
4) To participate in the development and maintenance of a global system of quality standards for engineering education.
[The GEDC’s Paris Declaration]

Related blog posts:

• Prof. Yashpal on Higher Education


• Godspeed to SPEED (on IFEES @KIIT University, Bhubaneswar)

Professor Yash Pal on Higher Education

Professor Yash Pal committee recommendations vindicate my stance on several aspects related to academic processes – particularly on issues related to granting greater autonomy to the individual for various creative pursuits. Here is one article titled "Creating an enabling environment for fostering creativity" written in 2007 for young deemed universities, such as KIIT. Here are few others:

• [2006] Invited article titled "Sensitizing beyond the Science Discipline" Vigyan, The Science Magazine of KIIT Science College, First Edition (April 2006)
• [2006] Invited article titled "Multiskilling the Craftsman" for KUSHALI - The Technical Magazine from ITI, KIIT (February 2006).
  

I have been articulating many of these views even before I joined KIIT in 2005 (some of them are archived in my blog posts: http://sites.google.com/site/kaushiksahu/Home/Weblogs )
The following views (classified under education) were articulated to break the “socio-politico-economic stalemate” that I was sensing in the education sector while at KIIT: http://ksahu.blogspot.com/search/label/Education

I hope India will be able to exploit the opportunities embedded in the Yash Pal committee report with MHRD playing the role of the facilitator.

Here is the full report & The 100 days action plan

Reengineering Indian academic processes

Professor Damodar Acharya’s viewpoints expressed in an article titled “On Growth Mode” (ET Supplement dated 15 June 2009) makes interesting reading - particularly the ones on creating opportunities up in the value chain and a strong bottom-line recommendation for scratching entrance examinations of all kinds. In his capacity as the Director, IIT Kharagpur he says: “Time is ripe to scratch the entrance examination of all kinds, be it for admission to prestigious technical and medical institutions or leading universities in the country.” While it would be interesting to know the details of his recommendations for the admissions process, here is one “out-of-box” suggestion that I had articulated earlier in my blog post titled: “Year of Creativity and Indian Education”

When I was pursuing some links in the Harvard Business Review (June 2009 issue), I came across the following two papers – a must read for these tough times.

As also pointed out in an ET article (by T T Ram Mohan dated 11 June 2009), the first paper titled “The Buck Stops (and Starts) at Business School” by Joel Podolny highlights some shortcomings in B-School teaching: (a) Inattention to ethics and leadership (b) A tendency to teach management in “disciplinary silos” instead of offering a holistic view (c) A focus on theoretical models that do not clarify how organizations actually work and (d) An obsession with school rankings that, in turn, leads to a focus on jobs and salaries in place of the greater good of society. Some of these points I had highlighted earlier in my own blog post titled “Value-Oriented B-School Curriculum”(http://ksahu.blogspot.com/2009/03/value-oriented-b-school-curriculum.html)

The second paper titled “How to be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy” is a good one for creating a just and humane work environment. The author, RobertI. Sutton, is a professor of Management Science and Engineering atStanford University, where he cofounded the Hasso Plattner Institute ofDesign. Interestingly, though my proposal for establishing the “KalingaInstitute of Design (KID)” brought me close to KIIT in 2005, it is yet to be a vibrant reality in the erstwhile state of Kalinga (Orissa).

Musings of a foreign returned Oriya

Today’s editorial titled “Buffalo’s gain, Bangalore’s loss” in the new Indian Express (7 May 2009) took me down memory lane. Read on..

When I moved out of US in 1992, it was because of some early recessionary trends that I found quite disturbing. The trends were based on a few perceptions that I had picked during my stay. One was that of my grandfather who was vehemently against Indians underselling themselves in the US job markets. The second was my experience as a research scholar. Though I eventually got a full assistantship, my first one was a shared one (I don’t remember whether it was a half TA or 1/3rd TA). I silently worried – is this not underselling? Subsequently, thereafter, I worked hard to earn my full assistantship so that I could finish my doctoral research in four years (with the fourth being the most productive in terms of papers). This year also got me a job prospect with GE Kentucky sending me air tickets to finalize a possible job offer. However, before I could proceed, there was a hiring freeze. The GE official was profusely apologetic in requesting me to return the air tickets - which I did immediately. I heaved a sigh of relief because of two reasons – the first one related to my concern for Americans being sidelined in their own country and the second, my own low hassle tolerance limit in going through the immigration formalities for staying in USA on a work permit (which might have tempted me to go for a green card). I badly wanted to return to India. The first reason, however, was more significant. More so because I had seen the emotional conflict faced by some quite tolerant American graduate students during campus recruitments (where Indian students on study visas were taking away the jobs meant for Americans). Corporate America was not showing any concern for these job losses.

Postscript: Some may want to know – How does a person with such a low hassle tolerance limit continue to handle the hassles in a state like Orissa? A state which loves to ignore its own talent for outsiders?

I don’t have the answers yet. Perhaps a meet with the incumbent chief minister will unravel the answers (his late father was my late grandfather’s acquaintance and the above experience was possible because of their respective powerful personalities). Like any other common man of the day, it is not easy to meet the chief minister - more so when our political ideologies are so different [BJD taking a left turn definitely can’t have the same ideologies as that of a BJP supporter (i.e., moderate though progressive right-of-center and not the extreme right)....Please see the footnote inserted on 26 Aug 2009]. However, the only thing apparently common is transparency – but then TRANSPARENCY is a relative term. [Read my blog on Transparency in the Private Sector & How transparent is Transparency International India]

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NB (26 Aug 2009): The recent happenings in BJP are rather quite disturbing. They must be open to dissent and agree to disagree. Accepting constructive criticisms is healthy in a democracy.