W16312

EAST VERSUS WEST: ARMADA INDIA’S INGENIOUS APPROACH TO

HRM

Sangeeta Goel wrote this case solely to provide material for class discussion. The author does not intend to illustrate either effective
or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The author may have disguised certain names and other identifying information to
protect confidentiality.

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Copyright © 2016, Management Development Institute Gurgaon and Richard Ivey School of Business Foundation Version: 2016-05-26

V.K. Singh had fully invested himself in Armada Factory Ishapore (AFI) in India. He took immense pride
in the fact that the productivity (input/output) of the factory, which had been marred by performance
inefficiency until he came on the scene, had increased from 30 per cent in 2008 to 75 per cent in 2010.
His two years of hard work and emotional investment in implementing innovative management
techniques were finally yielding results. He had become almost a hero in the eyes of the AFI workers. The
prestigious Indian Business Review had just completed a cover story on his ingenious approach to human
resources (HR), which was based on Buddhist philosophy. On the insistence of the factory union, factory
management had even filed for Singh’s nomination as a candidate for a national award in the category of
“Best HR Manager.” Though he had always been an enthusiast and a workaholic, this period marked the
first time that Singh had derived such rewards and fun from his work. And all this happened despite his
bosses being skeptical and unsupportive of his style of management.

Quite suddenly, however, the board of directors of AFI shocked Singh by hiring Marina Kumar, a young
HR manager who, in Singh’s words, “was there to implement Western models of human resource
management in Indian conditions.” Kumar’s presence not only called into question the efficacy of Singh’s
HR practices, it also aroused doubt regarding Singh’s competence as an HR professional. Senior
management, including Singh’s own immediate boss, already lacked confidence in his ways. For the first
time, Singh, who had never given up easily, found himself losing confidence and self-esteem. After all,
Kumar was half his age and a newcomer with only a few years of management education—at an
American university, no less! In the words of Singh, “She didn’t know the ground realities of Indian
culture and the management scenario here, and yet she was challenging a senior manager like me who
knew the pulse of the organization and its people so well.” He continued, “How could my understanding
of Indian management and culture be debunked like that?”

Though Singh was in a senior position as the “number two” person in the factory, he set his ego aside and
even attempted to take Kumar into his confidence. But Kumar not only refused to oblige, she also
publicly scoffed at Singh’s “so-called Buddhist-style HR interventions.” Singh felt humiliated. “What
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should I do now,” he wondered, “should I give up?” But, were he to give up, would he not go from “hero”
to “zero” in the eyes of the workers? Moreover, as per his seniority and past performance, he was in line
for a promotion to the position of chief general manager (CGM), but a mishandling of this event could
prove decisive, especially when the bosses were not on his side. According to Singh, it was in the interest
of neither the organization nor the workers for him to resign. Should he try to bounce back from the
humiliation? Was that even possible, given the circumstances? Singh suffered many sleepless nights as he
agonized over the problem.

ARMADA INDIA—PARENT COMPANY OF AFI

Armada India was an engineering and manufacturing company with a very good reputation in India’s
private sector. More than three decades of a strong customer-focused approach had helped Armada India
attain market leadership in its main line of business—commercial vehicles. However, by the end of 2002,
competition from foreign manufacturers had become much more aggressive. Thus, when in 2002 the
government made the decision to open up defence production to the private sector, the board of Armada
India immediately filed for the necessary licenses. It was successful in obtaining licenses for the design,
development, and manufacture of air defence guns, weapons platforms, armoured vehicles, tanks,
unmanned aerial vehicles, and equipment for the aviation sector. To meet these new production needs, the
company finalized its production plan and acquired two new factory sites in West Bengal, one of which
was AFI. It also had plans to convert some of its existing facilities to produce its new products.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Armada India was headed by a chairman and managing director (CMD) and six directors. According to
the CMD, “The company that we run has a strong legacy of professionalism and therefore places very
high value on merit and integrity.”

FUTURE PLANS

In 2010, the board had planned to ultimately receive licenses to produce all of the defence items, albeit in
a phased manner. It planned to set up a minimum of one facility for the production of each category of
items. AFI in West Bengal was its flagship factory. A competing factory to produce weapons platforms
was also being built close to AFI’s factory, in nearby Dum Dum in Kolkata. The other projects of Armada
India were also expected to take off soon. However, because of land disputes with the local population
surrounding some sites, a slight delay had occurred. Nevertheless, the company had plans to
operationalize all of its defence manufacturing units by the end of 2012.

INTERNATIONAL PRESENCE

The company had always operated with an international presence. However, the introduction of the new
product mix had coincided with a growing demand abroad, which compelled the company to place a
stronger emphasis on its international business. It had planned to set up its offices and manufacturing
facilities within a certain period of time, in several other countries.
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ARMADA FACTORY ISHAPORE

AFI, one of the units of Armada India, was engaged in the manufacture of air-defence guns. AFI had
started production in 2005. The factory was situated in Ishapore, a small town near Kolkata in West
Bengal, India. The factory had about 3,000 workers and 100 supervisory staff. There were 30 managers,
including 15 at the junior level, 10 at the middle level, and five senior managers. The workers’
educational profiles ranged from illiteracy to middle school. In fact, the workers were all natives of
Ishapore, because the prevalence of the “son of the soil” theory had prevented management from
recruiting anyone from outside Ishapore. According to the “son of the soil” theory, only the local
population should be given a chance to work for a company in the immediate area or state of residence. In
some ways, it could be advantageous to the company to recruit from nearby because it could likely access
an available and cost-effective labour supply. However, the company might also fail to achieve the
desired output from its workers, if people with the requisite skills were neither available nearby nor
recruited from outside of the general area.

KARAN GUHA, CGM, AFI

Karan Guha was the CGM of AFI. He was a well-qualified and experienced manager, as well as a very
sober and well-mannered person. He was a native of Kolkata, as well as having been raised and educated
there. In his previous work, he and Singh had worked together at the Trichy unit of Armada India, located
in the extreme south of India. There, both Guha, as general manager (GM) of production, and Singh, as
additional GM of maintenance, reported to the same boss. One major handicap that both Guha and Singh
faced in Trichy was their difficulty in communicating with workers and staff due to their lack of
knowledge of the local language, Tamil. Because both of them knew Hindi and English well, and despite
major personality and ideological differences, Guha and Singh formed a solid friendship while in Trichy.
Their shared unfamiliarity with the local culture and language of South India created closeness between them
and their families. In January 2007, Guha was promoted and transferred to AFI as the CGM.

SINGH, GM, MAINTENANCE

Singh was a very senior manager at AFI. He held an engineering degree from the prestigious Indian
Institute of Technology Delhi. He was born and raised in Uttar Pradesh, a North Indian state. He had 35
years’ experience working in various capacities in Armada’s different vehicle factories. As a maintenance
man, he had vast “hands-on” knowledge of HR, administration, and production. He had a very
charismatic personality, although some of his colleagues found him “eccentric and quirky.” Singh was
quite aware of this opinion, but remained unfazed: “I believe in keeping my spirits always high and am
ever ready to give innovative ideas and plans, which are not liked by many.” According to his close
friends, he was a very candid workaholic who never hesitated to “call a spade a spade.” He himself held
that as long as he commanded popularity among workers and staff, he “cared little for others!” (By this,
he meant he cared little for bosses.) According to Singh, whether “bosses liked it or not; as long as I
delivered, the board management had no choice but to promote me to higher and higher positions, often
against resistance from my immediate bosses.”

MARINA KUMAR, HR MANAGER

Marina Kumar, a very bright, 29-year-old woman, was a graduate of a prestigious Ivy League university
in the United States. Although she was Indian, her parents had immigrated to the United States when she
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was eight years old. She had been brought up and educated in some of the best American schools. Her
parents had taken every care to expose her to Indian culture and had made it a point to send her to stay
with her grandparents in India for annual vacations. After completing a two-year internship in a
prestigious multinational company in the United States, she had pursued a management degree with a
specialization in HR.

Kumar was one of the five new recruits that Armada India had handpicked for its new projects. The
objective was to revamp and align the HR practices of these units with the overall business strategy of
Armada India. Kumar was posted at AFI with specific directions from the board “to make AFI a truly
world-class unit in terms of HR capabilities and culture for the company’s long-term success and
growth.” Kumar was very ambitious about her career but was quite a level-headed person. She had always
wanted to work in India and had preferred Armada India’s offer over that of a prominent American HR
consultancy firm. AFI was her dream project because in it she saw immense possibilities to implement
what she had studied and absorbed during her education and internship in the United States. She wanted
to completely transform the way people functioned at AFI and to infuse professionalism in AFI’s work
culture. According to Kumar, “The challenge lay in the fact that the workers had a very low level of
education and yet were so keen and receptive to learning new things.”

SINGH’S POSTING AT AFI—BACKGROUND

In July 2008, on very short notice, the board had made Singh move from the Trichy unit to AFI. On
arrival at AFI, the first thing he noticed was the low productivity (input/output). The machine downtime
in three out of four factory plants was extraordinarily high. The overhead costs were also exorbitant. The
politicking and confrontation by workers over many issues was a constant headache for management.
AFI’s CGM had, therefore, asked the CMD of Armada India to hire a well-qualified HR person who
could work with teams in the factory and help improve productivity and production. Instead, Singh, who
was due for his promotion from assistant GM (maintenance) to GM (maintenance), was posted to AFI.
The CGM thus assumed that Singh’s posting at AFI was done under some political pressure.

According to Singh, on the very first day of his joining AFI, he was told by the CGM that he was not
welcome. “I took it as if the CGM, who used to be my friend once, was saying—Well, come!” said Singh,
bursting into a huge guffaw, although one could see the pain in his eyes that he was trying to hide.

Due to a shortage of office space, Singh was not given an office near the CGM. Despite being entitled to
one, he was also not given a car. Whenever he approached the CGM, he was treated coldly and was given
the impression that he should leave Armada India at the earliest possible time.

“My motto in life is to not internalize any negativity, so I didn’t care, more so when it comes from a
friend,” Singh said in an interview.

After joining AFI, the first thing Singh did was to take multiple walks through the factory. During his
interaction with staff and workers, he noticed that they were all locals and spoke the Bengali language,
which he could hardly understand. To his surprise, he was given a very warm welcome by workers and
was even offered lunch in the staff food pantry, which was the most popular place in the factory.
Page 5 9B16C016

THE UNAUTHORIZED STAFF PANTRY

During his very first visit, Singh had realized that the staff pantry at AFI was the most interesting place to
be. It had been set up in the middle of the factory by two very “notorious staff,” in Singh’s words.

As he entered there, lunch was about to begin. A few workers were sleeping soundly in a corner; a few
were playing cards as others keenly watched. There was also a small place of worship. Loud Bollywood
music was playing. On the central table, a heated verbal exchange was happening among a group of
workers. In a corner, a young union leader was addressing his supporters, exhorting them to undertake a
tool-down strike. Singh tried to overhear the conversation, which was over a factory accident that had
happened the other day.

“So much was happening inside that cramped place! And all of this was happening against the very soul-
soothing aroma of Indian food . . . I was amused but not really surprised when they informed me that the
pantry was earning huge profits that were going to those two staff,” said an excited Singh later. Although
the management had already provided an official canteen, it was not even half as busy and popular. The
management had repeatedly objected that the pantry’s operations were unauthorized. However, the union
leaders running this pantry did not pay heed to it. They could afford to ignore management because they
had the workers’ support. Because Singh did not have an office, he had decided to sit in and operate from
the staff food pantry itself.

AFI’S INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT: TEETHING ISSUES

Within a few days of his interaction with each worker and staff member, Singh could “dig out a huge
mine of information” about the factory. There were teething issues that Singh took note of in his diary
(see Exhibit 1). On the whole, Singh realized that the factory was very inefficient in terms of production,
productivity, and discipline. Every product was costlier than that of competitors. Frequent defects, a high
rejection rate, and a high direct to indirect cost ratio (1:1.5) were some of the issues calling for immediate
attention. According to Singh, “The delivery schedule was lagging behind by six months. The closing of
accounts for FY2007/08 was being done in September 2008 in place of March 2008. Frequent accidents were
a serious concern both for management and the union. The quality was a big casualty in the entire process.

SINGH’S INTERVENTIONS

Immediately upon joining, the foremost task Singh took upon himself was to earn the confidence of
workers and staff so that he could motivate them to improve. Singh started sitting with them, playing
cards during recess time, and giving tips on children’s education, careers, health, etc. He also organized
yoga classes in the pantry during lunchtime. Singh had an old Mercedes-Benz car gifted by his father, a
veteran politician. He offered the car to workers for free usage during the marriages of their sons and
daughters. “Be it a happy or sad occasion, I made it a point to visit the workers at their residences,” said
Singh. While most of the managers sat in their air-conditioned rooms, he started sitting in a chair on the
shop floor, facing fumes and the excruciating heat of furnaces. Soon, he started doing things that had been
thus far regarded as “undoable.” For example, he helped workers to open a hydraulic tank that they had
not been able to open and operate for the last five years. They also opened and reassembled a
computerized, numerically controlled turning centre machine, which was otherwise lying idle and
incurring audit objections.
Page 6 9B16C016

“In no time, despite being a non-Bengali, I was well accepted in an all-Bengali workmen community,”
Singh said with a glimmer in his eyes.

However, the CGM had meanwhile come to know of Singh’s everyday interactions and lunches with
workers in the unauthorized pantry. “Thinking that I might misuse or leverage my proximity with workers
and the unions to gain an upper hand in the factory, the CGM soon offered me an office that was situated
far away from the shop floor, and I flatly refused,” said Singh. According to him, by then, he had started
liking the idea of operating from the pantry, because it provided him with an opportunity to have one-to-
one relationships with workers and to gain first-hand information about issues arising on the shop floor. It
also helped him to convert a piece of information into a quick decision, along with convincing the unions
and workers to own a decision and ensure quick implementation. “Now my job was to change the work
culture of the factory and implement HR interventions for taking all the staff and workmen on board. As
GM, maintenance, I believed that more than machines, it’s the men behind who required maintenance and
repair as the dumb machine simply followed the clever man!” Singh said in an interview before bursting
into his typical guffaw.

SINGH’S EXPERIMENTS WITH BUDDHIST PRECEPTS

On a personal trip to Japan, Singh had visited the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance. What had hooked
him there was the idea of total productive maintenance or TPM (see Exhibit 2). He was especially smitten
by the concept of “overlapping small groups.” Singh took it upon himself to organize the workers’ teams
to ensure, “zero accidents, zero defects, and zero breakdowns towards overall increased performance
efficiency, leading to increased production and productivity.” According to Singh, it was his task to solve
all the problems of the factory. He was already convinced that it was not the management but the workers
and the supervisory staff who were the key to AFI’s efficiency. A staunch believer in Buddhism, he drew
upon it, especially the three “Gacchams” that Buddhists looked to for guidance:

Buddham, sharanam, gacchami (I go to the Buddha for refuge).

Dhammam sharanam gacchami (I go to the Dhamma for refuge).
Sangham sharanam gacchami (I go to the Sangha for refuge).1

In the simplest terms, a Buddha was one who was “perfectly enlightened, accomplished in true
knowledge and conduct.”2 Buddha was also taken to be the full development of one’s highest potential or
mind. The Dhamma meant taking recourse to the Buddha’s teachings. The Sangha was the community of
disciples of the Buddha who had fully realized the nature of their mind; it also referred to the practitioners
and students of the Buddha who used the same methods and worked towards the same goal.3 Singh gave a
nuanced meaning to the Buddhist philosophy of the “Three Jewels” to make it appeal to the workers and
apply to the situation in the factory (see Exhibit 3). God-fearing workers lovingly followed it.

BUDDHIST PRECEPTS AND SINGH’S INNOVATIVE INTERVENTIONS

Singh’s creative interventions at AFI included the following six major initiatives:

1
“The Threefold Refuge: Tisarana,” Access to Insight, November 30, 2013, accessed April 19, 2016,
www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/tisarana.html.
2
Bhikkhu Bodhi, The Collected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya (Somerville, MA:
Wisdom Publications, 2000).
3
“Sangha,” Encyclopædia Britannica, accessed April 19, 2016, www.britannica.com/topic/sangha.
Page 7 9B16C016

1. Singh divided the entire shop floor into “Sanghams,” or groups of five, and told them to brainstorm
and identify issues that were adversely affecting production and productivity. The first problem to be
tackled was to improve the quality of the products. The major bottleneck was the lack of knowledge
among the majority of workers about product specifications and drawings. Singh first identified the
workers who were relatively more experienced and trained in technical know-how, including
specifications, and designated them as team leaders.
2. He organized the workers to implement a team-based decision-making model on the shop floor and
saw that decisions flowed from the bottom up (see Exhibit 4).
3. He exhorted the workers to learn from their team leaders. Special training sessions were organized in
the pantry. The workers, instead of gossiping or playing cards, were now busy learning new things
and sharing these with others. Soon, a few other shop-floor managers also joined Singh in his
endeavour.
4. All purchase decisions and selected strategic decisions, such as where a manufacturing or assembly
plant would be located, were first discussed in these “Sanghams” before being reviewed by the CGM
for approval.
5. “Confess and communicate the truth” was the catch line of all the groups. Singh had trained the
workers to confess to the group whenever a mistake was made at any level. As Singh and other group
leaders took the lead, the workers followed them in willingly admitting and acknowledging their
mistakes.
6. “Truth” was defined by Singh as “what the group or Sangham feels is the truth,” but it had to be
corroborated by the other groups.

WHY DID WORKERS FOLLOW SINGH?

For the first time, the workers had an active role in the factory’s decision making. The knowledge they
were gaining by getting involved was empowering and exhilarating. “I would solve a problem and then
would share the same with my wife and kids who would look at me in awe—it was such a wonderful
feeling!” said an elated Ramlal, the union leader, during his interview. “For the first time I felt I was as
important as my manager,” said Ramlal’s friend Kishan Pratap.

However, according to Singh, “I was just treating these illiterate and poorly educated workers as
intelligent and wise human beings. I had simply given them the importance in decision making they so
well deserved. They were men and not cogs in the wheel. And once they saw that their earnings, now
pegged to the output produced by their team, were going up, they were the happiest workers.” As Singh
spoke, his face lit up with a sense of achievement.

A few interventions that Singh made and that showed results are given in Exhibit 5. Ultimately, Singh’s
experiment was paying off. In his own words, “For the first time, I, myself, was thoroughly enjoying what
I was doing.”

ARMADA INDIA’S STRATEGIC INTENT

At the end of 2010, Armada India was flooded with orders, mostly from abroad. Its vision then was to
make the organization truly world-class in order to ensure its continued long-term success and growth.
The CMD and other board directors knew that in most of their units, the HR practices had to be aligned
with the company’s strategic intent. The board had finalized an induction plan for its recently handpicked
HR managers. Before its competitors caught up, it wanted to gain a competitive advantage and HR was going
to be a major tool in overcoming the handicaps at places like AFI due to its “not so qualified” manpower.
Page 8 9B16C016

SINGH VERSUS KUMAR

Soon, a gruelling “match of competencies and calibre” between Singh and Kumar ensued. Kumar had the
full support of the CGM, who took no time in issuing an office order to disband the teams or Sanghams of
workers. The workers were advised to wait for “a soon-to-be-started factory-wide scientific team-building
exercise under the guidance of Marina Kumar.” The workers were excited, seeing a new young female
face on the scene, and were hoping for more opportunities and input in the factory’s decision-making
process. The supervisory staff was also keen to learn proper management tools and techniques from the
U.S.-trained Kumar. Meanwhile, Kumar had obstructed Singh’s work by publicly mocking and officially
objecting to the decisions made in Sanghams, describing those decisions as low-level, like the shop-floor
workers themselves. The CGM had given Singh the “friendly advice” of immediately winding up his
“useless Buddha style of management” and to take a leave of absence. The most humiliating of all, for
Singh, was that “even board management was supporting and encouraging the CGM and Marina Kumar
in their all-out efforts to uproot me and my practices from AFI.” Singh was feeling extremely humiliated
and devastated. He wondered, “How could my deep understanding of Indian management and culture be
debunked and denigrated like that?”

“What should I do now?” he wondered. “Should I put up my papers for resignation or should I bounce
back?” The only sign of hope was a piece of mail popping out of his mailbox. This was an offer from the
recently opened Nalanda University to be on the list of honorary professors and teach a course on
Buddhist approaches to HR management. But he knew that AFI needed him. He had always wanted to be
a shop-floor manager, not an “armchair professor.” He had no doubts about the capability of Kumar, but
he had doubts about the receptivity of locals to her foreign ideas of management. Besides, the other day
he had seen Kumar mocking the locals and their quaint rituals during the marriage of a junior colleague.
He wanted to collaborate with Kumar, but Kumar was in no mood to compromise on her sophisticated
management ways and had flatly refused to oblige him.

The author sincerely acknowledges the guidance and support provided by Shri Vinod Kumar Singh, National Vice-
President, Indian Institution of Plant Engineers, Eastern Region, Kolkata, India.
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EXHIBIT 1: EXCERPTS FROM SINGH’S DIARY

Low productivity due to inefficient processes mainly because of

• too much and too frequent machine downtime;

• high energy consumption;
• too much time taken in the loading and unloading of machines;
• too much time taken in the maintenance of machines;
• high rejection rate by the quality department;
• very slow managerial decision making even in day-to-day problems; and
• a lesser degree of involvement of workers and staff.

EXHIBIT 2: TPM, JAPAN INSTITUTE OF PLANT MAINTENANCE, 1996

According to the Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance, total plant maintenance or TPM aims at
“establishing a corporate culture that will maximize production system effectiveness.”

It can be achieved by

• organizing a practical shop-floor system to prevent losses before they occur throughout the entire
production system cycle, with a view to achieving
• zero accidents,
• zero defects, and
• zero breakdowns;
• involving all the functions of an organization, including production, development, sales, and
management; and
• achieving zero losses through the activities of “overlapping small groups.”

Source: Japan Institute of Plant Maintenance, TPM for Every Operator (Portland, OR: Productivity Press, 1996).

EXHIBIT 3: BUDDHIST JEWELS, TRADITIONAL MEANINGS, AND SINGH’S INTERPRETATIONS

Buddhist Jewels Traditional meaning Singh’s interpretation

1 Buddham, sharanam, I go to the Buddha for Select the one who knows and
gacchami refuge. choose him or her as your
teacher/mentor/guru to follow.
2 Dhammam sharanam I go to the Dhamma for Take recourse to truth—your
gacchami refuge. ultimate religion—because the
truth ultimately wins, so there is
nothing to hide and nothing to
fear.
3 Sangham sharanam I go to the Sangha for Go to your group leaders, listen to
gacchami refuge. them, and follow them.

Source: Created by the author based on discussions with Singh and material from “The Threefold Refuge: Tisarana,”
Access to Insight, November 30, 2013, accessed April 19, 2016, www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/tisarana.html.
Page 10 9B16C016

EXHIBIT 4: SINGH’S TEAM-BASED DECISION-MAKING MODEL FOR THE SHOP FLOOR

Note: GL = Group leaders; the arrow shows the flow of decision making from bottom to top.
Source: Prepared by the author based on discussions with Singh.

EXHIBIT 5: SINGH’S INTERVENTIONS—A FEW EXAMPLES

1. Problem in seam welding of iron sheets: The joint of a sheet would often leak due to workers’
unintentional mistakes. The sheet was then sent for painting. The paint covered up the leak and then
it would be sent for testing. This was happening almost on a daily basis. The group debated the issue
and discovered that the presence of oil or dust not visible by the naked eye was the reason, and they
were able to resolve the issue.
2. Ammunition testing: Every ammunition component used to be packed in a lot size of 100 for testing
by an independent quality department in the ratio of 1:1. As the rejection rate came down, the quality
department agreed to a lot size of 400 in one pack. The lot testing ratio by the quality department
came down to 1:3 in three months and 1:30 in two and a half years. This significantly increased the
packing and testing speed, which, in turn, resulted in enhanced confidence and reduced expenses.
3. Purchase decisions: The time taken for purchase-related decisions was drastically reduced.
Previously, it was about 24 hours for simpler things and one week for complex decisions, which was
the actual time taken by the shop-floor management.
4. Improved performance efficiency of machines: Previously, the operating efficiency of machines was
as low as 30 per cent. The major reasons were the loss of production in the planned time due to
minor stoppages required for checking and adjusting machines, the slow running of machines,
rejections in the process, extra time taken in loading and unloading, frequents breakdowns, etc. After
Singh’s intervention, the operating efficiency of machines rose to 75 per cent within a span of two
years. Singh was aiming to bring it up to 100 per cent.
5. Resource management: Previously, the company had difficulty determining where resources would
be coming from, but now it was able to easily organize its resources.
6. Time management: This became an easy process for everyone on the shop floor to achieve. Thus,
the need for crisis management, while doing “overtime” to meet delivery targets, ceased to exist.
7. Completing tasks: Certain tasks that were earlier considered to be impossible were completed within
schedule.
Source: Prepared by the author based on discussions with Singh.