Three decades in manufacturing has its perks. Old sales engineers from machine tool companies, now big wigs, still call. We share a beer or two, along with some hot tips and industry gossip.


One such lead took me to Tamil Nadu. The company was started in the 90s by an ex-employee of a well-known Iyengar-run corporation. He jumped ship but kept selling to the same ship. How cozy is that? Anyway, his business was steady. Eighty-plus CNC machines, loyal but aging operators, dependable supervisors, and trucks rolling out every shift. All seemed fine.


My tip was very clear: “Talk to the son, skip the dad.” The son had just returned with a shiny MBA from you-know-where. He was keen to make his mark, scale up, and go global. He spoke the new language: dashboards, KPIs, and benchmarks. His eyes lit up when I presented Leanworx. “Yes, we must do a pilot, then a plant-wide rollout,” he said, full of confidence.


And then the father walked in. Wiping grease off his hands, sharp-eyed, wearing a tired but confident smile. A god-fearing man, a traditional hands-on man. Looked like the type who could strip a CNC lathe and put it back in minutes. The son proudly introduced, “Appa, they will help us monitor our machines and operators, it seems.”


I repeated the pitch in ten minutes. The father listened in silence. Then in a calm voice, he said, “Sir, my men have been with me for 25 years. They trust me, and I trust them. They think this factory is their own. How can I install a system that makes them feel like criminals? Our OEE is already 87 percent. By God’s grace business is good. We don’t need your system.”


And to seal it, he quoted the Gita (4:39): “When leaders trust their people and give them purpose, they gain knowledge. With knowledge comes confidence, and with confidence comes success.” Who am I to argue with someone who has Sri Krishna Himself on his side? I smiled and left.


Cut to five years later, 2023. I bumped into the son at an event. The father retired, not tired. The son now ran the show. But the glow was gone. The once-bustling shop had fewer machines, senior operators had retired, orders had thinned, and volumes had dropped. Same customers, but less business. The son now had one “trusted” man tracking numbers on paper. He said with pride, “Our OEE is above 85 percent.” I smiled. In my head I said, “Not OEE da, but POIEE.” Tamils reading this, please post what “Poiee” means for the benefit of others.


June 2025. The same son walked into our Leanworx booth at ACMEE Chennai. Just a simple request: “Let us try a live pilot.” We did. In five days, the real OEE came out: 48%. The bitter truth of Indian SMEs. Trust people, respect them, and reward them. But measure performance with data, not feelings.


The rule is simple.
In Data We Trust. Adopt or Go Bust.