Thursday, March 3, 2022
The Fall and Fall of Boeing
Of the many thought provoking bits that Downfall pulled together in its presentation of Boeing's failures in the aftermath of the 737Max crashes, the one that struck me the most was the change in Boeing's culture in the mid 1990s.
At the surface, the easy target is unabashed Capitalism. It is fair to say that over the decades, we have come to expect American companies to optimize moneymaking potential in all of their endeavors, skirting at the edge of ethics and moral compulsions but mostly behaving within the confines of civilized society. But it was not this urge to profiteer that affected me. The forces at play here are far more complex, and subtle.
This phenomenon is more than just about profits.
***
In 1984, Bhopal suffered an explosion in a pesticides and chemicals factory. In less than a few hours, the toxic gases spread around the city and killed, maimed and permanently disfigured not only the people that were unfortunate enough to live in the city at the time, but multiple generations thereafter. More than half a million people were injured, thousands died!
The American company running the plant knew of safer (but more expensive) alternatives to the dangerous chemicals they were using in the production process. The facility also had a history of casualties from toxic exposure in the years leading up to the accident, but didn't institute permanent corrective actions to fix their controls.
And yet, even nearly 40 years after one of the World's worst man made Disasters, condemnation of the American Manufacturer, UCC, is far from unanimous. Questions are often raised on the quality of the Indian managers running the Plant and the engineers and workers who were operating the processes.
This is very relevant to the Boeing story, because the first public statements from Boeing and American Aerospace "Experts" in the aftermath of the crash ascertained at least a part of the blame on "Third World" pilot training. It was ironical when it eventually turned out that the pilot of the Lion Air that went down was actually trained in the United States.
It is more than just about profits.
The issue is the purported unassailability of American Engineering. Obviously the USA cant be designing poor products and processes right? Is it not more likely that the operators from poor Asian and African countries cannot comprehend the complexity of the said American products?
This is flawed thinking. As evidenced by Downfall, production engineers and operators (including users/consumers) are often at the mercy of design decisions made far away from the field, with limited ability to control their own destinies.
In a World that is driven by Centralized Design, Decentralized Manufacturing, and Global Product Application, the control of critical characteristics in the product specifications is progressively moving further and further away from the end user. And unless companies strive to democratize within their supply chain and effectively establish the feedback loops to solve these engineering problems, disasters of this magnitude will probably, unfortunately continue to happen.
And that's part of the reason why Homegrown Product Engineering and Manufacturing deserves the push in India.
* * *
The Chernobyl Nuclear Explosion happened less than 2 years after the Bhopal Tragedy. In this case, everything was designed and developed by Russians, at that time one of the World's most technologically advanced nations. But it happened in a system that was occupied from top to bottom by the State. Engineers and Scientists were valuable, but not as valuable as the Polit Bureau member who could control through his whims and fancies the allocation of resources, and hence had to be pleased.
In study after study, there has been critical analysis of the unintended consequences of this power dynamic - when in a moral dilemma, would an engineer owe primary allegiance to the quality of his engineering work or to the idea of serving his Motherland?
It is more than just about profits.
Boeing was in a rat race with Airbus and it was losing. To rise above this, quickly, was not just a matter of corporate rivalry, but one of national identity! Every part of the American Aerospace Industrial and Regulatory complex recognized this and agreed to work in coordination to fix it ASAP.
Mission statements are great in aligning the forces of bureaucracy and paperwork in a large faceless system. The problem occurs when botched mission statements stand in direct contradiction of product integrity. Should the MCAS Engineer or the Regulator reviewing it have owed primary allegiance to the quality of his engineering work or to the idea of serving Boeing/USA by letting them get ahead in the race against Airbus?
And if this happened in an Individualistic, Self Preservation before All Else society like America, what chance does the rest of the World stand?
* * *
Downfall was a very thought provoking movie and as shown above, got me thinking on multiple levels about the state of the World, and more personally about my role in the World as an Engineer.
What caught me the most by surprise was that one of the World's most iconic companies, through a series of changes up at the top ended up with a culture that discouraged people, especially engineers and subject matter experts to speak their mind.
Surely, of all places in the World, the Land of the Free and Home of the
Brave would have given its brilliant engineers and scientists the platform to
debate on merits and demerits of technologies on scientific principles
with absolutely no other consideration.Unfortunately, no.
Indian Engineers around the World are now involved in the design of most products you will encounter in your life. And in their pursuits of excellence, they might do well to remember India's motto which in times like this seems more far sighted and timeless than we have given it credit for.
In the end, Satyameva Jayate. Truth Alone Prevails.
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Make for India
When was the last time an Indian product truly wowed you?
When a product was crafted so beautifully and was so uniquely Indian that it taught you something new about the heritage of the people who created it...
When you were so enamoured by the product that you didn't really care what the price tag was, and all you wanted to do was procure it...
It is not that such products do not exist. We have all seen these products. In temple streets lined with overstocked shops, along highways near level crossings, at airports, at railway stations, and at the gazillion bazaars that 90% of India shops in. We just do not know these products - there's no popular brand associated with them. There's no colorful packaging that differentiates the product from a million other less distinguished sellers of the same product. This causes a grave unintended consequence which will prevent the product from ever generating large scale economic value - a lack of sophistication!
When a product was crafted so beautifully and was so uniquely Indian that it taught you something new about the heritage of the people who created it...
When you were so enamoured by the product that you didn't really care what the price tag was, and all you wanted to do was procure it...
It is not that such products do not exist. We have all seen these products. In temple streets lined with overstocked shops, along highways near level crossings, at airports, at railway stations, and at the gazillion bazaars that 90% of India shops in. We just do not know these products - there's no popular brand associated with them. There's no colorful packaging that differentiates the product from a million other less distinguished sellers of the same product. This causes a grave unintended consequence which will prevent the product from ever generating large scale economic value - a lack of sophistication!
Sophistication in a product comes from several different means - but the ultimate goal is always the same: improving customer satisfaction. It may come from a choice of better materials, it may have longevity arising from a simpler process of production and fewer constituents, it may offer a myriad of customizations, it may come from better insight into customer preferences or it may feature the best consumer preference: low cost. All of these improve the product by a notch and give the producer a measure of protection against competition, and drive innovation. A lack of sophistication makes the product replaceable by a better version. And in a globalized world, the better version is normally a cheaper version, mass produced in a factory in China, and sold by a "brand" that has spent some time applying the above mentioned sophistications.
With the advent of GST in 2017, India has the World's largest open market, and the largest population of consumers under the age of 35 in the World. No other market has a larger sample set of consumer preferences available to analyze and tune products to. And even in an era where e-commerce rises to new heights every day, a vast majority of purchases happen offline. This gives entrepreneurs at every level of the value and supply chain to understand and analyze customer preferences, build a better brand and improve their reach to a wider market. A few iterations of this Measure-Analyze-Improve-Scale routine can succeed in creating a sophisticated, well recognized product with wide ranging economic impact that generates wealth and creates jobs. All it takes is focusing on the customer the product is being created for.
It turns out, the best answer to the trillion dollar Make in India question, is Make for India.
Labels: Making India Work
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
Falling in Love with America's Best Idea!
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| The image of Yellowstone forever stuck in my head came from a Bing Wallpaper years ago. |
Years ago, logging on to Windows, Bing picked out a lock screen wallpaper that I have not forgotten. It showed a bright blue pool of water surrounded by the colors of the rainbow with fire blowing around the edges. It looked out of this World, and the image stuck in my head and carved out its own little corner in my hippocampus. Further investigation revealed this spectacular feature to be the Grand Prismatic Spring, arguably Yellowstone's most unique and celebrated feature, and that day about 8 years ago was when I subconsciously started planning America's favorite Summer Vacation.
Our travels through the other jewels in the National Parks System had only elevated the sense of anticipation we felt for this trip that was yet destined for some time in the future. The opportunity arrived in 2019, when we finally decided that our Memorial Day would be spent in Wyoming. For years, I had dreamt of the Grand Prismatic Spring, wowed at the towering Teton peaks in photography exhibitions, and been amazed by the Serengeti of America in the Lamar Valley. This was our chance to be there and see for ourselves if these images in my mind were a product of the Great American Marketing machinery or if there was substance to it.
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If you have only one shot at viewing the Tetons, and want the best picture out of the trip, head to Schwabacher Landing early in the Morning. P.S: Remember to go low when you get the picture. Very Low. Lower. |
Memorial Day is a great time of the year. It's late May and the fickle minded nature of the weather makes way for a more consistent Sunny experience, with the occasional rain shower keeping things fresh and interesting. Our previous Memorial Day sojourns had taken us to the Badlands & Custer in South Dakota, and we wanted to take our Wild West experience a notch higher with the trip to Wyoming. Up in the mountains, May always carries the risk of a late season blizzard, but it had the benefit of thin crowds that only start to pick up when Summer kicks in, and more importantly, increased observable wildlife activity from animals emerging from Hibernation, descending upon the Great Plains, foraging while the day temperatures are still relatively cool.
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While in Yellowstone-Grand Teton, chances are you will be in Bear Jams, and chances are that some of the bears you see will be young. Young bears are still fairly large like we found out when we encountered this family near the Pilgrim Creek region in Grand Teton. It is fascinating to learn that a lot of the bear moms like hanging out near the roads because that keeps them safe from Eternally Hangry Grizzly Dads who like killing cubs that ain't theirs. Something to do with establishing genetic supremacy. Getting rid of the grizzly obsession is crucial to enjoying the Park. We got over ours after the 15th bear in the first four days of trip, and once we got that out of the way, the natural beauty of the park was even more stunning! Before the trip, we really would've liked to see bears. By the end of the trip, we had seen so many (both black, and grizzly) that our focus shifted towards their more elusive competitors at the top of the food chain: The Gray Wolves. We didn't see any wolves on our trip. Guess we need to head back soon.... |
For months, we pondered and debated every last detail of the trip - where we would stay, how many days we would spend at each part of the park. You see, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is huge - large enough to be a State by itself. And as experienced roadtrippers, we knew only too well not to get caught in the trap of having one home base throughout our trip and drive around to the destinations - that simply doesn't work. Instead, we decided to break our 10 day trip into 3 days at Jackson Hole near the Tetons, which was the far south portion of our itinerary, 3 days in Cooke City, the eastern most part of Yellowstone and the Gateway to the Lamar Valley wildlife experience, and 3 more days in the central"8" Loop of the park, so we could easily access the Thermal features, and make multiple trips to the Grand Prismatic Spring. At the time we planned it, we did not know the park and driving distances too well, but in hindsight, our stay locations gave us the best shot at taking in all of Yellowstone-Grand Teton on a slow and relaxed schedule.
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Hot water sculpting layer upon layer of limestone with its own acidic carbonic acid solution is a spectacle worth seeing at the Mammoth Hot Springs area - as a side bonus, you are guaranteed the observation of elk at close quarters, present in large numbers in the parking lots and around the village. Even when they don't really care about you, you are obliged to move 6 feet or further away from them. They are biig, and can do significant damage without much effort. |
Our typical day on the trip went something like this. We woke up for the Sunrise, every single day and stayed up for Sunset. The dawn and dusk are when a lot of excitement happened in the park. The Golden hours of Sunlight made for great pictures, and wildlife was up and about. Around the time of our trip in May, the Sun typically rose at about 6 AM and set at about 9.15 PM. So maximizing our daylight hours meant we went to bed a little after 10 and woke up at 5 every morning. We caught up with sleep in peak Sun hours - about midday, after we had scraped bits and pieces for lunch.
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| As it turned out, there were more things to learn about the Grand Prismatic Spring before we could cross it off our bucket lists. In early spring,when the air temperature is still fairly cool, and the surface temperature of the hot water spring is significantly higher, a steady stream of condensation blows over the spring, making it hard to visualize the colors in all their glory for more than a couple seconds now and then. Oh, and you realize you can never personally view the spring from right up above as seen in the Bing Wallpaper....duh! Not unless you are in a helicopter that stays low while you admire the beauty. |
Lunch and Dinner were arguably our most difficult planning assignment. Food for grass eaters such as ourselves is hard enough in any non-urban American setting. Add to that the vastness, and remoteness of traveling through Yellowstone, and the problem compounds. On our very first day in the park, we realized, we wouldn't necessarily be able to drive to a restaurant or concession stand precisely when we wanted food - we went hungry for lunch that day. We would have to plan our meals in advance, and stock up on food whenever we found some, even if we didn't really need it at the time. This change in strategy meant, each time we were able to find a restaurant and fresh food, we would buy two more of whatever we ate to-go, so that we wouldn't go hungry if we found a grizzly or a wolf pack on our drive back on Lamar Valley. And trust me, that happened several times.
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| The Pros of traveling to Yellowstone in early-Spring - Exhibit A. Spring is shorthand for Baby Animal Season. This moose calf was likely days old when a traffic jam spotted it, and this was one among several young animals we encountered on the trip. Cons: Remember, baby elk and moose are staple diet for Grizzly families (who also tend to have really young babies this time of the year), and you cannot wish away everything you are about to see in the Wild. Not the kind of stuff you want to remember from vacations! |
Weather is the other element you've to be watchful of. Days before the trip, the forecast looked really discouraging with every day in the week we were going to spend at the park showing either rain or snow. The Park Cams on the NPS website that relay real time park conditions and traffic was almost always showing dense fog or wet roads. I even went as far as buying rain protective covers for my telephoto lens preparing to always be shooting in rain. Fortunately, the reality of the situation was not as bad. There were a couple days passing through the mountains when the snow did give us some anxious moments (there's not much shoulder on the roads on the Mt.Washburn pass). We could never make it down the spectacular Beartooth Highway due to heavy snow and landslide in that area. But for the most part, we could stay informed on the weather and prepared accordingly, and managed our expectations. We did enjoy bright blue skies, and sunny days during most of our trips. Clouds during Sunrise and Sunset actually helped the landscape look more dramatic!
Yellowstone is popular as America's first National Park. It's goal is to preserve the wilderness that once spanned the entire North American continent before the colonization and industrialization of the 19th & 20th centuries. Once away from the roads, on hikes at least a few miles away from the road, the feeling of isolation and having the whole World to yourself is real. It is not hard to find yourself the canopy of a large tree and a lush green meadow to lay upon for a little siesta, with scarcely other people to disturb you. Although, in that scenario, it would be wise to have your wife awake and on the lookout for any curious bears because they like the same exact thing.
America is proud of Yellowstone - it is often called "America's Best Idea" - and the ideas of preservation started at Yellowstone have been emulated through the rest of America, and the rest of the World. And yet, the scale of Yellowstone - the area of land owned and developed with road networks and infrastructure - is virtually unparalled. But the cost of creating this park was significant too. It is easy to forget the decades of Armed conflicts in the Yellowstone region, and the forcible eviction of the Native American tribes who called the vicinities of the Park home, and tied spiritual significance to the thermal features of the parks. A visitor to Yellowstone today does not encounter relics from the grim past when millions of bison were slaughtered for a multitude of reasons ranging from creating more grazing lands for cattle, to beating boredom on long train journeys on the Pacific Railroad. There is no other way of looking at it - Yellowstone was built on blood and tears.
The story of the park is captured in great detail in the book "Empire of Shadows" by George Black. Page after page, the book sums up the price nature and humanity paid so that two hundred years later, the people of the World could appreciate what nature was before the destructive forces of the Industrial Revolution.
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| When you are done enjoying the treasures Yellowstone has to offer, try to read more about the price Native Americans and Nature had to pay so we could appreciate the Wilderness centuries later. |
When we were planning our trip to Yellowstone, the years of pent-up excitement and anticipation often made us wonder if we had maybe built it up too much in our heads - surely, there was no way it could be as good as we were expecting it to be, and that we would likely be underwhelmed when we finally got there. We were pretty sure we would come back with pictures and memories, but that we would move on to our next trip and forget everything about this place when something cooler came along, like every other State and National Park we had been to.
It wasn't.
We knew exactly what we were going to be seeing, and we were still awed at everything we experienced during our 10 days in the area. After our trip to Yellowstone is when we started questioning our goal of giving every US State a chance, and getting to all 50 of them before we started to pick favorites. Yellowstone spoiled us, and has made it an involuntary compulsion for us to keep returning there for every vacation for the rest of our lives.
And I don't blame us. We are humans after all. When you can fall so much in love with something so familiar and accessible, and still gain a generous measure of excitement from it, why then would you ever go looking for anything new?
Saturday, February 29, 2020
In (Premature) Defense of 2.0 & Every New Movie Ever Going to be Made
It is my humble opinion that great movies serve one purpose - they make it a memorable experience for viewers. And they make it memorable by wowing audiences visually, cognitively or emotionally or a combination thereof. Few movies transcend all three experiences in the exact right proportion. Movies that fall do this are defined as Awesome Movies.
As an example, Enthiran, released in 2010, was an awesome movie.It had a humanoid robot (cognitively appealing), built from scratch with sheet metal and PCBs (more cognitively appealing),with Aishwarya Rai (visually appealing), a robot that falls in love with her (emotionally appealing), and tons of Rajinikanth (cognitive, visual and emotional phenom).
But alas, there is such a thing as "too much" of any one of these experiences.If there is too much visual action, or emotional drama or cognitive masala, the Awesome movie fizzles out. And that has been known to happen before as well. A lot.
In the coming days, 2.0 hits the screens. There will be moments before,
during, and after the movie, where you will question everything you know about
your appreciation of a fine cinematic experience, and start to believe that the
movie is bad.
You will hate Akshay Kumar as the Bird in the sky, and every time you look
at his face you will be reminded of the insane amount of CGI and Artificiality
and Non Realistic Fantasy the director has put in the movie.
If you are a Rajini fan, you will think the movie didn't have enough Rajini
in it. It will descend into a debate about whether or not Rajini should enter
politics.
If you are a Shankar fan, you will think the movie was too much about Rajini.
It will descend into a debate about whether or not Rajini should enter
politics.
If you are a Rahman fan, you will question if his days of good music are
gone forever and if you should officially start a Santhosh Narayanan
Thalaivaaaaaa (with 4 extra a's) Page on Facebook.
If you are an Amy Jackson fan..... well, dont bother, you are not real. Wake
up. (Incidentally she's not real in the movie either, playing a role written specifically for her - a robot!)
You may be a progressive thinking liberal, and you will want to burn the
theater down for a couple of the bad jokes Shankar tried to insert to please
front benchers. It will descend into a debate about India's culture and
Sabarimala.
You may be financially conscious and the vulgar $450 Cr number will boggle
your mind into saying crazy stuff like "So much Poverty we could've
removed if we spent money on buying clothes for poor". It will descend
into a fight about whether BJP should be building statues.
There are possibly thousand different reasons you have been waiting for this
movie to come out. And as soon as the initial rush of being in the
theater, watching this movie leaves you, you will find that the movie doesn't
live up to the extraordinary expectations you had for it, because one aspect of
the movie ruined it for you.
In the midst of all this, you will read a 100 reviews trashing the movie,
500 status updates and check-in's with movie ticket pictures, Youtube videos
with poor imitations of the Superstar, a few crazy clips of the people involved
in the movie getting angry, and at least 5 High Court cases for banning the
movie for either "hurting sentiments" or "copyright
infringement".
And all this will spoil the movie for you, and you will start to question
"everything you know about your appreciation of a fine cinematic
experience, and start to believe that the movie is bad."
It is important you resist that feeling.
You see, regardless of how good a movie 2.0 actually is, this is an
extremely important movie for audiences in India to watch. Because this movie
in some ways, will decide what movies we will watch for the next 10
years.
Few film-makers break out of the safety net (and only they can afford to)
make movies that expand the boundaries of the cinemas we watch. And these
pioneering filmmakers giving new technologies, new styles and new techniques a
platform in their movies is what makes the Indian film industry gain new
capabilities to tell new and bigger stories.
When Shankar used 65 cameras in one action scene in Anniyan, it was unheard
of. Today it is common place enough that simple duet songs use it.
When Rajamouli made Magadheera, he really built the tools to be able to make
Baahubali in the years down the road.
When Bollywood made 10 different boxing movies, it was slowly building the
fanbase and interest, and the template to succeed at making one Dangal.
In an absolute disappointment of a movie called Kochadaiiyan, an established
sequence of operations was established to produce a motion capture movie in
India, and that's what is making 2.0 possible.
Bad Ambitious Movies always beget Great Ambitious Movies!!
The possibility that making 2.0 today may make an Amar Chitra Katha
Superhero Movie possible, or a Mars mission movie a la Tik Tik or Martian
possible.
But what about being objective, and critiquing the nuances of filmmaking as an appreciation of art and a reflection of our society and popular culture? I say - Valid point! But hear me out.... Now, I know very little about how the Universe operates, and my worldview is restricted to my Facebook and Twitter feed. But if the reviewers on my feed are anything to go by, nuance and subtle references are severely underrepresented features of their assessment of movies, and in all fairness, the First Law of Social Media Engagement states that the more nuanced view someone takes, the lesser likes/retweets/engagement it gets - which defeats the whole purpose of posting opinions onto social media in the first place. So reviewers, by natural laws of Social Media Survival of the Fittest gravitate towards populist 1-liners which reduces movies to caricatures of themselves.
So regardless of why you hated 2.0 or any other movie that will be released in future, please
remember to thank the people who stared at the task, knew and understood how
impossible it was to make the movie they wanted, and went ahead did it anyway,
because at the end of the day, this movie is not about this one movie alone, it
is about the kind of movies we will see in decades to come in Indian Cinema!
Update: I watched 2.0 in Rochester Hills, MI (on the day of release, there were at least 20 shows in Tamil, in addition to about 10 more shows in Hindi/Telugu in the Detroit area - in total Maayajaal style - unheard of for an Indian movie, even Baahubali), and absolutely loved the movie! It was everything I hoped for, and more. 2.0 the Rajini character in the second half of the movie is Black Sheep Chitti on steroids, and I absolutely loved it! And what a great job tying everything back to the environment and how we are destroying it with cell phone towers - I get it, it was a little preachy, and felt like a kid's movie at times, but the lighthearted nature of the movie was a big part in why it was enjoyable! And as predicted, social media is full of disappointed moviegoers - there's just no pleasing some people I tell you.
Labels: FDFS Review, Social Media
Saturday, February 1, 2020
The One Where Heer is Very Sad.
Kaansen Khronicles #1: Revisiting Songs from years past, that have been lost in the chaos of Social Media-era content explosion!
Picture this. A girl returns from a bizarre trip to Corsica, where
she meets a stranger, and she falls in love with him. She doesn't know
his name, or anything about where he comes from or what he does.
Anguished at her foolishness for letting her soul mate leave without the
classic Bollywood "Kya Yahi Pyaar Hai" song in the Alps, she does her
best to get on with life, getting big promotions at work and all, but
barely hiding the fact that she is borderline clinically depressed, and
desperately needs to find herself the love of her life. Picture all
this, and then insert a quirky 4 man Bhangra Band that likes to
punctuate every sentence they sing with a stereotypical "Haye Hoye".
Misfit ? Nope. Just A.R.Rahman doing his genius thing.
Coming
at a time where his obsession with the Punjabi/Bhangra genre was at its
peak following Katiya Karoon and Patakha Gudhi in the years prior to
Tamasha, Heer Toh Badi Sad Hai, is a classic Rahman number with
symphonical layers woven together underneath the leading instrument - a
Tumbi and the Sarangi in this instance - and crisp vocals from Mika
Singh. The song generally has a peppy outlook, and the Bhangra Boys
singing it on the screen dont look too upset while they're singing in
celebration either - especially the older gentleman with his toothless
grin.
The song itself beautifully captures the effects
of Depression - a superficially content and satisfying life, but the
deep issues beneath the surface waiting to drag a person down. Irshad
Kamil's lyrics add another layer of simple language loaded with cliched
analogies that help the listener connect with Tara.
Indian
Film songs do not live in isolation - they are often pieces of a
bigger puzzle - the story the director is trying to tell. This song is
yet another showpiece of the crucial mental connection Rahman seems to
make with some of his repeated collaborators like Imtiaz Ali that helps
him set the mood with a song in the context of the larger story
surrounding it.
Some day, I hope to read a story about how Imtiaz Ali and A.R.Rahman
envisioned using this theme to highlight Heer, or Tara's despair, but in
the meantime, this song needs to be celebrated as one of Rahman's best
offerings in the past decade in Hindi cinema.
Labels: Kaansen Khronicles
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