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Honey Traps

September 21, 2013 3 Comments

wealthymatters Today’s find has been the pheromone-based pest control traps made by Bangalore-based Barrix Agro Sciences.

Barrix Agro Sciences is a start-up founded by Lokesh Makam-an MBA in pharmaceuticals management who had worked for companies such as Ranbaxy, Dabur and Himalaya and Mayil Vaganan who had worked at pharma majors like Cadila Pharmaceuticals and Ranbaxy, before changing their focus to agriculture.The company was set up in 2011 with their personal savings of 23 lakh.

Fruit and vegetable farming are simple ways of making more from smaller land holdings.And the greatest challenge you will face in bringing up a good crop are the fruit and vegetable flies. They create holes in the fruits and vegetables and make them unfit for sale, You end up spending about 50,000 per hectare on pesticides.

The problem with pesticides is that besides being expensive, they are washed away by the rains. The pheromones developed by Barrix are artificially synthesized smelling agents that attract pests. Instead of eating the crops, the pests are attracted to the pheromones in the traps and so can be trapped and destroyed. Read more of this post

Filed under Alternative Assets, Entrepreneurship, Tool Kit Tagged with Barrix Agro Sciences, Cadila Pharmaceuticals, Dabur, Farming, fruit farming, fruit flies, Himalaya Drug Company, Lokesh Makam, mango crops, Mayil Vaganan, MBA in pharmaceuticals management, pheromone-based pest control traps, postaday, Ranbaxy, start-up, vegetable farming, vegetable flies

Eiji Toyoda – The Bard Of The Assembly Line

September 20, 2013 2 Comments

wealthymatters

Eiji Toyoda died,earlier this week, at the age of 100, almost 30 years after retiring from active management of Toyota Motors.

Like Alfred Sloan and Henry Ford before him, Toyoda was an engineer whose vision dominated the company in its formative years and beyond. He transformed Toyota into a global powerhouse with management and manufacturing processes that transcended the auto industry.

Where would we be without kanban, kaizen, muda, and keiretsu, as well as acronyms like JIT (just in time), TQC (total quality control), ZD (zero defects), and TPS (Toyota Production System)?

Although Taiichi Ohno is known as the father of the Toyota Production System, Toyoda probably deserves more credit for its development. He encouraged his team to learn from W Edwards Deming, to study the Ford production system, and to use data to refine manufacturing processes. Read more of this post