Book Review: Ringtone: Story of Nokia

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Ringtone: Exploring the Rise and Fall of Nokia in Mobile Phones

By Yves L. Doz and Keeley Wilson

Nokia, which easily can be termed as the most innovative company, helped bring the mobile revolution which currently we are in, adapting the need of being connected 24×7, and at its peak having more than 40% market share and a true leader. Though unnoticed many of us don’t know Nokia still exists and is the world’s largest 5G infra company and still innovating. But what touched us is the Nokia Mobile Company, and this book is about its rise and fall. Breaking general misconception and reasons behind its fall.

Against the general perception of failure due to not looking ahead or lack of innovation, the reason behind the fall of Nokia Mobile company is due to a change in business model to a matrix organisation 

That’s the summary of why Nokia mobile failed so miserably, it’s just because of poor execution of matrix organisation. And that’s what interests me, as a leader myself, justifying the use of matrix organisation for better productivity, it’s even important to understand the consequences of its poor execution. This book covers all those aspects with Nokia as a centrepiece. Whereat all the phases of it, we were touched as a consumer or as heartbroken engineers to see the fall of such a beautiful product company.

Small trivia

Before I begin the review of this book, let me share how mammoth the Nokia is. We always see it’s mobile and thinks Nokia started as a mobile company and ended as one. However, it’s surprising to know Nokia started as a Cable company in Finland in the 1800s, moved to Telecom infra in the 1900s, followed by infra for the first car telephone and diversified with the mobile decision in the late 1990s

What this book Is about

It tries to answer following questions, which generally we also want to know.

  • Could Nokia’s decline have been unavoidable—just an extreme case of Schumpeterian creative destruction?
  • Was it an instance of organizational evolution and adaptation gone astray down a dead end in the face of disruption and business model change?
  • Was this a failure of management volition—the wrong strategic decisions, poor choices of organization, inadequate management processes, weak leadership, and bad timing?

Some insights

Nokia always had the edge with its strong innovation. For example, although Sharp launched the first camera phone in 2001, it was Nokia’s camera phone released the following year which really changed the landscape, providing not only superior picture resolution but also picture-sharing applications that paved the way for multi-media communication. This product innovation came from fifteen labs around the world and a number of technical cooperation projects and partnerships.

Beyond product innovation, Nokia’s success was supported by an innovative and highly efficient supply chain system that had been built in the 1990s. Through this, Nokia was able to achieve much lower prices from suppliers than its competitors and ramp up new production lines to full capacity in a matter of days. In the 1990s it had also mastered lean production and Japanese quality processes and organized its integrated manufacturing around a few key regional hubs in Europe (Finland, Germany, Hungary), Asia (China), and North America (Mexico).

Just as success often results from many small positive steps, the roots of failure can usually be found in multiple small mistakes, which seem manageable when viewed in isolation. However following this book we can see small cracks, however, they are evident now, and could not be avoided in the actual scenario. For example communication gap between R&D and Sales and Marketing lead to ultimate failure with the Symbian operating system. Though a leader in OS development themselves, delay in adapting Android and working with Microsoft’s half-cooked mobile platform led to the last nail.

CORE principle

Author has evaluated the various ups and downs in Nokia with CORE dimensions .

  • C Cognition: this is what leader saw during that phase at Nokia, and strategise
  • O Organisation : it’s outing strategy to action
  • R Relationship : it’s about relationship with people.
  • E Emotions : Emotions are at play during various phases, this is what impacts the relatioy

My MindMap

Key Takeaway

  • Shifting from Symbian to Microsoft OS, Nokia overestimated brand loyalty and weren’t innovative enough
  • Decision made in 2001-05 made its impact in decline in 2013-15. Management need to be mindful of its long term impact.
  • Strategic foresight and intellectual leadership would have no value if not acted upon.
  • Poor management choices contributed to strategic stasis.
  • Successful past commitments leave a legacy
  • Outside parties, customers, major shareholders, strategic partners, industry pun- dits, and regulators can excessively and unduly influence one’s sense-making, particularly in adhering to a “being close to customers” logic.
  • Failure of cognition may not result from ignorance or lack of information, or even poor foresight, but from inadequate sense-making—i.e. not making effective sense of available information.
  • Management systems and processes have to acknowledge the irrepressible influ- ence of emotions, and thus leave some room for them to be legitimately expressed.

Where to buy. Available on Amazon as Kindle and Hard copy.

Book Review: Good Economics for Hard Times

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Recall watching many dish tv antenna on top of very weak Jhuggi or in slum areas? Thinking, people who can’t afford food and clean drinking water, how can they afford a TV? It’s not rational right?

Wrong, my fellow reader, People knows what they want…

Television is more important than food

The book tells the story of a man in Morocco. After he made a compelling case that he and his family really did not have enough to eat, he showed us his largish television with a satellite connection. We might have suspected the television was just an impulse purchase he had subsequently regretted. But that was not at all what he said. “Television is more important than food,” he told us. His insistence made us ask how this could make sense, and once we went down that road it was not that hard to see what was behind this preference. There was not much to do in the village, and given he was not planning to emigrate, it was not clear that better nutrition would buy him much more than a fuller stomach; he was already strong enough to do the little work that was available. What the television delivered was relief from the endemic problem of boredom, in these remote villages where there was often not even a tea stall to relieve the monotony of daily life.

The book I’m about to review, gives such examples , which are so co-relatable. Let’s start the review

The Book: Good Economics for Hard Times

By Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (Both are Nobel holders and married to each other

The book tries to answers questions like:

  • Is immigration a biggest problem, to swing our attention, political environment and really a concern?
  • Does welfare, free cash make people lazy?
  • Do we need to fear Automation? Will it take away all jobs, leading to more jobless people on ground?
  • Does inequality going to stay?
  • Is climate change really impacting productivity and poor people?

What this book do wonderfully?

The book’s greatest contribution is its methodical deconstruction of fake facts: migration, we learn, is not on the rise – indeed, at 3% of global population, it is at the level it was in 1960. Natural experiments (involving Finns expelled from the USSR in 1945, Cubans flocking to Miami in 1980 and Jews settling in Israel in the 90s) prove that migrants do not steal natives’ jobs; they just help expose the holes in public services and social housing left by austerity. As for trade liberalisation, which economists treat as super-important, Banerjee and Duflo suggest it brings relatively small benefits while doing a lot of damage to the poor in countries such as the US and India. The resulting discontent turbo-charges racism: the moment white blue-collar men lose hope and apply for disability welfare benefits, it is no longer enough for them to denigrate black people and Latinos as “welfare queens”. They must now be depicted as gang members or rapists.

My MindMap

Key topics and some insights

Impact on me

Current times, when you have more news coming on mobile than you go out and watch yourself or ask someone to validate it, and as people around loosing patience in a blink of an eye, and even knowing that the content received, has high probability of being a misinformation, we get biased and make out perceptions on surrounding and creating an irreversible situation around us. This book helps clear this muddy water, helps get clear reflection of self in clear water to know self better.

Reading this book helped me to understand my biases and basic assumption on human behaviour when it comes to subject like migrants, tax cuts or taxing riches, automation taking job away, climate change impacting once life, racist behaviour towards community either cast based or economy based.

The book clearly mentions, “We should not stop telling the truth, but it is more useful to express it in a nonjudgmental way”. And it did wonderfully well in this regards it shares data points which we can see, validate and hence accept.

Key concept like to remember

Statistical Discrimination: This concept helps why police stops and checks black driver more often, why we see more Muslims “accidentally” killed by authorities and why There are more blacks and Muslims among criminals. Why we see so less women at leadership position. And how self discrimination impacts one’s performance in a place, where there are no bias. (Self discrimination triggers once under performance thinking s/he is getting discriminated)

Where to buy? It’s Available on Amazon as Kindle or hard copy. Great for collection.

Book Review : Change by Design

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Iconic Oral B Brush designed by IDEO, of which Tim Brown (author) is CEO. Till this point, we learned about ‘design thinking process’, with empathetic thinking, Defining the problem statement, Ideate the concepts, build prototype, test and launch the product.

The designer who designed it, once went to near by sea shore, and found few of colorful brushes washed over beach! the design came to its end of the life cycle, most of the part of the brush was intact.

Designer can’t prevent people from doing what they want to do with its product they own, but that doesn’t excuse them from ignoring the larger system. Often in our enthusiasm for solving problem in front of us, we fail to see the problem that we create.

Change by Design

The book is all about all round thinking while designing a product/solution for a problem. IDEO is the company, which has brought the ‘design thinking’ concept to masses. and Auther himself is known as one of the founding members of this key concept.

Key Concept/ Take away

Ideas for #Leader

  1. What is design thinking
  2. Finding interdisciplinary team members
  3. Putting people first
  4. Inspiring the birth of great ideas

Ideas for #Process

  1. Look : Look at inspiration, ideation, and implementation together to become great at design thinking.
  2. Prototype : Build the prototype of your idea and begin testing as early as possible to help you encompass all areas of innovation at once.
  3. Storytelling : If you want to make your great new idea stick, use storytelling.

About Author

Tim Brown : CEO of IDEO

  • Tim is leading IDEO, and key person to bring ‘Design Thinking’
  • He has published many books/articles for this topic including for innovation.

Tim Brown (Author of Change by Design) | Goodreads

Personal Impact

Process on ‘how to innovate’ is explained simply, with three step approach.  Innovation is an ongoing activity, its not an on/off like activity. One has to be mindful of his surrounding, get inspiration and how quickly we can bring idea to life thru rapid prototyping. Few example like complex product like google glasses the prototype was done in 30 min!

I Understand role of Empathy in design thinking, but the insight I got from this book is, empathy without action is of no use, what we need to do is act quicky and convert idea into reality by rapid prototyping.

My Mindmap

Economiser, some FAQs

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Guide for better economiser design

Is it essential to pre heat feed water?

How one preheats they boiler feed water? We have two options,

  • Via economiser, mounted on exhaust of boiler, and heating incoming feed water by absorbing lost heat in flue gases
  • Via Deareator tank, adding steam to deareator and heating the water temperature. Though the purpose of deareator is as name suggest remove the “oxygen” from the water, by heating it. Nevertheless it also increases the temperature of water in this process.

Let’s talk about economiser

Now that’s the question, one should not ask, if possible, one should always use economiser. It generally speaking will increase boiler efficiency by 3-5 percentage points.

It also helps reduce the thermal stress on boiler as a whole.

Then why this question?

Challenges with economisers are few, apart from how much heat we are recovering vs how much expenditure we are doing in is installation, maintenance and qualification.

Assuming the economics works well, the next question is if you absorb too much heat, and condensation happens, it will lead to sulphur corrosion, distorting not only boiler but also chimney in long run.

Criteria for designing economiser from user perspective

  • Define maximum hot water temperature we expect out of economiser, this has to be above sulphur due point
  • Define maximum pressure drop allowed. As more pressure drop will add more duty to the Blower, adding to running energy cost
Acid Dewpoint Corrosion

Criteria for design from Designer’s perspective

  • Configuration of path, with multiple branches to make water flow, it helps get maximum efficiency but also adds to pressure drop and duty on feed pump
  • Profile of fins for heat exchanger, some profiles of fins, for example serrated fins, has huge heat transfer to area ratio, and are highly efficient, but also adds to pressure drop on air side, and blower duty increases accordingly.
  • Number of passes of hot flue gases, this ensures more residential time for the flue gas, so that we can extract more heat, however, this will also cost us more pressure drop and added duty to the blower.
  • Minimum feed water temperature and maximum outlet temperature, both factors are important to ensure we get better efficiency but also to ensure we have less issues with corrosion (oxygen pitting

Typical failure reasons

Typically in boiler, the flue gas is mostly utilised to super heat the steam, and then passed to economiser, in such cases, The temperature differentials between the flue gas and water are quite low. To maximize heat transfer, water temperatures at the end of the economizer run should be very close to the saturation temperature. If the temperature difference is very low, then it some time can lead to steaming in economiser. Steaming not only reduces the efficiency drastically but also lead to knocking and failure of weld during operation due to thermal impact.

Second reason for failure could be quenching effect. This happens, when boiler is stand by mode, that is steam is not consumed. Water in economiser reduces drastically, and sudden surge in demand, make feed pump, pump cold water to economiser, leading to thermal stresses, even if the delta of water differential is low, this will lead to failure after some time. This issue can be over come by losing some water in boiler itself via intermediate blow down, small water circulation in economiser helps avoid such quenching issues.

P&ID Diagram : Process Vs. Piping

Technical

Whats ‘P’ Stands for!

In office someone told me, lets not spend (tone was ‘waste’) time in making P&ID, as our machine has no piping! an I was like … confused on matching the description of P&ID with need of P&ID. and hence this article.

I just went back to basis, and tried to find out whats the ‘dictionary’ meaning first.


  • ISA 5.4 Says, This standard establishes minimum required information and identifies additional optional information for a loop diagram for an individual instrumentation loop. This loop is typically part of a process depicted on the class of engineering drawings referred to as Piping and Instrument Drawings (P&IDs).
  • EN ISO 1068 Says,  a piping and instrument diagram (P & ID)
  • Document on ISA Website , refer The process and instrumentation diagram (“P&ID” as it often called) represents a document that can take on many different forms . 


  • IS 3232: Says, RECOMMENDATIONS‘ ON GRAPHICAL SYMBOLS FOR PROCESS FLOW DIAGRAMS, PIPING AND INSTRUMENTATION DIAGRAMS
  • South Austria Water Technical Standard TS 112 : Process and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&ID)

So, is it Piping of Process diagram? What we understand?


The challenge, limiting it to piping application, user can ignore its advantage  on discrete machines, where there is no piping (or less of it), but its highly automated.  

To answer this question, we need to see what the diagram help us with.

It help us with
  • Understanding the design philosophy.
  • Understanding of process flow (energy and mass flow)
  • Process Control parameter, loops, interlocks
  • Economics of system, process optimization
  • HAZOP Study
  • Unit operation, interlinking between plants and machines. 

It will be more appropriate to consider P&ID and Process & Instrument Diagram, which shows following but not limited. 

  • Material & Energy Flow
  • Interconnecting Piping 
  • Stations of operations
  • Instruments
  • Interlocks and data flow
  • Loops and control logic
Let me know your views on this.

Orbital Welding for Sanitary Piping

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Orbital Welding for Sanitary Piping

Orbital welding in Sanitary application is extension to tungsten inert gas (TIG/TGAW) welding. This type of welding is default in piping, which the application demands Sanitary or super clean application, where cleaning is done with CIP/SIP.
The pharmaceutical industry currently uses orbital GTAW/TIG welding almost exclusively. This produces welds of high quality with very low rejection percentages; these joints possess high strength, high purity meta, and good surface finish.
Orbital welding is the controlled rotation of components within a fixed support, while an adjustable, non-consumable tungsten electrode attached to a guide moves (or “orbits”) the joint. The electrode, the arc, the area surrounding the weld, and tube interior are protected by a shield of inert gas—usually argon—with a purity of 99.995/99.999% 
Virtually all the metal alloys employed in the pipeline fabrication sector can be welded and since the process is carried out in an inert atmosphere it produces results that are extremely clean, oxide free and without spatter

Its completely automated process and hence needed precision when preparing the face and edges before welding.

Following mind map will help you understand variable in Orbital welding.
Please Explore. Will add more information shortly.

Material in Saniatary Application (Pharma/ Food Industry)

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Metals in Pharma/ Food Industry

As we know, the out put from these industry are directly consumed by end user, and it impact either health value or patients safety! Its prime importance that the metal used in these industry ensures no impact on quality of products and also ensures minimum maintenance.
Many time, manufacturer prefer to take different batches of products in same equipment, and this leads to one more challenge of cleanability. and when one like to be equally sure, that no residual is passing to next batch, its prime important that the metal should not react with any chemical cleaning agents!
Stainless steels are uniquely qualified not only because of their long service life, availability and fabricability, but also because they are non-corroding, non-contaminant, they can be polished to very smooth finishes, they are strong and rigid, they can withstand heat and chemical sterilization treatments, and they are easily welded.
In such industry, following metals are preliminary used.
  1. 304 and 316 stainless steels and their L grades
  2. Austenitic stainless steels with higher Mo content
  3. Duplex stainless steels group
  4. Superaustenitics in particular “6Mo”
  5. Ni, Cr, Mo family commonly called the “Alloy C family”
  6. Cobalt based alloys with high corrosion and wear-resistance
  7. Titanium alloys, referred as chemically pure (CP)

Following table shows chemistry of typical Stainless steel used in industry

Ergonomics design for Push Trolley (System on wheel, managed by Pushing)

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Ergonomics design for Push Trolley (System on wheel, managed by Pushing) 


As per HSE, Pushing and pulling of loads is a way to avoid manual lifting and carrying of objects such as by putting the load on a trolley.

Why its important to study? and even design?

Statistics can be seen below that give you an idea of how important it is to eliminate or reduce pushing and pulling risk factors.

  1. 11% of manual handling – related RIDDOR accidents investigated by HSE involved pushing and pulling.
  2. The most frequently reported site of injury was the back muscle injury (44%).
  3. Followed by the upper limbs (shoulder, arms, wrist and hand) accounted for 28.6%.
  4. 12% more accidents involved pulling than pushing (where the activity could be identified within the reports).
  5. 61% of accidents involved pushing and pulling objects that were not supported on wheels (e.g. bales, desks etc.)
  6. 35% of pushing and pulling accidents involved wheeled objects!

IS there any Regulation?

Yes, we have to comply with the risk assessment requirements set out in the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 as well as the requirement in the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992 (as amended) (MHOR) to carry out a risk assessment on manual handling tasks.

So, Tell me about design now 🙂

Following are the quick tips, then my next post will talk more in details.
  • Choose PUSHING a load instead of PULLING it whenever possible
  • Place your hands at the correct height.
  • Followings are weight (push or pull) to stop the load! will cover this in next post.
Men
women
For stopping or starting a load
20 kg (ie about 200 Newtons)
15 kg (ie about 150 Newtons)
For keeping load in motion
10 kg (ie about 100 Newtons)
7 kg (ie about 70 Newtons)

Design of a trolley : A thought!

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Be in whatever field you are, you come across trolleys in one form or other.

Trolleys, some time stuck, sometimes with broken wheels, sometime hard to push and sometimes its better keeping them untouched.
My profession given me opportunity to design one trolley myself. And I grab the opportunity by both hands.
Here, I’ll share some learning those I came across while designing and also some surprises that in faced myself while designing the system.
I’ll also share my thought process, to enable reader understand my background and reasoning for going with my decision.
So, let me put the challenge that I’ve grabbed !
Challenge: Design trolley for clean in place system, weighing 300kg plus, easy to install and accommodated all crucial items in and yes Movable!