Excerpts from a conversation with August’s Timbor Star – Saumil,
Floor Manager at Changodar.
The sales team or person on the floor is the face of a company. He/She needs to ensure targets are met; customers are satisfied, and have to deal with the tantrums of a customer. The sales person convinces a customer of a product, ensures payment and has to even follow up/bear the criticism if something goes wrong. On the other hand, the production or factory team does not usually have any kind of interaction with the customer.
The battle between production and sales is of epic proportions,
both departments being different sides of the same coin. Equally important for
the success of any kind of business – these two are usually at loggerheads.
The sales team or person on the floor is the face of a company. He/She needs to ensure targets are met; customers are satisfied, and have to deal with the tantrums of a customer. The sales person convinces a customer of a product, ensures payment and has to even follow up/bear the criticism if something goes wrong. On the other hand, the production or factory team does not usually have any kind of interaction with the customer.
Sales thinks that all the factory needs to do is ensure that
the product is ready for dispatch. The factory feels that the sales people are
sitting in air-conditioned offices and lead an easy life. For this issue of the
newsletter, we decided to find out exactly what the production process entails.
Who better to ask than Saumil.
Editor: Tell us
exactly what you do? And what is with this soft board of yours?
Saumil: My main
priority is scheduling the orders that we receive from the stores – from the
start to its end – the entire production cycle. This is not as simple as it
sounds. Orders need to be scheduled according to machine capacity. The time
that every order would take depends on its category as there are different
production cycles for laminate, wood, paint, and so on.
The soft board illustrates where each single order is placed
in the production cycle. This enables me to know exactly how many days an order
is going to take, whether it is going to be delayed.
Editor: Can you
elaborate on the main issues that arise during production?
Saumil: Material –
As we all know, a single kitchen is not just made out of one particular type of
material. Whether hardware or raw material related, if all the materials are
not ready or available – the kitchen will remain pending in the production
cycle.
Machines – Our machines are fully computerized and if one
stops working – inevitably there is a delay. As these machines are imported, it
takes atleast 3 days to get a replacement or software update if something does
go wrong. Also, it will never be that all the machines stop working on the same
day. On average, this happens once a month.
Power Fluctuation – this causes the maximum complications.
Nowadays, almost every machine has a chip or works on software. Whenever there
are power fluctuations, this causes an issue in the software programming of the
machines which further causes a delay.
Editor: What are some
things you think the sales department should be aware of?
Saumil: It is
important to have product knowledge, which every person on the floor is very
well versed in. Having an idea as to the product cycle duration is of equal importance.
A major complication that is faced is when an urgent order
is sent to us for production scheduling. Since all the machines run on a
certain capacity, materials have to be procured in advance, etc. – an order
that comes between the already set schedules makes the other orders move down
the list and thus causes a delay.
