THE DILEMMA THAT IS PRODUCTION

The field of production isn’t much appetizing and attractive enough if you’re just starting your career and your hunger for learning the tricks of the trade is insatiable. It’s not that it doesn’t offer the scope. In fact the chances of getting ahead if you’re tied to this field are unparalleled to every other. There’s only so much you can climb the hierarchical organizational ladder if you’re in the maintenance or the quality department.

The vista of learning is the greatest in the maintenance department, which obviously raises the bar of satisfaction higher. But then this is the toughest job in the business, and the ‘Ragra’ is equally tough if you’re just starting out as a trainee, as Bilal learned the hard way in Abbott.

It’s not that you don’t get to learn much in production; I learn something new every day. Maybe that’s because we get breakdowns almost every other day, and so the maintenance factor comes into play in the learning curve of production as well. But somehow the production people are preferred for the top level posts. You’ll seldom find the GM of a factory hailing from the maintenance side.

The quality department is the most fun-filled and trouble free; not to mention lethargic as far as my observations go. I’ve asked around quite a bit, and at least in the middle-size organizations there’s a remarkable consistency of mediocrity all around. Maybe they do a significant role in the top-notch industries of Pakistan, but in the majority they are there just to justify ISO requirements. But this I’ve got to admit. They do a hell of a good job looking busy day in and day out.

Coming back to production, it has its own set of problems and scope pf learning, but it’s really charming or appetizing if you have a penchant for forging ahead through your sheer skills rather than some relative in the top echelon of the company

Most of the people I’ve come in contact share this view, including my friends and colleagues at my workplace. On paper it looks quite fascinating and impressive when you narrate your job description, but the ground reality is a bit different. All you’ve got to do is look, observe, or to sugar coat it a bit: supervise. It gets quite monotonous after a while; not action-packed like a Hollywood flick which would keep your adrenalin pumping throughout. But then that’s life. And by the way, all that surge of adrenalin would likely give you a heart attack than a sustained excitement level.

Maybe it’s up to you to break the shackles of monotony and do things a bit different. True, you can go horribly wrong, but at least you’ll have the satisfaction of learning something new. i.e. what doesn’t work. But don’t go overboard and try to reinvent the wheel by trying things which have already proved to fail. And whenever trying something new, don’t try to change many parameters at once. That way you won’t able to pinpoint exactly what went wrong.

And don’t worry about losing your job. That won’t happen. Unless you blow up the factory or make the company go bankrupt. Or worse still, your boss is already pissed at you and looking for an opportunity to do away with you. Otherwise, the chance of you getting fired especially early in your career with no downsizing changes looming on the horizon, are pretty slim. And it makes no difference whether it’s the private or public sector.

I work in the process industry where production can affected by altering even a single of the numerous parameters involved. And this happens all the time. So what harm can come if I intentionally change one of these parameters myself? Even if something goes wrong, I’ll at least know what doesn’t work. Thomas Edison failed almost 9,999 times in his endeavors to invent the electric bulb. When a friend of his tried to talk him out of it citing these failures, he merely replied, ‘These are not failures. These are 9,999 ways I know a bulb cannot be made.’

If we were to persevere this much, wouldn’t all of us be genius? After all, genius they say is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

‘It’s better to be risky than sorry’ should be your motto if you intend to get somewhere. Whether you make it or break it in your career solely depends on your ability to take
calculated risks. You can either content yourself with what little you get and let your career stagnate to mediocrity, or you can go all out in search of that perfect life. You have the rest of your life to take it easy; why not try to find out how far you can go now?
Mark my words. You’ll almost certainly get, not what you want but what you yearn for. Merely longing for something is just not enough. You have to thrown in whatever emotional energy you can generate behind your desires. Persistence and an inextinguishable desire are the only difference between success and failure, between people who get the life of their dreams and those that spend their entire life brooding over where they went wrong. Remember that your ability and aptitude don’t make much of a difference if you have the will.

I’ve seen people shown the door literally overnight by the company for no apparent reason after having put almost two decades of their life in that company. God forbid if the same fate befalls you, at least you’ll have the satisfaction of going the extra mile when the going got tough. Why to be cautious when you never know what tomorrow hold, or if it ever comes?