On Angst, Capability gaps and Pragmatism

In case i havent mentioned before, i have been, for the last 3 months or so - have been sort of trying to fit into the typical role within our business thats overall expected of me - like in the general sense - i.e - take up a key role running our plants, essentially try and fit into some sort of role which will eventually lead to a scenario where i'l have to end up replacing the boss with me+a bunch of systems/people.

Somewhere during these last few years - i might have been guilty of treating / talking about a business as just a bunch of numbers / each transaction or product as just a function of money - i cant be more wrong.

Running a Manufacturing Op is tedious, needs super wonkish dedication & loads of energy.

The advent of IT, Emailing and broadband has actually made the manufacturing business EXTREMELY competitive - makes old marketing organization concepts obsolete & puts more pressure on you to actually excel at the manufacturing skillset - because the other aspects of the business - contacts, information & so on - have become that much more accessible & easy.

With rapid pace of client addition, increased size of product portfolios, longer costsheets, transaction sizes, geographical spread and so on - we have - somewhere in the middle- reached a stage where we've suddenly gotten boggled down by capability gaps on the shopfloor - low frills, relaxed, bindass plants - have suddenly started appearing unwieldy, slow & incapable.

While in the past, i have always been vocally critical of the Old man's sudden change of delivery schedules, packing, logistics schemes, specifications, new client addition policy and so on - now when im given charge of a similar production line - more often that not - ive ended up doing the same things - sometimes doing worse.

There are always 100s of things to do - that reactor system to be optimized - that water system to be SOPed - new machine ordering to be supervised - and that quality complaint from half across the world to be attended to - all while maintaining financial/ethical integrity, smiley face for local netas who come for donations and not yell at your mother when you get back home.

And while youre trying to keep your head above the water tackling routine-ish chores - there are the long term things to be constantly worked on - registrations, regulations, market visits and so on..

My old man appears to have managed all this and more - for decades, enduring harsher physical strain / brutal working conditions - brilliantly balancing the boss's role & line manager's role with patience, ease and panache.

In fact, i can unconditionally declare that in the next 5/6 years if i somehow manage to earn a reputation / develop confidence in managing operations - even at the expense of not growing in size at all - i would consider it to be a worthy achievement.