I have always wanted to Mess around with machines, getting my hands dirty and having a lot of fun in the bargain.

So while I was working for Mphasis in 2004, I rented a 500 square foot shed in  Banaswadi, Bangalore, to mess around in.

I had wanted my very own lathe since I was thirteen years old, so I pitched in all my savings (scrimpings) from working at Mphasis and OfficeTiger bought one;


and then I had a  life changing epiphany;

I suck at manual work!

I was pretty good (my opinion) at conceptualizing and imagining stuff and designing on the computer, but when it really came down to making something using my hands,  I was REALLY bad at it.

I had two choices. Either work at it and get better at manual work or hire someone who was good at it.  Because I'm lazy, I chose the latter.

I interviewed a few machinists/fitters and hired Chandrashekar. My first and oldest employee.



Two words: MAGIC HANDS.

So since I had a lathe, I thought I'd go out and get some orders for it. The orders needed some drilling operations, in addition to turning, so I bought a couple bench top drilling machines.


But then, I needed people to operate them, so I hired some more people

and then Ajay Fernandes joined me and we founded Ushtara Engineering Pvt. Ltd.,  and then we got more orders  that needed milling, so we bought a CNC vertical machining center


and hired people to operate it.

And I quit my job and became a businessman full-time.

Then we got more orders so we bought more machines and hired more people until by 2010, our team looked like this;



But if some one had asked me about processes at Ushtara, I would have been like;

PROCESSES HAH!
Who needs processes when you have a Gazillion Terabyte supercomputer between your ears?

I knew every part number, every machining specification, every heat-treatment tolerance, every coating-thickness and surface-finish requirement for every part made in my shop.

I could tell you the manufacturing status of every single part at any point in time, day or night.

I was spending 16 to 24 hours a day, in the factory. Stopping only to sleep and brush my teeth.

I watched everything like a hawk. Nothing, escaped my notice.

AND THEN I GOT SICK
A searing pain in my right leg was diagnosed as Sciatica, caused by a herniated disc pressing on my sciatic nerve.

Long hours of sitting on my office chair, no exercise, minimal rest and an irregular diet had taken their toll on my body.

Two months of bed rest with minimal movement was what the doctor ordered.

When I got back to work after 2 weeks of lounging at Ajay's house (thank you Danni) and another month of rest at my parents' house in Chennai,  Ushtara was in shambles.

Parts sent to customers had been rejected because of operations not having been carried out or faulty operations.

Machines were idle while people were loafing about.

Schedules had been missed.

The shop floor was in disarray.

Customers were on the verge of finding alternative suppliers.

Simple things like paper in the printer and tools in the machines had not be bought simply because no one knew how or who was responsible.

All this in a month and a half!

This would not do!

That's when we decided that we needed processes.
Processes that would tell people what to do and how to do it and when to do it.

In other words;

PROCESSES WOULD REPLACE ME
Processes would dictate when material was bought.
Processes would guide people on how to manufacture the parts and how and when to send them out.
Processes would show people what to do when we got a new order.
and so on.

If the word process in this context sounds confusing,  here's the low down;

Processes are things happening in defined ways

That's it!

Define a standard way of doing ANYTHING. Then make sure people do this thing in this standard way. Now you have a process.

The obvious outcome of this, is that people will know what to do ALL the time and so you don't need to be there to tell them what to do.

When an organization does this kind of standardized work, you can get a certificate that says so;




It took us a long time and a lot of effort to implement our processes.

The quality of our parts became consistently good.
Parts went out to the customer on time.
Customers were happier because they could rely on us
We made more money because we wasted less time and resources.

Perhaps most importantly;

PROCESSES FREE UP MY TIME
I can do important stuff like go to the movies on a Wednesday afternoon with my wife :)

And also stuff like envisioning the future of my company, networking with potential customers, learning about microcontrollers from this guy and this guy and programming from this guy  and sharing my knowledge on my blog.

And I can do all of this, secure in the knowledge that it's business as usual at the factory.

WHEN TO GET IN YOUR PROCESSES' WAY
But it doesn't end there.

Nothing is so good that it can not be improved.
Periodically, I go in and mess up a process, just to see whether it can get better.

But then that's a process too. We have a defined process for continual improvement!

Till next time

Sunil