Atul Agarwal

Specialties:

Cellular manufacturing
Lean Manufacturing
Manufacturing systems specialist
Quality control
Statistical applications in business processes

Description:

Dr. Atul Agarwal, associate professor of Production Operations ManagementPh.D. from the University of Texas at Arlington in Business, with expertise in lean operations, quality control, performance issues, and production systems.
Agarwal finds Kettering students driven, mature, and career-minded, with a "razor-focus" approach to career, and the exposure to the best practices in industry that sets Kettering students apart from students at other universities. He enjoys the closer interaction with students that results from Kettering's small class size. teaching graduate courses through the Distance Learning program.
At the beginning of every term Agarwal tells his students how to pronounce his first name. He tells them to say "tool" with an "A" so it's "Atool." A couple of years later he met a student in a store and the student forgot about "tool" in his name and asked, "Aren't you Mr. Hammer?" Since then, he has stopped introducing himself this way.
He would tell prospective students that Kettering is "the best value for your time and money."
Hidden talents and outside interests: Agarwal isn't all business, all the time. Though he avidly tracks Wall Street activity, he also enjoys reading and writing poetry and literature, playing tennis, and traveling both the United States and abroad.

Theory of Constraints

Theory of Constraints (TOC) is an overall management philosophy introduced by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt in his 1984 book titled The Goal, that is geared to help organizations continually achieve their goal.[1] The title comes from the contention that any manageable system is limited in achieving more of its goal by a very small number of constraints, and that there is always at least one constraint. The TOC process seeks to identify the constraint and restructure the rest of the organization around it, through the use of the Five Focusing Steps.

Key Assumption
The underlying assumption of Theory of Constraints is that organizations can be measured and controlled by variations on three measures: Throughput, Operating Expense, and Inventory. Throughput is money (or goal units) generated through sales. Operating Expense is money that goes into the system to ensure its operation on an ongoing basis. Inventory is money the system invests in order to sell its goods and services.[2]

The five focusing steps

Theory of Constraints is based on the premise that the rate of goal achievement is limited by at least one constraining process. Only by increasing flow through the constraint can overall throughput be increased. [1]
Assuming the goal of the organization has been articulated (e.g., "Make money now and in the future") the steps are:
1. IDENTIFY the constraint (the resource/policy that prevents the organization from obtaining more of the goal)
2. Decide how to EXPLOIT the constraint (make sure the constraint's time is not wasted doing things that it should not do)
3. SUBORDINATE all other processes to above decision (align the whole system/organization to support the decision made above)
4. ELEVATE the constraint (if required/possible, permanently increase capacity of the constraint; "buy more")
5. If, as a result of these steps, the constraint has moved, return to Step 1. Don't let inertia become the constraint.
The five focusing steps aim to ensure ongoing improvement efforts are centered around the organization's constraints. In the TOC literature, this is referred to as the Process of Ongoing Improvement (POOGI).
These focusing steps are the key steps to developing the specific applications mentioned below.

Constraints

A constraint is anything that prevents the system from achieving more of its goal. There are many ways that constraints can show up, but a core principle within TOC is that there are not tens or hundreds of constraints. There is at least one and at most a few in any given system. Constraints can be internal or external to the system. An internal constraint is in evidence when the market demands more from the system than it can deliver. If this is the case, then the focus of the organization should be on discovering that constraint and following the five focusing steps to open it up (and potentially remove it). An external constraint exists when the system can produce more than the market will bear. If this is the case, then the organization should focus on mechanisms to create more demand for its products or services.
Types of (internal) constraints
Equipment: The way equipment is currently used limits the ability of the system to produce more salable goods / services.
People: Lack of skilled people limits the system.
Policy: A written or unwritten policy prevents the system from making more.
The concept of the constraint in Theory of Constraints differs from the constraint that shows up in mathematical optimization. In TOC, the constraint is used as a focusing mechanism for management of the system. In optimization, the constraint is written into the mathematical expressions to limit the scope of the solution (X can be no greater than 5).
Please note: Organizations have many problems with equipment, people, policies, etc. But the constraint is the thing that is preventing the organization from getting more Throughput (typically, sales).

Buffers

Buffers are used throughout Theory of Constraints. They appear as part of the EXPLOIT and SUBORDINATE steps of the five focusing steps. Buffers are placed before the key constraint, thus ensuring that the constraint is never starved. Buffers used in this way protect the constraint and should allow for normal variation of processing time and the occasional upset (Murphy) before the constraint.
Buffers can be a bank of physical objects before a work center, waiting to be processed by that work center. Buffers can also be represented by time, as in the time before work reaches the constraint. There should always be enough (but not excessive) work in the time queue before the constraint.
Buffers are not the small queue of work that sits before every work center in a Kanban system. The assumption in Theory of Constraints is that with one constraint in the system, all other parts of the system have sufficient capacity to keep up with the work at the constraint. In a balanced line, as dictated by Kanban, when one work center goes down, then the entire system must wait until that work center is restored. In a TOC system, the only situation where work is in danger is if the constraint is unable to process (either due to malfunction, sickness or a "hole" in the buffer).

Plant types

There are four primary types of plants in the TOC lexicon. Draw the flow of material from the bottom of a page to the top, and you get the four types. They specify the general flow of materials through a system, and they provide some hints about where to look for typical problems. The four types can be combined in many ways in larger facilities.
I-Plant: Material flows in a sequence, such as in an assembly line. The primary work is done in a straight sequence of events (one-to-one). The constraint is the slowest operation.
A-Plant: The general flow of material is many-to-one, such as in a plant where many sub-assemblies converge for a final assembly. The primary problem in A-plants is in synchronizing the converging lines so that each supplies the final assembly point at the right time.
V-Plant: The general flow of material is one-to-many, such as a plant that takes one raw material and can make many final products. Classic examples are meat rendering plants or a steel manufacturer. The primary problem in V-plants is "robbing" where one operation (A) immediately after a diverging point "steals" materials meant for the other operation (B). Once the material has been processed by A, it cannot come back and be run through B without significant rework.
T-Plant: The general flow is that of an I-Plant (or has multiple lines), which then splits into many assemblies (many-to-many). Most manufactured parts are used in multiple assemblies and nearly all assemblies use multiple parts. Customized devices, such as computers, are good examples. T-plants suffer from both synchronization problems of A-plants (parts aren't all available for an assembly) and the robbing problems of V-plants (one assembly steals parts that could have been used in another).
For non-material systems, one can draw the flow of work or the flow of processes and arrive at similar basic structures. A project, for example is an A-shaped sequence of work, culminating in a delivered project.

The Robotic Society is near...

ScienceDaily (June 10, 2009) — European researchers in robotics, psychology and cognitive sciences have developed a robot that can predict the intentions of its human partner. This ability to anticipate (or question) actions could make human-robot interactions more natural.
The walking, talking, thinking robots of science fiction are far removed from the automated machines of today. Even today's most intelligent robots are little more than slaves – programmed to do our bidding.
Many research groups are trying to build robots that could be less like workers and more like companions. But to play this role, they must be able to interact with people in natural ways, and play a pro-active part in joint tasks and decision-making. We need robots that can ask questions, discuss and explore possibilities, assess their companion's ideas and anticipate what their partners might do next.
The EU-funded JAST project (http://www.euprojects-jast.net/) brings a multidisciplinary team together to do just this. The project explores ways by which a robot can anticipate/predict the actions and intentions of a human partner as they work collaboratively on a task.
Who knows best?
You cannot make human-robot interaction more natural unless you understand what 'natural' actually means. But few studies have investigated the cognitive mechanisms that are the basis of joint activity (i.e. where two people are working together to achieve a common goal).
A major element of the JAST project, therefore, was to conduct studies of human-human collaboration. These experiments and observations could feed into the development of more natural robotic behaviour.
The researchers participating in JAST are at the forefront of their discipline and have made some significant discoveries about the cognitive processes involved in joint action and decision-making. Most importantly, they scrutinised the ways in which observation plays an important part in joint activity.
Scientists have already shown that a set of 'mirror neurons' are activated when people observe an activity. These neurons resonate as if they were mimicking the activity; the brain learns about an activity by effectively copying what is going on. In the JAST project, a similar resonance was discovered during joint tasks: people observe their partners and the brain copies their action to try and make sense of it.
In other words, the brain processes the observed actions (and errors, it turns out) as if it is doing them itself. The brain mirrors what the other person is doing either for motor-simulation purposes or to select the most adequate complementary action.
Resonant robotics
The JAST robotics partners have built a system that incorporates this capacity for observation and mirroring (resonance).
“In our experiments the robot is not observing to learn a task,” explains Wolfram Erlhagen from the University of Minho and one of the project consortium's research partners. “The JAST robots already know the task, but they observe behaviour, map it against the task, and quickly learn to anticipate [partner actions] or spot errors when the partner does not follow the correct or expected procedure.”
The robot was tested in a variety of settings. In one scenario, the robot was the 'teacher' – guiding and collaborating with human partners to build a complicated model toy. In another test, the robot and the human were on equal terms. “Our tests were to see whether the human and robot could coordinate their work,” Erlhagen continues. “Would the robot know what to do next without being told?”
By observing how its human partner grasped a tool or model part, for example, the robot was able to predict how its partner intended to use it. Clues like these helped the robot to anticipate what its partner might need next. “Anticipation permits fluid interaction,” says Erlhagen. “The robot does not have to see the outcome of the action before it is able to select the next item.”
The robots were also programmed to deal with suspected errors and seek clarification when their partners’ intentions were ambiguous. For example, if one piece could be used to build three different structures, the robot had to ask which object its partner had in mind.
From JAST to Jeeves
But how is the JAST system different to other experimental robots?
“Our robot has a neural architecture that mimics the resonance processing that our human studies showed take place during joint actions,” says Erlhagen. “The link between the human psychology, experimentation and the robotics is very close. Joint action has not been addressed by other robotics projects, which may have developed ways to predict motor movements, but not decisions or intentions. JAST deals with prediction at a much higher cognitive level.”
Before robots like this one can be let loose around humans, however, they will have to learn some manners. Humans know how to behave according to the context they are in. This is subtle and would be difficult for a robot to understand.
Nevertheless, by refining this ability to anticipate, it should be possible to produce robots that are proactive in what they do.
Not waiting to be asked, perhaps one day a robot may use the JAST approach to take initiative and ask: “Would you care for a cup of tea?”
The JAST project received funding from the ICT strand of the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme for research.

Fallacy: Ad Hominem

Description of Ad Hominem

Translated from Latin to English, "Ad Hominem" means "against the man" or "against the person."

An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of "argument" has the following form:

Person A makes claim X.
Person B makes an attack on person A.
Therefore A's claim is false.

The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).

Example of Ad Hominem

Bill: "I believe that abortion is morally wrong." Dave: "Of course you would say that, you're a priest." Bill: "What about the arguments I gave to support my position?" Dave: "Those don't count. Like I said, you're a priest, so you have to say that abortion is wrong. Further, you are just a lackey to the Pope, so I can't believe what you say."

The End of an Era

The End of an Era

When General Motors filed for bankruptcy yesterday it marked the end of an era. The first truly modern, manage-by-the-numbers corporation, created by Alfred Sloan in the 1920s, was laid to rest as a viable concept. But what comes next?
This is not just a question for GM or large enterprises more generally. Yesterday also marked an end of the lean narrative that has been unfolding for thirty years, ever since GM first began to decline in the recession of 1979. David (in fact a team of Davids) finally felled Goliath just as Goliath was finally paying attention to the lean message. So we need to consider what happens next for the Lean Community as well.
What's Next For GM?
At the beginning of 2009, GM had three major weaknesses. It had too much legacy debt – bondholders and retirees. It had compensation costs for current employees that were too high to compete with transplant operations in North America. And the money it received for its products in most segments of the market was far below average, partly as a legacy of decades of defective products and partly due to losing the pulse of the public on what the company and its products should mean for customers.
Ironically, GM also had considerable strengths. It had competitive factories in terms of productivity and quality and a competitive product development process when it could focus its energies. (E.g., the new Chevy Malibu.) After failing for 15 years to learn lessons from NUMMI (its California joint venture with Toyota), GM had in recent years developed a competitive and consistent global manufacturing system and rationalized its global product development organization. It had even taken impressive steps to lean its internal business processes. But -- as in the case of its cast-off parts supplier Delphi -- lean came too late.
The bankruptcy re-sets the trip odometer. The legacy debt has been written down to a manageable level and compensation costs for current employees will now be much more competitive. In addition, the company is dramatically retrenching toward a reasonable portfolio of brands with production capacity appropriate to its realistic share of likely market volumes.
So what is the problem? Simply that GM has now explained what it is not. It is not Saturn or Saab or Pontiac or Hummer. (Or Opel or Vauxhall either, although surely the new Opel will be a supplier of fully-engineered cars for GM for a long time to come.) And GM is not a significant manufacturer in the U.S. outside of the Midwest. And GM is not, from a profitability standpoint, mainly a finance company. And GM will not have a dealer net blanketing every area of every city across the continent.
But what a company is not is of no interest to consumers. If General Motors is no longer "your father's GM" (to paraphrase its advertising line in the last years of Oldsmobile) or "the company that let you down" (as CEO Fritz Henderson phrased it at yesterday's news conference), then what is it? Why should any new customers care to shop GM products, much less pay the top-of-the-segment prices GM needs to flourish? And who can define what the new, appealing GM is?
Sloan's great genius in re-creating General Motors in the 1920s (after its second trip through reorganization – yesterday marked the third in 100 years) was to provide a compelling explanation of how GM fit into every American's life. He presented a complete range of vehicles from a used Chevrolet as a first car for the low income buyer to a fully-equipped Cadillac for those who had succeeded financially. And GM products were carefully arrayed in a status hierarchy with brilliant attention to the look and feel of each product in relation to American tastes. Indeed, as it gained massive size, GM was often the arbiter of American tastes.
So far the only message about what GM is is the Volt, its extended-range hybrid. Perhaps this is a start, although with enormous risks given the flux in technologies and in political and public perceptions about climate change and energy dependency. But even if it is a start, it is a very small start. Who can comprehensively define "your son's GM", "the GM that never lets you down"? And what freedom will they have to do so?
It is easy to blame GM's recent management for its troubles. But the senior GM managers I have known – almost all of whom had strong finance backgrounds --were remarkably competent at running the company in the financially oriented, manage-by-results way that had produced success for generations. So the problem is not the individual competence of mangers but GM's irrelevant conception of what management needs to do. In simplest terms, where is the new Sloan, the leader able to rethink GM's management and purpose and make it relevant to Americans again?
And supposing the new Sloan (or Sloans) can be found. What freedom will this person or team have to run the company in a way that restores its former glory? This is truly a central question because the U.S. government, as the new owner, is sure to be enormously conflicted:
Should the company be immediately and completely "right-sized" for its new place in the world? (This would be the best way to boost share prices so the government can sell the stock to recoup its massive investment. And it would be the best way to help Ford and Chrysler as well, by eliminating excess capacity.) Or should GM stimulate employment in a deep recession and placate the union by minimizing cutbacks? It can't do both.
Should GM focus in the next few years on the big pick-ups and SUVs that account for all of its profits? (This would be another excellent way to boost share prices so the government can recoup its investment.) Or should GM take a dramatic turn toward highly fuel-efficient products, which won't sell and certainly not at high margins unless energy pricing is also dramatically adjusted upward toward world levels? (e.g., $5 versus $2 per gallon.) It can't do both.
Clearly the hard part comes now, after bankruptcy, and we will all watch what happens. But let me make an exception for those readers – and there are many – who work at GM and who can take an active role in making it happen. I truly wish you the best.
What's Next for Lean?
For 30 years now the Lean Community has benefited from a strong trailing wind. GM steadily declined as Toyota steadily advanced. All we needed to do was standby and cheer! But this narrative is over.
GM and almost all large manufacturers have now accepted lean as a management theory, although the actual practice is always a struggle. As I noted above, GM was becoming a vastly leaner enterprise just as it collapsed and I have confidence that it will continue to embrace lean principles and methods in the years immediately ahead.
At the same time Toyota has turned out to have flaws of its own in the current financial crisis. It barged ahead with capacity expansion across the world that outran its ability to create lean managers and defied reasonable expectations for long-term market demand. (As I have mentioned in previous e-letters, in the mid-1990s Toyota redefined its purpose from being the best organization at solving customer problems to being the largest, an objective of no interest to any customer.) This has been a real setback for the lean movement.
We in the Lean Community therefore find ourselves in the odd position of winning a battle of ideas without actually getting most believers to fully practice their new convictions. And we have as our ideal organization a company that is experiencing significant management and revenue challenges despite "winning" the great contest between modern management and lean management.
Even as this drama plays out within manufacturing, lean ideas are spreading rapidly to new fields, from the beleaguered financial industry to healthcare to government services. Yet we have not fully defined what lean means in these areas, much less how to implement and sustain it. So the dramatic events of recent weeks are not a time for self-congratulation. Instead, they are a time for modesty and self-reflection – hansei, if you will – as we all struggle with the economic crisis while trying to re-define our own purpose as a Lean Community for the new era ahead.

Saving Milwaukee’s Best

Milwaukee is home to America’s most vibrant school-choice program: More than 20,000 students participate, almost all of them minorities. They have made academic gains and boast higher graduation rates than their peers in public schools. They even save money for taxpayers. Inevitably, Democrats in the state capital are trying to eviscerate the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.They’ve wanted to gut school choice for years, at the behest of teacher-union patrons who believe education should be a government monopoly. Until recently, Republicans have stood in the way. That changed following last year’s elections. Now, for the first time since the advent of school choice in Milwaukee two decades ago, Madison is a one-party capital. The governor, Jim Doyle, is a Democrat. Members of his party control both the state assembly and the state senate. School choice is in their crosshairs.Last week, the legislature’s Joint Finance Committee approved a series of auditing, accrediting, and instructional requirements that will force successful voucher schools to shift resources away from classrooms and into administration. Several schools will have to comply with new bilingual-education mandates, even though many immigrant parents choose those schools precisely because they emphasize the rapid acquisition of English instead of native-language maintenance.Lawmakers also propose to strip funding for school choice. With the value of each voucher reduced, private schools will see their payments fall. Meanwhile, public schools will watch their budgets increase by hundreds of dollars per student. This is on top of what is already a startling financial asymmetry: Taxpayers currently hand over $13,468 per student to Milwaukee Public Schools, compared to just $6,607 per student in the school-choice program. In 2008 alone, school choice saved the public almost $32 million, according to Robert M. Costrel of the University of Arkansas. Since 1994, the figure is $180 million. The savings would be even larger if more students used vouchers.At the National Press Club last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that he opposed school choice: “Let me explain why. Vouchers usually serve 1 to 2 percent of the children in a community. . . . But I don’t want to save 1 or 2 percent of children and let 98, 99 percent down.” It was a bizarre statement: Why not simply let more than 1 or 2 percent enjoy the benefits of school choice? In Milwaukee, they actually do. It’s the largest urban school-choice program in the country, dwarfing the size of the one in Washington, D.C., whose de-funding by congressional Democrats has drawn so much criticism. Roughly one in five of Milwaukee’s school-age children receive vouchers. All of them must fall below an income threshold. Researchers say that the program is beginning to show systemic effects. In other words, it doesn’t merely help its participants. It also gives a lift to non-voucher students because the pressure of competition has forced public schools to improve.Sometimes onerous regulations are at least well-intentioned blunders. Not these. The enemies of school choice in Madison know exactly what they’re doing. In the name of “accountability,” they attack the quality of voucher schools with deadly precision. The goal is to make them as mediocre as the public schools they routinely outperform — and to leave parents, once again, without a choice.