I acknowledge the fact that hard work OR knowledge can take a person to great heights. But I strongly believe that hard work AND knowledge can take a person to the summit.
Keeping this principle in mind, I have always tried to put in the right balance of hard work and knowledge into every task at hand. In this regard, I would like to cite an incident. During my tenure at JFE Engineering India Pvt. Ltd. as a procurement engineer, I encountered a very challenging task: A loyal customer of JFE wanted to set up a 'Cement Waste Heat Recovery' power plant at its cement factory in Thailand. However, due to stringent bureaucratic constraints, he wanted JFE to prepare a commercial proposal for the power plant in just 3 weeks as against a minimum of 6 weeks given to every EPC company to prepare it.
Here was a challenge for me in the form of manpower management and the question that was posed to me was 'How to prepare a proposal in half the time with the same manpower that already has other commitments at work?' For this, I first calculated the manpower and the resulting man-hours that will be required to complete the proposal. The major manpower requirement came from the sales team (for finalization of scope and terms of the contract) and procurement team (in the form of solicitation of quotations from its approved suppliers). However, the manpower requirement from non-commercial departments (thermal equipment design dept., process equipment design dept.) was very less because JFE had set up similar plants earlier.
This gave me an idea of temporarily diverting 'manpower' from design teams to the sales team and procurement team. I proposed a systematic manpower allocation method to all the line managers. The real challenge started from there. The design teams had already been loaded with work from in-execution water treatment projects from the headquarters and my proposed method fell flat. After this meeting, I first tried to persuade the line managers to allow some diversion of manpower at the cost of overtime payments done to other team members working exclusively in design.
Together, we drafted a proposal for sanction of overtime payments and sent it to our HQ in Japan for approval. It got rejected with clear instructions to focus on the in-execution water treatment projects. After this, I investigated on the company servers and found out that the deadlines of the water treatment project were not stringent and could be worked out. Finally, I proposed a 'man-hour' allocation plan as illustrated below. (attached image)
This helped me convince the line managers of other departments to allow their team members to work with us for a few hours of their day and help to achieve our 3 week target. This method did not require sanction of additional payments. It created a bit of additional pressure on the design team but we together pulled off the show very well.
Why the Aditya Birla Group is big in my life
I feel that a company's true value is seen through the lives it touches and enriches. Aditya Birla has reached out to various demographic segments and influenced their lives. ABG touched my life as my first telecommunication service provider. It would not be wrong to say that it is the only Indian company providing good quality telecommunication services. I have been using Idea for a decade now and I appreciate the consistency of services provided by them. The apparels by ABG’s brands are something I would like to add to my wardrobe. My first suit was a Peter England, which I bought in 2015 and wear it with pride till date. The fabric is durable and has not lost its gloss till date. Louis Philippe is the brand I aspire to refurbish my wardrobe with when I have the financial capacity.
