In September 2000, a chemical plant I was working in was completely gutted in a fire. There were two fatalities. There was an urgent need to turn things around or face the inevitable closure.
In the ensuing 7 years, the team worked in a frenzy and accomplished many remarkable things. It started with setting the systems right. Within 1.5 years, we had ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and the erstwhile OHSAS 18001 Certification. The critical raw material was imported and we were under constant pressure to improve yield to control cost. We commissioned a fixed-bed reactor to improve throughput. Fuel prices were soaring. We decided to switch to Indian Coal. With the help of Thermax, we commissioned a Solid Fuel, Fluidized Bed Thermic Fluid Heater. We also bought an old ship turbine (60 Hz frequency) and retrofitted it to generate power. Simultaneously, we installed Compabloc Heat Exchangers from Alfa Laval and set up a robust heat recovery system. We devised a vacuum pump with the help of HK Vacuum Company to eliminate the liquid effluent from our plant. These and many such strings of innovation not only kept us competitive and profitable but also developed our technical and managerial skills.
History is replete with examples where a crisis has triggered a series of innovations. The PWA was set in the US during the great depression to undertake infrastructure projects. The goal was to create employment and stabilize the economy. Between July 1933 and March 1939, the PWA funded and administered the construction of more than 34,000 projects including airports, large electricity-generating dams, major warships for the Navy, and bridges, and 70 percent of the new schools and a third of the hospitals built in 1933–1939. In normal years, such projects would have been burgeoned under bureaucracy. But in those abnormal times, the playbook was thrown out of the window. Decisions were taken expeditiously.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, India administered over 2.2 billion doses covering 95% of the eligible population. An Indigenised Vaccine was developed in record time. Also, the doses were scheduled and tracked using the CoWin app. This level of digitization was not even achieved by developed nations. Though the UPI came into existence in 2016, it experienced a big surge in usage during the pandemic.
There is a pattern here. The fear, the pain, and the struggle are way more powerful than positive thoughts. Of course, there is a limit to stress-induced innovation. But then there is a much larger risk of inaction stemming out of years of stability and prosperity.
Subodh
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