The story of simplicity

So why did you opt for this technique where you tell a story through the eyes of a trainee and her grandmother? 

A friend of mine said while it’s good that you want to write down your experience, a textbook nobody will read. You have to write it as a novel. I thought it was a good idea to do it that way. I don’t know what came through my mind creating Pavithra and her grandmother.

I thought if I focus on a young lady, here in Chennai, in this environment, it’s would be something unique. So, the idea was born to let the story happen mainly via these telephone calls and the advice from the grandmother. I used the grandmother’s voice to share my wisdom, maybe influenced by my own grandmother as well. But I found this is the right way to convey a message.

For an outsiders view into India, you seem to have got a lot of the local idiom, practices and customs quite right. Is that through your observations of years of working here or did you consult others? 

Mainly by observation one part. Second is by asking my colleagues and my associates about things. How is this interlinked? Tell me more about this and that. I was just keen to learn. I wanted to emphasise the local traditions.

And the tradition is underestimated from my point of view by many Indians themselves. They take it for granted. But it’s a very unique and valuable thing which I really love. The more I understand it, the more I love it.

While Pavithra’s grandmother gives common sense advice to her, one thought that you have attributed too much knowledge to the character of the grandmother? 

I got this feedback as well, regarding mainly the usage of computers. What I want to point out is that even people, when they are older, might have more knowledge than other people think. I always take my mother as a reference.

She’s 85. She still has the urge to learn something new. So, if I give her a mobile, she works with it till she understands it; so, she’s keen to learn. And this is something people do not see. They just see how old you are and that you can never understand technology. 

My attempt was to bring common sense into our artificial complex industrial world, because people are usually pretending to use complex words. I’m coming from a smart factory summit. So many buzzwords. But when you ask them to give a deeper understanding of a smart factory, they cannot answer. I’m looking beyond this mask of artificial complexity.  

Let’s talk about the core of your book? What did you want to convey in terms of the simplification of the manufacturing process? 

The decoupling of the management from the shop floor is, from my point of view, the most dangerous development in the industry. If management cannot convey the key message to the shop floor they are creating more of a distance.

And sooner or later they will be in a bubble. And they will by then be supported by people who are just telling them how good they are, but they don’t see the reality. This is the core message. If you cannot explain this in a simple way, then you need to rethink because no matter is so complex that it cannot be explained.

This is what I tell my associates as well: If you come to me with a problem and it takes you half an hour to explain it, then you have not understood the problem. And if you can explain the problem in two or three sentences, you have the solution with you already. So, don’t dangerously simplify, but spend energy and try to see the core of the problem. 

So would you say that the principles in your book, which talks about simplifying manufacturing processes, be applied universally? 

It’s just one aspect. The second aspect is applying this to management as well, not only the manufacturing process. It’s how the management should act in this system as a leader and this is something that I really have experienced here in Chennai as well. We have banned all computers in management meetings.

Earlier, if we were having a production meeting, every head of department would have a computer, and you would see a lot of graphs and PowerPoints and then you’re just talking about the past. I told them: Guys, we are here to create the future. What happened yesterday we cannot change. We can learn from it, but can’t spend 90 per cent of our time just talking about what happened and whose fault it was. It’s like driving a car looking in the real-view mirror. I said we need to look through the windshield.

I tell them to put the computers away, because everything on display, once they switch off, is wiped out of their minds. Everything we want to communicate we do with a pen and we will ask ourselves the question. is the production safe for tomorrow?

For next week, for next month and for the next quarter? If not, what do we need to do? So this helps the team to solve everything, not me. I’m just the leader of the team, but they have to work on the problems. That was a big breakthrough. 

How did you arrive at the title of the book, Eliya (simplicity in Tamil)? 

I asked my team if there’s a word in Tamil that reflects exactly this? Easy, simple to understand. And then they came up with this, Eliya. I love this word and I love how you can project everything in this world with this beautiful word.