Mass-customization: the Ice-cream wallah way

There is a small but big word in marketing: “Mass-customization”. This means that the products being offered are customised for the masses, not only for some selected few customers. Examples? The Dell laptops; you can visit the Dell website; configure your laptop as per your requirements and then order. You will be able to decide on the price based on exactly what you want. Some level of mass customization are also offered by the automobile firms where you can chose what colour, accessories, and components to get your car with. But for me, the biggest business doing the mass customization is my neighbourhood Mewad Ice-cream wallah.

You want a cone for Rs 5, or 6, or 10? You want fruit salad or faluda of Rs 5, 10, or 15? Do you love a particular flavour? The boy won’t ask any question, he will give you exactly what you want and for how much. This is unlike the ice creams from big firms and dairies where you get fixed stuff and pay fix amount…

Inspired by my operations professor who always give indigenous examples instead of straight-from-the-books stuff...

Book Review: The Goal by Edi Goldratt

I read the book "The Goal" by Edi Goldratt some days back. It was made compulsory for our operations management class. If you haven't read the book yet, I would recommend it to you. It is a novel which is called "Love story of manufacturing" and is based on the theme of Theory of Constraints (TOC). 

I have worked in the manufacturing industry. Though the process described in the book is different from that industry in terms of (batch) manufacturing, still there are methods and insights which can be replicated. Immediate recall would be like importance of and how to reduce inventories, how to handle bottlenecks and exploit them, and culture change by promoting ideas from workers.

I remember when our works manager asked them to prepare a make-shift bridge to reach the inside of the kiln, one which could be removed and inserted much faster, he was actually practicing the right way to treat the "bottleneck". Kiln is our bottleneck most of the time. As the book says, an hour lost on the "bottleneck" is an hour lost for the entire system.

I came to know that many companies overseas which have made reading "The Goal" compulsory for their entire staff. I recommend this book to all in the manufacturing sector.

Title: The Goal

Author: Edi Goldratt

Publisher: Productivity and Quality Publishing, Chennai

Rs: 395

ISBN: 81-85984-13-1

Book Review: 11 Minutes by Paulo Coelho

I have read Paulo Coelho, through three of his other masterpieces: The Alchemist, The Pilgrimage, and Like the flowing river. How was 11 minutes? At times frightening, at times shocking, at times interesting and most of the time daring. It is the story of Maria, a young Brazilian girl who doesn't believe in any boundaries, bindings, standards or societal norms. She believes in going to the extreme, and taking all her decisions herself. A boy she liked in her school tried to talk to her and she refused. And then she never saw her love again. Life taught and she commanded her life, her personal diary was a witness to all. She loved each slice of adventure, and then she chose to become a prostitute in a country far from her own, and gets to understand the psyche of men, women, sex, suffering and the truths of life. In the end, a painter falls in her love and she makes a decision to go with him. I love the happy ending stories. The book covers her moments of truth very well. The book has gone lengths on the how-to stuff, but that is not something that we would remember about it minutes after we finish it.

Some parts that I underlined:

On women:

Beauty, my dear, doesn't last.

Original sin was not the apple that Eve ate, it was her belief that Adam needed to share precisely the thing she tasted.

On men:

The most important experiences a man can have are those that take him to the very limit; that is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage.

She began to put clients into three categories: the Examiners, the Pretty Women type, and the Godfathers.

On relations:

I made my first mistake when I was eleven years old, when that boy asked me if I could lend him a pencil; since then, I have realised that some times you get no second chance and that it's best to accept the gifts that world offers you.

If I must be faithful to someone or something, then I have, first of all, to be faithful to myself.

Now, though, I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.

On her profession:

She discovered, to her surprise that one in every five clients didn't want her in order to have sex, but simply to talk a little.

When she realised that releasing tension in the soul could be as lucrative as releasing tension in the body, if not more lucrative, she started going to the library again.

For a prostitute, the kiss was sacred. Nyah (her colleague) had taught her to keep her kisses for the love of her life, just like the story of sleeping beauty.

On history of prostitution:

Prostitutes appear in classical texts, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in Sumerian writings, in the Old and New Testament. But the profession only started to become organised in the sixth century BC, when a Greek legislator, Solon, set up state controlled brothels and began imposing taxes on the skin trade.

The Greek historian, Herodotus, wrote of Babylonia: "They have a strange custom here, by which every woman born in Sumaria is obliged, at least once in her lifetime, to go to the temple of the goddess Ishtar and give her body to a stranger, as a symbol of hospitality and for a symbolic price."

On loneliness:

Human beings can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings. Like her, these men, and the many others who sought her company, were all tormented by the same destructive feeling, the sense that no one else on the planet cared about them.

Art of gift giving:

She placed the pen gently in his hand. Instead of buying something that you would like to have, I am giving you something that is mine, a gift. A sign of respect for the person before me, asking him to understand how important it is to be by his side. Now he has a small part of me with him, which I gave him with my free, spontaneous will.

When she decides to leave her profession:

I don't care whether it was once sacred or not, I HATE WHAT I DO. Its destroying my soul, making me lose touch with myself, teaching me that pain is a reward, that money buys everything and justifies everything.

No one around me is happy; the clients know they are paying for something that should be free, and that is depressing. The women know that they have to they have to sell something they would like to give out of pleasure and affection, and that is destructive.

Pain for pleasure or peace..

You experienced pain yesterday and you discovered that it led to pleasure. You experienced it today and found peace. That's why I am feeling you get used to it, because it is very easy to become habituated: it is very powerful drug. Pain is frightening when it shows its real face, but it is seductive when it comes disguised as sacrifice or self denial. Or cowardice. However we may reject it, we human beings always fid a way of being with pain, of flirting with it and making it part of our lives.

Does a soldier go to war in order to kill the enemy? No, he goes in order to die for his country. Does a wife want to show her husband how she is? No, she wants him to see how devoted she is, how she suffers in order to make him happy. Does the husband go to work thinking he will find personal fulfilment there? No, he is giving his sweet and tears for the good of the family. And so it goes on: sons give up their dreams to please their parents, parents give up their lives in order to please their children; pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that should bring only joy: love.