Category Archives: School Projects

Lean Machine!

07 Thursday Oct 2010

Posted by in Lean Engineering, School Projects

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I’ve decided that the time for thinking, talking and planning is over. If I’m going to get anywhere with my thesis, I’m gonna have to start doing! And Fast!

So I barge into the supply-chain department’s office yesterday morning at the hospital and declare
EngChic: “It’s time to be revolutionary!”  
I lift the large, heavy white-board off its stand and start frantically cleaning it (using a bandage and a bottle of detergent that I suspect is meant for medical wound sterilization).  I’m met with an array of responses, from blank stares to fits of giggles to outright screeches. 
Z: “What happened to EngChic?”
F: “I dunno, she just came in and started talking like a crazy person”
S: Waaaa! Hahahahaha
I make a big, beautiful visual control system called an ANDON board, showing the stock that had been requested by the wards but not issued due to out-of-stock items. The response from everyone was surprisingly good! The storemen liked how that they could see what was out-of-stock, the manager liked how he could keep the storemen in check, the data capturerers liked how they could communicate info to the ward staff without having to search for documents, the ward staff liked that they could see when their stock was coming! 
So simple, but why the hell had nobody done it before???
So this morning I burst into the office rounding everyone up and shipping them to the boardroom for a Lean Workshop. I simulated a simplified production line and got everyone to participate in ‘lean games’. Everyone loves to play games, and I really think it was helpful to get them to visualise flow! Of course, I had a lot of fun jumping up and down, screaming at the play-operators to hurry and produce faster coz ‘the patients are suffering!’ 
I sneakily snuck in a couple of lean principles like waste, flow and value-to-the-customer to get them thinking…Brainwashing is a slow process! I even invited the ward clerk I had a tiff with last week in the hope that it would show her the ‘bigger picture’ and get her to buy into the changes she’s been resisting, but we ended up having another screaming match which ended in a tense truce…lol…you can’t teach some old dogs new tricks…
The rest of the morning was spent decorating the office with bright and colourful visual controls like KANBAN! Lean can really be fun at times! I love how creative you can be! 
This thesis is teaching me so much about real life…Really, you don’t know anything until you ‘do it’…Most of my time has been spent talking to people, building relationships, trust, convincing them to see things differently and to buy into my ideas…convincing them it was their idea in the 1st place…
The question is, where is ‘Mechanical Engineering’ in all of this? Well, someone told me the other day that the root meaning of ‘engineer’ is someone who makes things happen…so I guess the answer to the question is ‘everywhere’.

Where’s Wonkie? Cartoons, Politics and Readable Reads!

27 Monday Sep 2010

Posted by in School Projects, South Africa

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I had the opportunity to meet another blogger today. In fact, Pratish Mistry just won ‘Best Political Blog’ at the SA Blog Awards for his www.wonkie.com blog. Quite an interesting cat, but I’ll get to that in a minute…
While waiting for him to arrive at our Long Street meeting place, I had some time to browse a small bookstore,just across the road from Mojito…

This little gem is home to hundreds of books about South Africa: histories,novels, opinions, memoirs…etc. I was so impressed by the collection, especially since it was NOT limited to the ‘Big 5′ and ‘the Struggle‘, but offered such a variety of flavours for any SA enthusiast! Seeing Steven Otter’s Khayelitsha: uMlungu in a Township (a piece of non-fiction I had often seen ((at a seriously inflated price)) in bookstores recently), I asked the owner, “Do you have anything on the history of the Cape Flats? I’m doing this project in Nyanga and something like that would really add context to my research”. The reply was, “Sadly and surprisingly not! I don’t think I have anything comprehensive, and everything written pre-1994 has er..well.”
“A certain standpoint?” I say.
“Well to put it nicely, yes!”
“Hmmm….well I guess I’ll have to write one“, I say as I leave the store.

So Pratish and I go to Cape to Cuba and have a long chat about a whole bunch of things…It turns out he’s been all over the world and has written two books,including The Universe and the Mad Butterfly! This actuary-turned-cartoonist is definitely worth checking out!

Ah, a very good day all-round! Especially since I’ve started implementing major changes at the hospital! We had a trial-run today to reduce stock-issue lead-time from 2 weeks to (hopefully) 2days! I’m very excited about that, and so are the ward-sisters (who threw their arms around me and squealed with delight when I told them the good news!) They know the impact this is going to have to the patients who really need it!

Just got off Skype with my Aussie Prince Charming before he left to slay his evil Senior Manager dragon…sigh 🙂 yes the time difference is a bitch, but somehow I know all will work out! Call it a hunch! (Thank you for being your awesome understanding self)

Living the Change You Want to See

18 Sunday Apr 2010

Posted by in Engineers Without Borders, School Projects

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I have been quite lazy about updating this page this week, but I have truly had a busy week, which culminated in me leaving campus at 3am on Friday morning, returning to campus later that day for a 9am design hand-in, driving off to the cape-flats to spend the morning in Nyanga and Gugulethu, and finishing the day off with my EWB project’s braai which ran until 8pm…

Comments on the above: the braai was great, the first time in days that I could just relax and have a cider and a good conversation…I think that my project team is really starting to gel. It’s so different to see people in a social environment, away from the stiffness and formality of work. It definitely eased my view of my position, and will probably go a long way in helping me be a better lead.

Oh, and one of the guys brought his energy-efficient stove!! This awesome, little thing took about 5 minutes to get hot, cooked the boeri in minutes, and folded away into a little pouch that could have fit in my hand-bag! The best part about it was that it used only a couple of twigs the entire night! (the township caterers use a bakkie-load of natural/treated wood in a week, that costs them R250/load!) Well done T.H. for living the change you want to see. (BTW, he also only eats game-meat, and doesn’t eat fish due to sustainability issues. Oh yes, and his bakkie runs of Bio-diesel that is made from used cooking oil!)
Saturday was another early morning. I attended a pilot workshop run by HAICU, UCT’s center that aims to ‘co-ordinate HIV/AIDS interventions in curriculum development, public activities, student orientation and community partnerships.’ They run this workshop with health-sciences students as part of their curriculum, and wanted to test how a bunch of engineers would benefit from this type of workshop.

I have to say, even if we weren’t paid R100 and given quite an awesome snack-lunch, it definitely would not have been a waste of day! Coming from a medical family, with a dad who has done a ton of work relating to HIV/AIDS, and having sat through hours of HIV/AIDS awareness campaigning, I believed that I knew everything that I needed to know about the condition. I was shocked to find how many points I was unclear of down-right misinformed about! The role-playing activities were quite fun too, something that I can use to jazz up my EWB meetings. (not that they aren’t riveting as it is!)
The last lecture was the one that interested me the most. A section 21 company (which means it’s an NGO), Cell Life gave a talk about what they do. Basically, its a group of ‘techies’ and engineers who develop methods and software to ‘improve the lives of people who are infected and affected by HIV in South Africa through appropriate use of mobile technology’. Basically, they realize that health-care personnel are great at delivering health-care directly, but kinda suck at making systems of service delivery work well. Piles of paper medical-records and histories of patients (that are often lost at the detriment of the patient) have been replaced by simple and reliable computer software, taking seconds to access. Whats even better, is that patients can get their updates and info of HIV/AIDS sent to their cellphones, or on MXIT!!! It seems so simple and obvious that systems like these are needed, but can you believe that before Cell Life, the paper trail ran long and wide? Check them out:
So why am I oh-so-excited about all of this? My thesis that I’m going to start in the next few months is…drum-roll…dealing with service delivery systems in public healthcare, and I was hoping to choose an ARV (HIV treatment) clinic as my guinea pig! I love it when stuff like this happens, the way that when I sit back, relax and just know things will work out, they generally do.
As a last thought, I got an email offering me a great opportunity and the chance to be a part of something really awesome recently. Although I was completely psyched about it, I couldn’t help feeling like I already have too many commitments. I mean, when will I get time to do stuff like blog, or shower??? But a wise person told me this, and it completely sold me…”In ten, twenty years time, you won’t regret the things you have done, only the things you haven’t done”. So I will rage, rage until the dying of the light, no regrets, no fear, just live it.