The Hindu Business Line : Personal productivity

Rajat Batra's approach won the favour of the board members but the HR head and the CFO looked unconvinced throughout. They had seen many a CEO hoodwink the board before and were curiously guarded in their confidence about the CEO's ability to get them bought by the operational layers of the organisation?

Soon thereafter Rajat convened an `all hands on deck' meeting with over 100 senior and middle managerial personnel. In response to the communication on the commitment made to the board, several ideas emerged that were classified into a 2x2 matrix as laid out across. The goals for personal productivity were derived from the treatment required at the current workplace to post enhanced profits.

Reduce resource intensity simply meant having to spend less time and labour on the workstation as each unit of work passed by. After a simple time and motion study substantial amount of duplicate efforts and controls were eliminated through the enforcement of self-management discipline removing layers of supervision the system had got used to.

Facility upgrade meant the provision of tactical relief to the bottlenecks that kept arising time-to-time including the design of dies and tools, special purpose diagnostic and early warning alerts to obviate needless holdups. The marginal investment involved could well be met out of the savings from reduction in the intensity of resource levels gained from the above.

Capacity creation meant complete reengineering of the process using the principles of `seamless workflow' together with the business rules being baked into the system using the appropriate technology to foolproof and failsafe the operations, releasing a processing capacity in substantial excess of what was considered possible earlier.

Value indexed premium acceleration essentially looked to improving the customer interface that focused on creating a competitive edge for the customer's customer. By getting rid of needless external redundancies, the supply chain shrank substantially in the bargain.

It is only when the HR head raised the question of finding the competencies to execute these goals and the CFO pointing out the lack of provision in the budget to undertake productivity improvement on such a stupendous scale that Rajat understood the source of their scepticism!

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