Author: Ali Shubbar

ROLEX: The Art of Watchmaking

Posted on by Ali Shubbar

Whenever you produce a product that is unique, there has to be something unique as well in the way of producing it.

Rolex came to my mind directly with a series of questions:
What makes Rolex watches unique from other brand watches around the world?
What are the distinctive features of the environment in which Rolex watches are manufactured?
What are the distinctive characteristics of the Rolex employees that make the watches?

 

At Rolex, men and women who service and produce these machines are considered artists, who blend both science and design to create these master pieces of art. They understand the interplay between all the materials used, and combine all the thoughts needed to create an object that is a reflection of care and intent. At the end, they believe that it is a piece of living art that is greater than the sum of its parts. Furthermore, and this is the heart of Rolex, people who work on watches are very passionate, have incredible ideas and are always excited to produce such products. Hence, when
you are caring, passionate and enjoying what you are doing, you will do it with the utmost attention and care. And that is the secret at Rolex when producing their luxurious watches. It is like producing a thing with pleasant feelings and creating another soul.

From another angle, the workshops where the watchmakers work are very much organized. Managers say that the person is expected to work in a library like atmosphere (i.e. clean and quite) that will enable the watchmaker to focus and to be comfortable. I believe, watchmaking is not for everybody, it requires talent, time management, commitment and patience.  What adds to all of this as well is dealing with very delicate and expensive products. Not to mention, adding the jewelry further pressurize the watchmaker.

At Rolex they will only bring people who believe that working as a watchmaker is the right career at the right time.

I searched until I found this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGd4XHfG-G8

Enjoy every bit of it!!

Emirates Catering: A380

Posted on by Ali Shubbar

 

Every year two billion people take it to the sky and that is more the combined populations of China, USA and Russia. All have one thing in common (i.e. hunger for food), and the question in here is ‘how to deal with this hunger?”.

Emirates Flight Catering, is the world’s largest airline catering and provides catering and ancillary services to airlines that are operating at this busy regional hub. Astonishingly, the company provided 42.5 million meals in 2011. Currently, the daily average catering uplift is 118,000 meals to 340 flights.

It is based in Dubai International Airport. A perfect example would show how the company’s manage its operations. Whenever, a plane lands at the airport, and after unloading the passengers, in less than an hour the planes have to be cleaned, fully stocked and ready to fly. An amazing thing is the way the catering carts are bring moved from the largest kitchen in the world to the planes which shows
efficient and effective operations.

The steps of the journey are as follows:

Step One: the carts move in an electric power monorail system and they stretch in three floors where they get emptied, cleaned and ready in 25 minutes. The carts move in a spectacular way using these electrical systems. All are controlled in a central monitoring system. The carts move in here as we want, just the way of controlling objects in games where they are directed to different locations, either for storage, repair or reuse. All is done at the press of a button.

Step Two: the kitchen where all the types of meals are prepared every morning, serving all the needs of the passengers. Everything is prepared in hand by qualified chefs. After preparing the food, they are kept in giant fridges to be saved at the required safe temperature and it becomes ready to be assembled.

Step Three: take back all the carts after they are loaded with trays filled with food.

Question worth mentioning: is this best way to serve our customers? Is there any different way to do it?

 

Watch this amazing video and you will get to know: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6vBo_uTGlY

BMW Operations Management, Drive Your Future

Posted on by Ali Shubbar

Whenever a conversation starts and its subject is about cars, I extremely get interested and I try to enroll myself in. In here, I will briefly explain BMW’s Operations Management Development Program, which plays a great role in enhancing the company’s production.

BMW pays great attention to its staff, who are considered the back bone of the company. All shall posses certain qualifications and experience which eventually will enable them to work efficiently, effectively and as expected by the management. And this program focuses mainly on the employees of the company and consists of different stages.

Candidates willing to join the company must first have:
1- Bachelor or Graduate degree with a high GPA.
2- Understand the business strategy and concepts.
3- Able to analyze approaches to problem solving
4- Strong interpersonal and communications skills.
5- Demonstrate leadership experience along with high degree of flexibility, initiative and motivation.

Second, the program as well covers the career paths that will shape the staff:
1- Manufacturing: working with processes and technologies used to make award-winning vehicles.

2- Product and Process Engineering: working with designers locally and in Germany to fine tune the engineering of the vehicles.

3- Procurement and Logistics: ensuring the safe delivery and expected quality of parts to the plant, and for the automobiles to the world.

In my point of view, I strongly believe having great staff will positively influence the image of each company. If each employee works greatly, the synergetic outcome that will result, from these individual and collaborative efforts of high excellence, will be immense for the whole organization as the whole is larger than the sum of the parts.