Sweating is one of the ways by which our body temperature is maintained. The sweat gets evaporated in the heat. As you know that evaporation causes cooling, we feel the chillness in our body. This way the temperature in our body is maintained.

Our body temperature should neither exceed nor fall below 36.6 degree Centigrade. So our body maintains this temperature by a number of ways. One of such is sweating.But who is doing this?

In our brain, there is an area called HYPOTHALAMUS, which senses the external temperature via the skin and once it feels that the temperature is higher than the set body temperature, it sends signals to the skin to produce swaet through the sweat glands.This is a thermostat effect in our body. The Hypothalamus regulates the body temperatur with respect to the external temperature.

Ok, for a warm day, how about a cold day or a rainy day? These days we would have a temperature lesser than our body temperature and what happens in such cases? Well, our body knows to handle that also. Instead of sweating, the hypothalamus will make the kidneys to urinate and maintain the body temperature. The water level balance in the body is used to regulate the body temparature by the hypothalamus

Imagine this effect when the two magnets are placed in a vertical position. One magnet is placed on top and the other in the bottom.There is a seperation in between. The magnet on the top will float. This effect where a magnetic object floats or stands still in air opposing the attractive forces is called MAGNETIC LEVIATION.

For magnetic leviation to happen, a very cool temperature environment is needed.This is achieved mostly by passing liquid nitrogen.

Magnetic Leviation is used in high speed trains where the magnetic field in the base of the train and the rails are of same strength. This ensures frictionless movement and hence the high speed.

There are a number of ways in which this is ensured. Companies normally organize a Preventive Maintenance program on a weekly basis. This is mostly done on a Saturday or a Sunday when there will be a minimal requirement to these machines.

This is done by the maintenance team and the other employees will not be involved much in this process. But it is actually the employees who use these machines than the maintenance team.

Total Productive Maintenance [TPM] aims in achieving a very minimal breakdown time for machines by involving all in the organization, including the employees. The employees will be educated to take care of the preliminary maintenance works on the machine. The major works will be handled by the maintenance team.

This maintenace done by the employees is called Autonomous Maintenance. The employees will be responsible for the preliminary maintenance on the machines they use. So every employee is responsible for the preliminary maintenance of the machine he or she uses like cleaning the surface of the machine,lubrication if necessary. This adds more responsibility on the part of the employee. This ultimately leads to a reduced breakdown and lesser maintenance cost. The machine performing well maintained will also produce a good quality product.

Even there are some suggestions, to focus on the occasions where individuals do a good job and appreciate them, than looking for occasions to criticize them. A deserving appreciation to the individual will make the individual that he is important. But a false appreciation will be counter productive.

This practice of appreciating at suitable occasions more frequently, will keep up the motivation level of the individuals. There is also a chance for the employee to improve his performance level.

The effect of increased performance through appreciation and motivation is called Pygmalion effect.

This is called Pygmy effect. The word Pygmy metaphorises the reduction in motivation. This is observed in animals also. Keep on beating your pet dog, you will see its activity level going down.

When someone is criticised always, there are two possibilities for the individual. He can either feel that he is not doing the job properly and consider himself a misfit for that job or he can loose all his interest on the job. Either way, it is a reduction in performance.

Alternatively, it is better to appreciate individuals when they do the job correctly sometimes. This will prepare them to take up the criticisms when they don’t do the job properly.

The effect of Pygmy effect can be reversed by focussing on the occasions when an individual does a good job. More such occasions amidst few necessary criticisms, will keep up the interest towards the job. The opposite effect of Pygmy effect is called Pygmalion effect.

The life cycle can be given this way,

Butterfly - Egg - Larva - Caterpillar - Pupa - Butterfly

Similar is the life cycle of a Frog. The Frog being an amphibian lives both in water and land. A frog lays eggs in water.The tadpoles hatch out from them,just like fishes. They swim in water and reach the land. Slowly grow up as frogs.

Frog - Egg - Tadpole - Frog

Friction is of two types, Static and Dynamic friction. Static friction is the resistive force acting on a body at rest. Dynamic friction is the resistive force acting on a body in motion.

The force applied to move a body at rest should be more than the sum of the static frictional force and inertia force. When a body moves the frictional force acts horizontally opposite to the direction of the applied force. The frictional force will work not only on flat surfaces, but also on inclined surfaces too.

The frictional force depends on the area of contact of the body with the surface and the roughness of the surface. A rougher surface will offer more friction than a smooth surface. Likewise objects with a lesser contact surface will have a lesser friction.

Friction leads to wear and tear of the object. But without friction the objects cannot be held in their position. If there is no friction,We cannot hold a pencil or a pen to write. Friction thus becomes a necessary evil. If friction is high then the surface gets damaged and ultimately the object will have a lesser friction.

Group Think standardizes the thought of the group members. When it comes to solving problems, this will be a disadvantage. But it is natural for a group to get into Group Think to have a consensus.

The price this consensus may be costly at times. This is because, the entire group may overlook a vital but different thought. Even ,if any member expresses this thought, it will be dismissed and the group will still maintain its original thought to be final.

A good example in History is the Pearl Harbour incident. Everyone in the US Navy believed that the Japanese do not have a Navy strong enough to attack America. Even people who said there is a possibility for Japanese to attack America were scoffed at. The rest is history.

To avoid Group Think, all the team members should realize that it is important and beneficial for the group to have a diversity of thoughts. This will avoid a vital point getting overlooked. One way to ensure this is to Brain storm. There are also other methods to achieve diversity of thoughts and get insights from them.

It is always better to think as a group but mostly it is disadvantageous have a GROUP THINK.

It is represented by a simple equation 1+1 =11

Synergy is a non linear phenomenon. Here there is a mutual contribution from one member to the other and thereby it results in a huge overall outcome.

Normally ants are believed to carry a weight which is nearly 7 times of their weight. This is because of the synergistic effect. Here each and every ant supplements the effort of the other ant and hence a group of ants is able to carry a weight which is much more than the total weight of all the ants in that group.

This effect is true in the case of human beings also. This is observed among the students having a group study session. One student will know one part of the chapter and the other knows the other part. Say for example if it takes 15 minutes each for each student to understand his part and it takes 10 minutes to explain to others and if there are 10 students, the total time taken is only 115 minutes. All the students will understand the entire chapter. Here every student supplements the understanding of the other students with his part. If it is done individually then it will take 250 minutes. In this case the saving is 135 minutes which is much more than the total time taken. This means that one more chapter can be read with 20 more minutes to spare.

Synergy magnifies the output of a group or team. If the positive effect is possible, the negative effect is also true.

The negative Synergistic effect is Dysergy.

While Productivity is the efficiency of one process, Throughput is the efficiency of a process having more than one stage.In other words, Throughput is the Overall efficiency of a multi-stage process. In real situations, you may have different stages or sub-processes to complete a process.If you measure only the productivity it may give you of only one stage or sub-process.This may not be a wholistic picture of the entire process. So we need to have the overall efficiency of the process.

To get the overall efficiency of the process, we need to know the overall time taken to complete the process and the total number of pieces produced by the process. This is similar to the way, we calculate productivity. In Productivity, we divide the Total production by the time taken. Here, for calculating Throughput, we divide the Overall Production after completing all the sub-processes
by the Total time taken for all the processes.

For example consider a Nut manufacturing process, it contains 3 processes namely, a) Turning, b) Drilling, and c) Threading.
If the Turning process takes 50 minutes for 100 pieces,Drilling takes 30 minutes for 100 pieces and Threading takes 40 minutes for 100 pieces. Then the individual productivities are as 2pieces/minute,3.33 pieces/minute,2.5 pieces/minute. The total time taken is 120 minutes and the number of pieces produced is 100 pieces. So the Throughput per minute is 0.8333 pieces/minute. The Hourly Throughput is 50 pieces.

You find that the Throughput is not the sum of individual process productivities.Throughput is an overall measure of a process.

If the produced volume per process is not same, then the Throughput can be calculated as a Harmonic mean of the Processwise Productivities. Means, if p1,p2,p3 are the productivity values for the 3 stages of a process, then productivity is calculated as,

1/(1/p1+1/p2+1/p3)

Throughput can be calculated using either Time or Manpower. For example, if we have 100 employees and we employee the same 3 processes to produce 4000 Nuts in a shift.Then the Throughput per Employee is 40 Nuts.

Throughput helps to plan manpower,process time.