Some last month, we approached a well-run company in Jaipur, at their online request.

Neeraj and his brother Ankit were ambitious and sharp. Their business was simple. They made vanilla bushes for shock absorbers, in millions. Their buyer was a large company making shox for two wheelers. They had supplied for 25 years straight. Good quality. Good pricing. Good quantity.

Ankit, the younger brother, wanted more. He wanted exports and a bigger global presence. They reached out to many OEMs /Tier1 around the world. One company in Brazil responded. The brothers travelled, made sleek presentations, showcased their track record, best supplier awards and everything else. They signed a tentative 4mn dollar MoU subject to due diligence. Came back and started planning for new export order.

Three weeks later the new buyer sent auditors to check the plant and equipment. The team finished the visit and went back. One week later a polite regret mail arrived. The MoU was withdrawn.

But what happened?

The customer audit was going perfectly till they entered MD,s office. The auditors asked a simple question, “Show us your records for the last 180 days the machine availability, breakdown patterns, preventive maintenance records, cycle time variations and OEE trends. Also tell us how you collect and store these data”?

The plant head said OK and asked for a few minutes. He vanished and came back after two hours with empty hands and a sheepish grin. He shook his head, “hum ko nahi pata”.

The data existed. But it lived in three shift registers, a few WhatsApp groups, in the memory of supervisors, and in some Excel files maintained by a supervisor who was on sick leave that day. Everyone believed the data was there. But no one could show it.

The owners had numbers in their heads, but nothing to prove. Maintenance had logs and PM schedules, but in a folder on a laptop with a dead battery. Planning had cycle times for only a few parts. Quality had its own sheets in a format the auditors could not read. Data was there but NOT distributed to people who matter.

Data existed everywhere but was locked in silos. The audit report had one line. 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗸: 𝗛𝗜𝗚𝗛. That single line killed a 4mn dollar yearly order and damaged years of credibility. Ankit later confessed, we did not lose because of quality or price or delivery. We lost because we could not prove our data. We lost because we could not show we had control. In my mind, I could hear Gabbar declaring “Humko kuch nahi pata”.

This is the story of many machines shops today. If your data is not central, clean and visible to the people who matter, you are running on luck, not confidence.

𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐢𝐬 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐠. 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐆𝐨𝐝.