Bits and Bytes from my Life

This Sunday we were sitting in Barnes and Nobles and studying. I drifted away from my book and started thinking something when suddenly Swati asked “What are you dreaming? Get back to studying” (U know she is like that)… SO I started telling her what I was thinking, Actually I was thinking of all the manufacturing plants I have visited in my life for work, When I say Plant I mean Plant not IT office or Head quarters or corporate offices or anything else but actual Plants.. So here is the list I could come up with…

1. Mercedes in Alabama. This is my favorite…
2. Invensys Building Systems in Rockford. This is the plant I have spent most time in.
3. Foxboro in Massachusetts
4. Boeing in Salt Lake city
5. Wacker Corp in Wisconsin
6. Flexco in Chicago
7. Yorozu in Mississippi
8. Tioga Pipe in Philadelphia
9. US Holdings in Florida
10. International truck in Ohio
11. Formed Fiber, All the plants in Auburn (Maine), Sumter (SC), sidney (Ohio)
12. Nortel Networks in Raleigh
13. TIC Gums in Pennsylvania
14. Metso Paper in Finland
15. Deckel Maho in Germany
16. Otis in Germany
17. Ferag in Switzerland

 

Hmm so it turned out to be pretty long list. But all of them have been unique and every unit/plant is different. U know Metso paper made Canon’s before first world war. After the war, they had to make something else and guess what is closest to canons, Paper manufacturing machines. SO that is what they started making. Isn’t that amazing. Ever visit has a story linked to it… But for now I guess this one is enough…

Today when I looked at my calendar I was surprised to see operations class on Monday. I was expecting Ethics. Anyway my prof wanted me to fill up a one page background info. One question in that was “List of Operations Management related activities I have been involved in”… Hmmm So I started thinking about it…Actually I have never held an operations related job. You know directly after coming out of college I started working for Baan. Baan made ERP software, I was trained in Distribution related functionality and later worked on OW the integration technology of Baan. Then after 3 years working for Baan I moved to US and worked on various projects where we implemented, integrated and automated ERP solutions. So did I manage operations no. But you know what I have seen to many things in operations, I have stood in front of management teams and recommended process reengineering based on inefficiencies.

Classic example was complete B2B strategy which was implemented for Flexco. Flexco had traditionally managed all of there order processing through phones. This was inefficient and error prone. We implemented a sophisticated B2B solutions which allows customers to upload orders either in Excel or XML format. Companies or distributors could directly post these XML documents over web, on receiving these orders the email was sent to sales reps and ordering company with order info. Once the order was shipped we sent another set of notification and users could download there invoices from the B2B site. It was not as simple as it sounds. There were issues related to production, shipping, billing we had to resolve before we could do anything. International customers had there own set of issues to be managed… Anyway but that was just one project… I have worked with more than 55 customers on various projects/issues..

The best time I have ever had on shop floor was at Invensys building systems in Rockford. I still do some consulting work for them. But when they went live with new ERP system. We had integrated there existing shipping software with BaanERP. On day of go live we reached the shipping dock at 6:30am and helped ship goods for whole day. That was fun. Can never forget that day.. If you really want to see America you have to go to places where things are made… “Made in America”….:)

Man this is just too cool… Microsoft Word 2007 has a amazing feature. It allows you to blog from word. I mean.. No u don’t get it… Like you can create documents you can create blog entries from word and directly publish it to the blog server. How cool is that… Amazing stuff… MS Office Rocks……

Today we had our first class of Ethics. So what is Ethics? It is being good or evil. Anyway… In short the jist of the class was what do you do when you need to choose NOT BETWEEN right and wrong. In that case you should choose right but what do you do when you have to choose between right and right. How do you make that decision?  Let me give an example. Let’s say your best friend comes to u and asks u to lie for him/her else he/she will be in trouble. What will u do? Is loyalty more important or honesty? Anyway that is where Ethics comes in play…:)  Anyway for me the bar to make a ethical decision is very simple, If my decision does not hurt anyone else that is fine. If someone is going to get hurt any decision I make I would like to make a decision which hurts less. Anyway.. that is me.. What is ur rule of thumb?? Think about it…  Now at the end of the class that is at 8:58 our prof let us go and said so we are ending 2 minutes early today…. But u know what our class is actually scheduled to end at 9:15 so was it unethical not to tell him the truth? No one did…:)

As I mentioned in my previos post I could not live without a laptop. My official laptop will take few days to arrive. It is on back order I guess because it is going to be really powerfull.:) But till then I could not wait so after 1 week of being without my laptop I could not take it anymore and I bought a new laptop. Here is a picture…:) It is cool…

 

I don’t even remember when and where I first met my sis. Oh!!! She is actually Bhau’s (my best friend) sister but for me she is more than my real sister. There was a time we use to live on 12th floor of our building and Sis use to live on 13th. That was such a great time. U know sis makes the best tea in the world. I actually started drinking tea because of her. Hmmm those were good old days.. Few incidences I will never forget, It was difficult to pick these but…

• We were going to marine drive on my bike to have ice cream(we did that once in a while) and we saw Anil and Tina Ambani at a signal in there car.
• Sis’s marriage in Delhi. That was some occasion.
• Shopping at Fashion Street with sis.
• Meeting Sis at VT station last time.

Actually I can go on and on and on… Anyway now Sis is in Australia and me in US. 2 corners of the world… Life… It is so unpredictable. On occasion of Raksha bandhan I wish my sis to get all the happiness in the world… Love you sis.

Since I moved to US in Feb 2001 I have always had a laptop. Everywhere I go I have one with me. I mean can you imagine even when I went on honeymoon I had my laptop with me. My newly wed wife was feeling left out at times…:) But it has been such an integral part of my life in past few years. I had to return my laptop from Sirit on friday and will get my new one on monday from Microsoft so 2 days without a laptop have been a nightmare.

You all will not believe I slept at 10PM and got up at 6AM on sat and sun. That is not like me. I am normally doing something till late at night atleast till 12:00am and on weekends I sleep atleast till 9:00am. But with no laptop I have no clue what to do.. Am so desperate to get my laptop and my life back….

Till then u eNjoy and I will wait for better times in life to return.

This weekend will be tax holiday in NC. Here is list of things exempt from taxes…

1. Clothing with a sales price of one hundred dollars ($100.00) or less per item.
2. Sport or recreational equipment with a sales price of fifty dollars ($50.00) or less per item
3. Computers with a sales price of three thousand five hundred dollars ($3,500) or less per item
4. Computer supplies with a sales price of two hundred fifty dollars ($250.00) or less per item
5. School supplies with a sales price of one hundred dollars ($100.00) or less per item

So Enjoy shopping…