Especially for SME’s.

17 August 2021

SME



The story goes that one centipede saw a two legged animal walking fast; it thought even though it has so many legs, it can walk only slowly as its legs get clogged while walking and it felt jealous that this animal with only two legs could walk so fast.

It wanted to find a solution for the slow progress being made by it, so it went dragging its body to the consultant of its own world namely an owl. It put this question to the owl and asked owl earnestly for a solution.

The owl said: “why are you disturbing me with such simple problems? If you think a little bit, the solution is in the problem you defined, you yourself could have deciphered the solution.”

Centipede: “I don’t understand what you say, please help me out”.

Owl: “You said the two legged animal walks fast: first let me tell you the two legged animal you are talking about is not an animal at all, it is a man! Secondly you said this animal is two legged, you have too many legs, just chop off your so many legs leaving only two of them you will be able to walk as fast as man.”

The poor centipede thought that its species are living for generations but none of them got this simple solution. That is why owl is the consultant and centipede remains a centipede. So thinking, the centipede took a U turn and started walking back, thanking the owl for the valuable suggestion.

Within just a few feet of its travel back, the centipede hit some of its legs against a small pebble and the pain it suffered was terrible. It got a small doubt that if hitting against a pebble can cause such severe pain, what will happen if it removes so many legs as per consultant’s suggestion. So it took another U-turn and reached the owl again and explained its doubt.

The great consultant owl said, angrily: “Don’t come to me with such trivial details, I have no time for these minor details for implementing my suggestion and these have to be worked out by you, that is why you are there!” Replace the centipede by an SME and the owl by the consultant. You know what I mean.

But the key points we are going to discuss in this series that you would be getting once every week, or at times once in two weeks, are exactly the opposite of what the owl said. They are practical and simple solutions implementable by any. So we have named the advisor here the opposite of owl that is, owl written in reverse- lwo and as it is difficult to pronounce, named it Lowe! Incidentally the whole series was born out of love for SME’s which can push up India’s economy far higher because of their sheer number and the technical skill they possess in their limited field.

To be frank the SMEs largely have the technical expertise and specialization to run the industries / shops they are running- barring very few exceptions. Mr Lowe has seen an SME exporting 100% of their product- round balls with tens of thousands of tolerance on ovality and diameter. Their products are so consistent in quality standards that their foreign customer has given green channel acceptance. This made Mr Lowe think that the SME must be having a very sophisticated machinery to produce such a close tolerance product and also sophisticated quality control equipment to ensure such tough quality standards and that so consistently. He was taken inside the factory only because it was Mr Lowe- and to his surprise Mr Lowe found the sophisticated equipment that was producing these balls– guess what – a HMT centre lathe! And the sophisticated equipment he was having for such tough quality standards was our ordinary carbon paper! This was ingenuity at its best and Mr. Lowe bowed his head before this entrepreneur.

Yes, Indians have plenty of innovation and creativity in them and Indian SME’s can beat the rest of the world, undoubtedly.


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4 Comment(s) 682 views

Suresh Says,   8/25/2021 12:19:49 PM

d Says,   8/25/2021 11:57:05 AM
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