Prior to getting attracted to the best profession in the world, that is, the stock market, I was a true-blue engineer.

My first job after graduating in electronics and communications engineering was with an entertainment electronics company which essentially imported VHS video cassette recorder (VCR, remember?) kits in completely and semi-knocked down condition and reassembled them.

My initial role was in the indigenisation division within the R&D department and the primary function was to substitute as many parts as possible with Indian ones to bring down import dependence and high cost due to imports.

As part of this, the firm sent me to study the systems, processes, automation levels and possible indigenisation issues at our principal’s plant in Japan.

This was more than 20 years ago, but if my memory serves me right, after a couple of days in Tokyo and Yokohama where I met the corporate staff, I spent the next few weeks at their plant in Murayama-shi in Yamagata prefecture, north of Tokyo. There were other large companies there with manufacturing set ups, including 3M.

The difference in work culture, courtesy, use of technology and cleanliness hit me like thunderclap as soon as I landed.

Another striking feature was the absolute and all-embracing lack of English usage. But over the next few days,

I found that I had a lot more to learn and, on my first ‘real’ foreign trip (I had only been to Nepal and Sri Lanka prior to this); I went about wide-eyed determined to learn and imbibe as much as I could. Initially, I was fascinated by the just-in-time processes and such like, but eventually realised what made Japan the global number one economy at the time.

Lesson one came soon enough. On the second day in Murayama-shi in Yamagata prefecture, I was on the factory floor. There were conveyor belts running non-stop, each of which had some 20 employees around it who put in a specified number of different components on each printed circuit board, which could not be machine-mounted. Each conveyor belt had a busy-looking supervisor.

This conveyor never stopped. If anybody on the belt had to take a break, the supervisor filled in for them him instantly — he had the skill and knowledge of each of his subordinates and worked continuously unlike in India where the supervisors’ role is generally confined to administration.

What’s the matter?

Lesson two was humbling. At one point, I was sitting alone in a large room analysing their products’ technical specifications, surrounded by application-specific spectrometers.

The door opened, a head popped in and raised his eyebrows in a questioning look. Having practiced speaking to my Japanese co-workers with actions, supported by broken English in reflex, I stammered while gesturing ‘‘light — frequency spectrum — problem — analyse’.

He looked around amused and, after a second, said in perfect English with a mischievous smile ‘What’s the matter? Don’t they teach you English back in India?’

Turned out that he was the Harvard-educated marketing director of the company on a visit to the plant! That taught me never to presume anything while interacting with others, a very helpful insight at work.

Then there was the technical stuff. One of the items identified for easy indigenisation was the humble power cord. Since I was vested with the prime responsibility, I ran several tests on it for a number of days, subjecting the cords, supplied by our local vendors, to all kinds of load tests, conductivity, and even strength tests.

After my approval, one vendor was finally asked to supply a pilot lot of 500 cords. Well, we had to throw them all away because I hadn’t checked the diameter and they simply would not fit into the space provided in the chassis! I felt silly but learnt an important lesson — you also have to check the obvious because it may not be what you think.

Smart and strategic

But the final lesson was the most simple, the most commercial and the most effective. The VCR consisted of a ‘head assembly’ which was impossible to indigenise because it utilised technology which was used to make missiles.

Primarily, this made the head turn at 1,500 revolutions per minute accurately. Which is why only three companies around the world, including JVC which invented the VCR, were licensed to manufacture it.

So our principals in Japan simply put 70 per cent of the cost of the unit on the head assembly, effectively making it unviable for us to indigenise the rest, as it was valued so low when imported! That was a smart and strategic pricing which kept their sales going for a long time.

Japan has a rich culture, an incredible history, mythology, literature, art and an amazing public transport system by which you can set your watch. But their respect for learning and attention to detail truly sets them apart and, for all their problems, they are simply unable to make the yen weak!

( The author is President, Religare Securities Ltd .)

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