Daily Excelsior...Business

Efficiency can mean
6 legs and a set of antennae

NEW YORK, Mar 17: Dr Stuart Kauffman wants corporate leaders to take a few tips from one of the world’s most efficient...more

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi

Statement on sale of
BALCO stands
vindicated: Jogi

RAJIV GANDHI NAGAR, Mar 17: Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi today said his statement on sale of Government equity of the public sector ...more

Cong charges Govt with
harming national economy

RAJIV GANDHI NAGAR, Mar 17: The Congress today charged the Government with harming the national.....more

Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha

Govt to move ahead
with reforms: Sinha

NEW DELHI, Mar 17: Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha today said the Government will move ahead with the reforms process despite political uncertainties....more

AICC asked to come
out with a whitepaper
on adverse effects
of WTO agreement

BANGALORE, Mar 17: Firebrand West Bengal leader Priyaranjan Dasmunshi today demanded the Congress Working Committee to come out with a whitepaper on the adverse effects of the World Trade Organisation agreement. Striking a discordant note during the debate on the economic resolution at the 81st session of the AICC, he said the whitepaper should spell out the safeguards and precautions the country needed to take......more

Efficiency can mean 6 legs and a set of antennae

NEW YORK, Mar 17: Dr Stuart Kauffman wants corporate leaders to take a few tips from one of the world’s most efficient workers.

One that has six legs and antennae and lives in a colony.

Kauffman and his associates at Bios Group, a New Mexico-based consultant and software developer, are taking lessons from nature —such as how ants forage for food — and applying them to the efficiency of wall street’s top-flight firms.

"The biological metaphor is really making its way into business. Companies co-evolving with one another are more like species evolving with one another," Kauffman told Reuters in a recent interview.

The corporate world is starting to take note.

Founded by Kauffman and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young in 1996, Bios Group’s computer models have tracked market behavior for Nasdaq, eased southwest airlines co. Cargo Delivery and smoothed over supply chain crunches for consumer products giant Procter & Gamble Co.

Bios Group applies complexity science, a discipline that draws heavily from biological patterns, to create its problem-solving software.

Inspired by foraging ants in nature, Bios Group uses artificial ants to gauge reactions to certain situations. Researchers incorporate these ant algorithms — or mathematical forumlae —into their software.

Last year, at Ford Motor Co., a Bios Group formula allowed the auto giant to sift through billions of combinations of car models, colors and accessories.

"They helped model data from customers that helped us zero in on options and features that customers want," said Kristen Kinley, a spokeswoman for Ford’s new business development group.

Whereas a traditional solution might assume that changing one factor in a problem produces a known result, complexity science says it is more realistic to simulate a range of outcomes. The science treats organizations as complex systems responding to sudden changes rather than as static bodies.

Take, for instance, the ants.

Foraging ants leave a trail of pheromones that allow other ants to find the shortest way to the closest food source. As more ants use the trail it becomes stronger. Other ants, meanwhile, explore alternative routes to secondary food sources to use when the first one is exhausted.

Those alternatives let ants adapt rapidly to change, such as a human boot crushing a food source. Bios group computerizes that process using artificial ants.

Applied to business, the agent-based models could show a traveling salesman, for instance, not only the best route to the cities he must visit, but also other routes in case a sudden, unexpected problem arises, Kauffman said.

"You wind up with a very good solution, with the added advantage that not only do you have a good solution, but if a road is blocked, then you already have knowledge of nearby trackways that are nearly as good," he said.

Bios Group put the ant model to work on a manufacturing plant for Anglo-Dutch consumer products group Unilever NV/PLC.

By tweaking flexibility on one of the company’s flow shops, unilever was able to better handle breakdowns and meet changing demand in the shortest time.

Bios Group researchers also worked with Procter & Gamble to enskre the company’s products, which include brands such as crest toothpaste and tide household detergent, make it to the right store at the right time without holding huge stocks of inventory in the supply chain.

"We think the solution lies in making a supply chain that is as flexible and adaptive as many systems found in nature," said Wendy Jacques, APG spokeswoman.

P G’s supply chain proved full of rigid constraints such as only allowing full truck loads to leave the depots or filling pallets with only one product type.

Those constraints acted like rocks interrupting a river flow, Kauffman said.

"A big message that is coming out of this is to try and introduce flexibility into your operations," he said. "It makes supply chain function better." (REUTERS)

Statement on sale of BALCO stands vindicated: Jogi

RAJIV GANDHI NAGAR, Mar 17: Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi today said his statement on sale of Government equity of the public sector undertaking BALCO stands "totally vindicated" by the exposure of pay offs by the tehelka.Com.

"I treat the exposure as a divine intervention on behalf of the balco workers and the tribals of Chhattisgarh", he said in an exclusive interview to UNI here.

Mr Jogi said the nation wanted the names of the people involved in the pay offs in various deals, including the BALCO deal, and they had seen the faces of those people through the electronic media.

Asked about his offer of taking over the BALCO at a price higher than the one offered by the Sterlite, he said his offer stands. "If the Government was transparent enough, it should accept my offer" he added.

Mr Jogi accused the Union Government of leaving the newly created states of Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttaranchal states in the lurch instead of granting these small states special economic packages to get them off to a good start.

He said the manner in which the Union Government had gone about disinvesting the BALCO showed that it had no regard or concern for the impact of their actions on tribal land rights and reservations for the SC/ST communities in the leading industrial enterprise of Chhattisgarh. (UNI)

Cong charges Govt with harming national economy

RAJIV GANDHI NAGAR, Mar 17: The Congress today charged the Government with harming the national economy by succumbing to external pressures for advancing the phasing out of the quantitative restrictions on all imports by April 2002.

The 81st AICC plenary in its economic resolution said a full two years in advance for this purpose as decided earlier was not in national interest. Besides, palplable failure to effectively use the alternative instrument of tariffication for the protection of national interest was one of the major causes for the collapse of the economy. No effective measures were taken to protect the indian economy to meet the challenge of the competition which was causing havoc in the country’s economy, including its industry and agriculture.

The crisis facing the Indian farmers had less to do with the WTO. The NDA Government had mismanaged the agricultural economy. The aicc refutes the false propaganda that the WTO agreement entered into by the then Congress Government was at the root of its economic malaise. The WTO was an umbrella agreement under which a series of subordinate agreements were to be hammered out. One of these related to the phasing out of the quantitative restrictions, the resolution said.

Due to the sound economic policies implemented followed by the Congress Government, the nation had now been rescued from the chronic balance of payments weaknesses that had earlier characterised the country’s foreign exchange reserves. It was left to the UF Government to negotiate the phase-out of the quantitative restrictions on all imports by April 2003, the resolution said.

When the Indian economy was at its crossroads, AICC debunks the false impression that the economic policy of the NDA Government was the continuation of the same policy initiated by the Congress when it was in power. The economic policy of the NDA Government was a parody of the Congress’s policy. It was the duty of the Congress as the leading opposition party to highlight the anomalies, contradictions and lacunae in these policies, the resolution said.

Opposing the privatising policy, AICC reaffirms commitment to a mixed economy where the public sector will have a dominant role and can co-exist with the private sector. A much faster level of growth was essential for the uplift of the poor and eradication of poverty. And for this purpose, radical reforms in economic policy should be effected. While reforming the economy, the interest of the workers, the farmers and the people belonging to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes must protected. (UNI)

Govt to move ahead with reforms: Sinha

NEW DELHI, Mar 17: Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha today said the Government will move ahead with the reforms process despite political uncertainties.

Talking to newspersons after the Customary Annual RBI Board meeting here, Mr Sinha said "reform programme is not a question of majority".

"I think we are more learned, meaner, fit and determined" to carry the reform process further", Mr Sinha remarked when asked to comment on the widespread perception that reforms are heading towards an uncertain future.

"In a democracy you cannot separate politics from economics. Politics will always influence economic policy. Those who think otherwise are not deeply rooted," he said.

Mr Sinha said the Government would bring as much consensus as possible on the reform issue in a "polity of our kind".

When asked how long did he think the majority of the NDA Government will last, Mr Sinha said "till the term of the Lok Sabha".

Mr Sinha was confident that the borrowing programme for the current fiscal will be as per the target.

When pointed out that there was a revenue shortfall in February, Mr Sinha said "I am hoping that we will have a good month in March and if there is any further shortfall than that projected in revised estimates, then there might be matching savings in expenditure". Asked whether there was a payment crisis in the Calcutta Stock Exchange, Mr Sinha explained that as per the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) guidelines issued on March seven, the payments schedule would be modelled along the lines of the National Stock Exchange (NSE). As per this, the trade guarantee fund of the stock exchanges will bail out any payment problem on behalf of brokers.

Asked whether the banks faced any problem lending against stocks, Mr Sinha said I have been assured by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that bank lending is well within the norms. In fact, it is much below the norms . He said the banks have been allowed to deploy five per cent of the credit for this purpose, but actually it is much less.

Mr Sinha said problems relating to Madhavpura mercantile cooperative bank limited have been sorted out. He also urged the media to be very responsible by not exaggerating issues of payments crisis and the like. There is no loss of confidence, he said. (UNI)

AICC asked to come out with a whitepaper on adverse
effects of WTO agreement

Striking a discordant note during the debate on the economic resolution at the 81st session of the AICC, he said the whitepaper should spell out the safeguards and precautions the country needed to take. He complimented a similar exercise carried out by the Karnataka Government.

Attacking the economic resolution, Mr Dasmunshi said it shattered the dreams of former Prime Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi adding that it had failed to restore the original party ideology especially in sectors relating to public undertakings, small scale industries and banking.

Mr Dasmunshi said the country should not not abjectly surrender to the imperialists and blindly follow the Chinese policy of liberalisation. China was not a democracy. "Let us not compete with China and embrace globalisation totally" he said adding that the country should cautiously tread the liberalisation path.

Mr Dasmunshi who had also opposed the economic policy document of the party at the Tirupathi session, said he was firm on the amendments he had made.

Stating that the resolution which appeared to be like the one drafted by a ruling party, he said it was silent about the plight of the small scale industries which had to fight hard against the onslaught of the multinationals such as benetton and louie phillippes in the garment sector. It was also soft when it spoke about the public sector units and wanted the present document to totally oppose disinvestment of the public sector and closure of loss making units. The Bharatiya Janata Party was dropping BALCO like a toy and diagressed from the Nehruvian policy of for not disinvesting from the strategic public sector units.

Mr Dasmunshi who had vehemently opposed the deviation of the economic policy even at the Tirupati session eight years ago, said the party should not be carried away by the words of economists. It’s people who matter, he said.

Similarly, he said, it should also come out categorically on the industrial disputes act opposing any dilution of the act which was be detrimental to the interests of the working class. (UNI)