India Shines On...!

As I headed straight to the "Science" section of my favorite Indian Daily this morning, I was thrilled to learn that a 16-year old girl (Masha Nazeem) from TamilNadu has invented and proposed design of a "flameless sealmaker". Its a breakthrough modification of the existing process of sealing documents/packages since it totally eliminates the use of fire to melt lac for sealing, runs on electricity, lets one control flow of the lac thus ensuring a uniform seal imprint, minimizes the fire related hazards that exist in sealing process as of today. Few reasons why this invention amazes me so much...

• Change is the Key: Its based on the notion of improving an existing process and Masha seems to have analyzed the shortcomings of the existing sealing process pretty well. And any positive change always deserves a warm welcome.
• Practical Application: While designing her prototype, she kept in mind the practical application of her offering - ballot boxes, government documents. This reducing the doubts of possible customer buy-in to near zero.
• Super Efficiency: Its cool because it makes life so simple. Think about it-if implemented this would cut the existing cycle time of sealing documents in offices, give extra time to officers who are involved in "sealing process" thus letting them take up new tasks, improve their skills and so on.
• Lean Thinking: This invention reminds me of myLean Six Sigma Project (back in TCS) aimed at making the software/product delivery process to the end clients easier. Though it was no way even light years close to an invention or something like this;) but the point I am trying to stress here is that her invention makes the whole process of "document sealing" in public offices leaner. And thats indeed a cost, effort and time saver in tons of ways.

Oh and a little googling tells me that this super-talented girl has proposed an equally impressive prototypes to keeprail tracks clean-her proposed system allows a Loco Driver to switch off the waste release from all the lavatories when a train enters a railway station. Isn't that a true Out of the Box approach-I bet it is. Keep up the spiritMasha or as the Human Torchin Fantastic Four says keep ur "Flame On"!

"Be everywhere, do everything, and never fail to astonish"