The department of Industrial and Management engineering hosted Mr. Aniruddha Khekale, Group Human Resource Director, Emerson Automation Solutions India for a corporate seminar on 4^th of August. It was an engaging session on the topic, ‘HR for passion and dispassion’. The seminar commenced with Mr. Khekale giving us a glimpse of Emerson Automation Solutions and its journey from a start-up in mass production to building Emerson platforms, going global.

He began his speech on the topic with a picture of a pulse signifying upward slope as passion and downward as dispassion. Passion and dispassion is defined by business driver however compassion is a human element that we can choose to deal with them. This compassion comes from organization’s values and culture. The speaker asked us for our views on the roles and functions of various facets of a CEO, a COO and a CHRO, what we would expect a CHROs contribution to the company and its decision-making system? It was an engaging moment, with many people coming up with multitudes of different thoughts and perspective.

While defining HR accountability, he spoke about the ideas of a moral compass, with a focus on results and human empathy. In the world of artificial intelligence, it is human empathy that will help a company to grow and prosper. The speaker next went on to discuss a case study about a company struggling to achieve a certain target in a year while having a de-growth in a certain quarter. After 10 minutes of brain storming the student came up with various solutions. Mr. Khekale discussed about how in such a situation that the company was facing, dispassion can be cost containment, restructuring and downward spiral, while passion is the growth which can come only from positive energy that we get from the hope and direction communicated by the top people in business. So, when Emerson faced with a similar situation, they implemented simple steps like empathetic communication, focus, engaging high potential members of various teams and reorganization. Smal steps of wisdom such as Weekly To-Do list or dynamic work allocation went a long way in improving the business ambience as opposed to critical appraisal systems where the productivity may be taken for a long walk under the occurrence of the same.

Mr. Khekale also talked about six step process of ‘Mission’ and ‘Role’ being long term and Goals and plans (To-Do list, Schedule and delegate) to be weekly point of focus. He also talked about the company policies of engaging and re-organizing the high potential people. There were greater than 95% retention and 75+ promotions and job moves. The speaker also spoke about the steps taken by the company in providing the women leaders an environment to work together. He spoke last but not the least about the  skills one should have as an HR which includes, strategic intelligence, energize organization, alignment, balance, speed, strength and compassion. In the world where numbers speak, one need to realise it is the humans to speak with numbers and it is imperative, we take care and value our human resources. After a truly engaging and interactive session, we thank Mr.Khekale for spending time us and sharing real life experiences that broadened our knowledge horizon.

By: Himanshu Negi

The above words very well define the learning methodology practiced at IIT Kanpur, where the transfer of knowledge is emphasized through “Involvement”. The MBA department at IITK is well known for realizing and meeting the corporate world’s requirement for Techno-Managerial skill sets. And the learning experience can be judged by the presence of erudite professors.

But its not only education which ties students to the teachers, the department enjoys a strong overall bond among its members. And to strengthen this bond the students organize a cultural night “Vihangam” in the summer term every year where all the members (students,
professors and supporting staff) participate in rejuvenating performances followed by informal dinner treat.

The night hosted casio performance, mimicry show, open house quiz and many solo/group dance and music performances, but the most happening performance of the night was melodies sung by Dr. Uday S Rucherla. We are very thankful to all the faculty and supporting staff members for their presence and making the night
a forever memory for all.

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Manpreet Singh

MBA 2015-17

The 4 day six sigma training certification program by Mr Vaibhav Agrawal of KPMG holding a six sigma Black Belt saw a lot of participation from both the first and the second year MBA students. The 6 sigma green belt certification training deals with making an individual well versed in Lean Six Sigma Methodology which possesses a thorough understanding of all the aspects of DMAIC i.e. Design, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control as well as the tools that are necessary for
implementing DMAIC improvement projects.

From giving a brief about importance of quality in all types of industries to the origin of six sigma,its meaning and different criteria and
ways of achieving six sigma qualities, the 4 day seminar not only covered the theoretical aspects but also its practical implementation through group activities and interesting tasks to ensure learning and knowledge retention.
The 4 day training program gave the students an overall picture of quality improvement procedures that take place in an organization, the importance of quantifying process performances and the various methods that are used for the same. Some of the sub topics that were covered were methods for measurement and analysis of data, analytical tools to identify and understand sources of variation, DMAIC process improvement road map, and method to establish customer requirements.

It concluded with an evaluation test conducted by KPMG based on the concepts learned in the workshops. Students are eager to apply the learnings from this programme in their future organizations.

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Bhavna Uttamchandani

MBA 2015-17

With this in mind began Prabandhan’15, to provide people with the opportunity to interact with people from various other colleges and to learn new things. OPTIMA-Operations and Marketing club of IIT Kanpur came up with various events like Prayas- A case study competition, Ishtihar-Poster making competition and Vigyapan- Video making competition with prizes worth 40,000 at stake.

In ‘Ishtihar’, people were required to make posters on the theme of ‘Make In India’ and promote them through facebook. Winner were team Spitfire, team Monopoly and team Bow & Arrow.

In ‘Vigyapan’, people were required to make a video(ad) on everyone’s favourite topic ‘Food’ and promote the same through facebook.

In ‘Prayas’, the first round was a quiz of 30 minutes on general questions related to Marketing, Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning. 100 teams participated (from which 15teams were shortlisted and 7teams were waitlisted) from various colleges like NMIMS-Mumbai, IIT-Kanpur, DTU Delhi, JBIMS, ISB-Mohali, MDI-Gurgaon, IMT-Ghaziabad, IIM-Rohtak, IIT-Delhi, IIM-Indore etc. Next round required making presentation of an Operations case on Production Planning and Warehouse location, for which 6 teams qualified. After that, an on-campus round was conducted where all the teams had to present their case solutions. Teams were given the option of presenting their case via Video Conferencing also. It was judged by Dr. Deepu Philip-Professor, IIT Kanpur and Mr. Harsh Vardhan-Head, Juniper Networks. The worthy and thoroughly deserved winners in the end were Drones- IIT Kanpur, BH2- ISB Mohali and Pinnacle- IIT Kanpur.

Finally, Prabandhan’15 came to an end with smiling faces of all the participants and judges and a learning experience to cherish.

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Meenal Gupta

MBA 2015-17

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Nitin Rawat

MBA 2015-17

The main event of Cognition is COnIT- the consulting case study competition. This year, case study on Southern States Communications was given in which students had to put themselves in the shoes of the CEO of the company and solve the problems. Six teams made it to the finals held in IME, IIT Kanpur. Team “2 states” from MBA, IIT Kanpur emerged as the winner. The team members- Vikrant Kumar Bishnoi, Shikhar Baid and Richa Singh were glad to receive the                 prize money worth Rs 12000. Team Zeal from IMT Ghaziabad with team members Amit Bhatia and Bhairavi Gupta was the first runner up team. Due to tough competition, two teams were second runner ups. They were Team Supremos- Raghav Sharma, Pankhuri Agarwal and Sudhanshu Kumar from IIT Kanpur and IB Warriors-Ankur Jain, Pranav Kapoor and Shikha Yadav from Delhi School of Economics.

Seeing the zealous response from the guest and the host teams, we hope that we continue to get the same and make Cognition and Prabandhan even more successful.

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Utkarsh Maurya

MBA 2015-17

PRABANDHAN is the Annual Management Festival of IME Department, IIT Kanpur and definitely the greatest exponent of exuberance, creativity and managerial know how of its students. ‘Prabandhan’ has grown into one of the biggest and the most zestful student management festivals in India. Witnessing huge and active participation from all over the country, this management fest has become a much awaited event in the business calendar of the student community. The participation is from almost all the prestigious colleges within the country like IIMs, IITs, FMS, MDI, S.P Jain and many more.

‘Prabandhan’, now into its 6^th year has evolved into a brand and a publicity paradise. Prabandhan has in the past played host to several corporate giants, electronic & print media icons like HP, Dell, ITC Infotech, IBM, Infosys, Snapdeal, KPMG, Capgemini, ACC Ltd, L&T Infotech, Makemytrip, Business Standard to name a few. The marketing team at Prabandhan continues to find novel ways to ensure brand visibility for the sponsors and give them unique platforms to connect with the very best youth of the nation.

This year Prabandhan is set to break all records and grow bigger than ever before with wide variety of events from all business fields. As in past years events like Analytics Case Study and Symposium (ACCS), Business Simulation Game, Cognition the IT conclave, and  Optima the Operation and Marketing delight and many others will see participation of students from the entire country.

Overall Coordinators:

Kshitij Sareen           kshitijs@iitk.ac.in +91-9953210473

Rajan Chauhan         rajanc@iitk.ac.in +91-9716267647

Shelbin Devassy       shelbin@iitk.ac.in +91-9453835510

PR TEAM

Ketan Bagga (Batch 2013-2015) was selected to represent the M.B.A. program in Jenesys 2.0. The JENESYS2.0 project, a youth exchange programme launched by the government of Japan, aims to revitalize the Japanese economy through introduction of Japan’s attractions to foreign tourists and consumers by promoting international understanding on the nation’s potential strength, allure and values, including the “Cool Japan” concept. We all eagerly await for him to share his experiences with us in the next month’s Avant Garde issue !