Big Brother is watching you !!!

Experience has shown that people work more efficiently when they feel they are being watched. Something I learned about couple months ago, when driving from Tehran to Yazd on the freeway was that there were multiple fake police cars (made out of wood) at different parts of the road where made people slow down, thinking they were speed traps. The funny thing is that cops in Iran could be replaced with wooden cars and still have the same influence.

Knowing how there have been multiple incidents of theft, arson and most importantly lousy workers performances in the past due to the lack of proper supervision and security, I decided to put a system in place which would be "supervising" production and the property. In order to make crew feel that they are being watched, I had to watch them even when I am not there. That task luckily can be handled by using surveillance cameras.
The cameras are to be installed through out the key points of the production line and also important areas of the plant, such as parts warehouse and storage tanks. The main purpose is to protect the system and increase the effect of unsupervised supervising.

The systems required 15 indoor IP cameras, 3 outdoor IP cameras and also one high speed dome IP camera which watches the entire property.
All come to a single point server that records simultaneously all 19 cameras 24/7.

This will also enable me to watch everything going on at the plant in my office. There are microphones on every camera which will even let me hear the environment without being there.

Yes....... big brother is watching and this time, I am "The Big Brother"!!!

You have to supervise EVERYTHING !!!!

A lesson learned from few years of working in the industry, if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself. But of course there is so much you can do yourself before running out of time and energy.

Since time is very valuable in a project, the next best thing is to supervise something you want done right.

When you supervise, check on things every so often, you can correct it if it is not being done right or at least make sure they are working on what they are supposed to work on.

What I learned in Iran's workplace is that your presence at the site is VERY important. In fact the only way to make sure things are getting done is to make your presence felt!!!

In order to accomplish that, I had to come up with a way to spend as much time as I can on overseeing things by being there physically. That's why I made sure I can have a space that is comfortable, can be used very productively and most importantly close to everything being done at site. I call that place my "work shack". I have everything at this shack that helps me stay focused, interested and best of all conveniently located at where everything is being done. This shack had to be created at the plant where the project is happening!!!

So the plan was to turn an existing building to such a place in short amount of time with least cost to the project.

That shack will be all ready in less than a week and I am already very excited about that. I will be moving in, on Thursday, which will officially mark the start of implementation phase of this project!

Added twist to the project

Assuming the project is done tomorrow, the biggest challenge after that would be selling the product. Even though that should be always separate from the production side of things, but since "I" have to worry about everything, that quickly became my territory as well. For the past month, I have been drawing up a plan to make a product that has a market and is in demand.

Since the main purpose of the plant is producing Chlorine gas (Cl2)and Caustic Soda (NaOH), whatever the final product is should be made from these two chemicals.

As any household wife would know, bleach is that chlorine smelling thing that everyone uses as a whitener for clothes or disinfecting solution for cleaning purposes around the house. That is made from, you guessed it, chlorine and caustic soda. So the plan is to market that to consumers. In order to do so, we almost need a whole plant, packaging it, suitable to be sold at stores.

I started researching the industry for machinery required to complete that task. The packaging line consists of the following overall equipments:

1. A machine that makes bottles

2. A machine that fills bottles

3. A machine that caps bottles

4. A machine that labels bottles

5. A machine that puts the bottles in the cartons

6. A machine that tapes off the cartons

There is an expo in China that is specific for this industry, called ProPak China.

It is held in Shanghai, China July 14-16 2010.

I am planing on attending this expo to pick a supplier that meets our needs.