Chief Operating Officer / India
The response kept the unresolved obligation in view
- Engineering and operations leadership
- 31 years
- Career begins July 1995
- Operations colleagues
- 230
- Led through five managers
- Annual operations expense
- ₹46 crore
- ₹3.6 crore approved annual capital expenditure
Decisions & consequences
01Making a replacement request specific to the revision
Service teams reviewed 170 spare-part requests after repeated questions about apparently similar components. Twenty-nine selections referred to a revision that was incompatible with the product concerned. A familiar family name and description had not supplied enough distinction. I asked engineering, service and operations to examine the selection path together, including where uncertainty should stop a dispatch decision rather than be resolved through a colleague's guess.
We funded ₹54 lakh of compatibility-record and selection work. Engineering retained authority for the technical relationships between product revisions and components. Service colleagues needed a way to identify the product in use and obtain a decision when the record was incomplete. Operations changed the work around the selection so that an unresolved compatibility question was visible before the order moved forward. The response was more than a request to read the same catalogue more carefully.
We rechecked the twenty-nine identified cases after the changes and resolved their selections against the engineering-approved records. That result concerned the known cases. It did not establish that every future request would be correct or that a catalogue revision could replace technical judgement where the product history was uncertain. I kept the scope explicit when reporting the work, because a correction to an identified set is useful without becoming a universal assurance.
The lesson was that information used in service must preserve distinctions that matter after manufacture. A product family may be a helpful commercial category while remaining too broad for a replacement decision. The operating process should make uncertainty understandable and give it an owner, rather than reward speed through an unclear selection. I would ask the same question in another business: what fact must be known before this order can responsibly proceed, and does the person making the selection have a reliable way to obtain it?
Creating a temporary option while repairs stayed open
We reviewed eighty-six customers whose products were in our repair process. Eighteen had waited more than ten days. The workshop could describe the work still needed, but that did not necessarily provide a useful arrangement for the person waiting. I asked service and operations to examine the interval from the customer's perspective, without assuming that any available mobility aid would be suitable simply because it was temporary.
We funded a forty-eight-unit loan pool at ₹72 lakh. Suitability had to be reviewed through the appropriate process before a unit was offered for use. The pool created an additional option; it was not a promise that one stock item could meet every person's needs. Service teams also had to explain the arrangement and keep responsibility for the original repair clear. A loan should not make the underlying work less visible merely because an interim response has been offered.
At the checkpoint, fourteen of the eighteen repairs that had exceeded ten days were complete and four remained open. Those figures describe repair status in the reviewed group. We did not claim that the pool caused every completion, that all customers accepted a loan or that the arrangement established a clinical outcome. The unresolved four remained in the service account with named responsibility for follow-up. The business still owed them a clear explanation of the work and the next step.
I learned to distinguish an internal plan from the experience it leaves outside the organisation. A queue may be well described while the person affected still has no workable option. Funding temporary capacity can help, but it introduces its own suitability and service responsibilities. The operating account needs to hold both the interim arrangement and the unfinished repair together. Neither an offered loan nor a completed workshop task should be used as shorthand for a broader result that the company has not established with the person concerned.
Paying for a quality hold without rewriting its conclusion
Engineering identified a weld-quality concern and placed ninety-four undispatched units on hold. The units were still within our control, and the hold interrupted the planned production and dispatch sequence. I asked operations to build a response around the technical decision rather than treat the schedule as a reason to argue the concern away. The people responsible for assessment needed clear authority, while management needed a realistic account of the cost and work that followed.
Qualified engineering and quality teams determined the disposition: twenty-eight units required rework and sixty-six required replacement. The total response cost was ₹1.1 crore. Operations organised the work, materials and revised sequence, with release remaining under the appropriate technical authority. I did not approve a departure from the assessment to recover the original dispatch plan. If a commercial commitment needed to change, it had to be explained as part of the response.
The figures account for the ninety-four units held. They do not establish the condition of every unit the company has made or provide a general claim about product safety. Nor did we use the fact that the units were undispatched to invent a wider conclusion about possible harm. The case describes a finding, a controlled population and a funded disposition. Any broader technical or reporting question belonged with the relevant professionals and the company's appropriate advice.
This decision reinforced a practical boundary in my role. A COO can be accountable for the cost and schedule of a response without owning the technical conclusion that triggered it. That separation is useful only if the operating plan respects it when the finding is inconvenient. I would want directors to understand the hold, the population affected, the disposition and the remaining uncertainty. The value of the response lies in carrying out the qualified decision responsibly, not in presenting a production recovery as evidence that no further question could remain.
Revising the instruction and keeping five learning needs open
Forty-two service technicians completed a defined task using our instructions. Twelve made unit-conversion errors. The exercise exposed a problem worth investigating in the relationship between the technical content, its presentation and the task expected of the reader. I asked engineering and service leadership to examine the instruction before assuming that repeating a general reminder would be an adequate response. The finding concerned this exercise and group, not every service action performed in the field.
We funded ₹23 lakh to revise the instructions and supporting training. Engineering remained responsible for the technical content, while operations examined how it was used in the service task. The revised material made the relevant units and sequence clearer. Training addressed the points the exercise had exposed. We did not treat the publication of a new document as the result; the work needed to be tested through use by the people expected to follow it.
In a repeat with the same forty-two technicians, thirty-seven completed the task correctly and five still needed further training. The same-group repeat helped us examine the revised arrangement, but it was not an independent certification or evidence that all field errors had disappeared. We kept the five learning needs visible and assigned follow-up rather than describe the whole group as cleared. The result was specific enough to guide the next action without becoming a claim about a wider population.
I learned that instructions deserve the same practical scrutiny as the process they describe. Technical accuracy matters, but a correct statement can still be difficult to use under the conditions of a task. Operations can help expose that difficulty while leaving the technical judgement with qualified colleagues. A useful account distinguishes the input changed, the exercise performed and the result observed. It should also retain the people who need another step, because their unfinished learning is part of the work the revised document was intended to support.