Well, I thought I had found the answer, but alas it struck again during the operations class. I remembered having a cold glass of Amigos, a Mexican beer. How smooth the Mexicans are in their craft, as was represented by this lovely pint. But how did it reach here in Porvorim, Goa, where my college was? I could hear the professor’s words resounding: Process, Capacity, Inventory, Logistics, and slowly like a jig-saw, all the pieces were coming together. It was not just the taste but also the hard work and passion of the Mexicans that was delivered to India via a successful operations strategy. It was the immense theory of combining the simple chemical reaction with a vision to deliver the best across the globe and that was the recipe for how a Beer is made.
I was content. I finally knew the answer to the 10 marks question. Yet how wrong I was. You see, the lecture for economics had just begun and my professors again shook my grounds. What I had learnt did not completely answer my questions. My economics professor peevishly said a Beer can be replaced by 2 bananas, and I was amazed, as to how the two can even be equated together. He slowly began explaining the concept of supply and demand, and I slowly began to contemplate that my dear Beer would not even have existed if this romance of supply and demand had not been there. Farmers would have sold the Barley to cattle feed instead of the brewer, it was for the holy grail of supply and demand that beer was possible.
I had now known all that was there about how Beer is made but yet my finance professor had something different in mind. He explained me the concept of C.O.G.S (Cost of goods sold) and how if this cost is more than your sales, you might as well close the shop and have a lovely time at your CASA De Sueños. Beer is possible to make because the manufacturing cost was always kept down from the selling price and so the companies survived, and the pint stayed chilled.
You might think after all this," You sure are ignorant if you are not able to score a 10 pointer in this one". The truth is, I am still not able to score full marks because to answer the question you don’t just need A, B, C points; you need the skills to communicate the answer effectively.Anybody can write the correct answer. However, it is a combination of how well you are able to combine your thoughts, how descriptive and articulate are you in your words, and how quantitative you must be. This is a skill I could only learn from my Communications class.
After this term at IIM Raipur, I sure as hell don’t know how a beer is made but what I do know is that every day I am taking a step forward towards the correct answer. Well, you know what, it is not the answer now that I am seeking, it is the process that I am enjoying that leads to the answer. IIM Raipur has taught me it does not take a chemical reaction to make a beer, it needs”more than that”, and it is this “more than that” that I enjoy learning.
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