ITBHUGlobal.org: The Chronicle: February 2009 Interviews

Welcome to the ITBHU Chronicle, February 2009 Edition Interviews Section.

Interviews

Interview with Dr. Manu Vora (Chemical 1968) Businessman & Philanthropist

@ Feb 28, 2009

We are pleased to publish interview with Dr. Manu Vora who is the Chairman and President of Business Excellence, Inc., a business management consulting company in the field of quality management and organizational excellence. As a founding Director and President of Blind Foundation for India, Dr. Manu has raised over US $3.5 million to help over a million visually impaired people in India.

He has over 30 years of leadership experience guiding Fortune 500 companies with assessment in the areas of leadership development, customer satisfaction, employee engagement and continuous process improvement. As an Adjunct Professor, he taught “Quality Management” and “Supply Chain Management” at Stuart School of Business at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

Dr. Manu has B.Sc. (IT-BHU 1968), M.S. & Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and MBA with Marketing Management.

For chronicle, Yogesh K. Upadhyaya discusses with Dr. Manu Vora about his high profile business management career and charitable work for blind people in India.

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(Dr. Manu Vora)

[Bio-data of Manu Vora here]

Dr Manu Vora Bio 2009.pdf

Q-1: Welcome, Sir. Please introduce yourself to our readers.

I was born in 1945 in Bombay, India. My father Shri Kishandas Vora was a successful businessman in Bombay in yarn business. My mother Smt. Shantaben Vora was a housewife. I have an older brother Mr. Mahesh Vora who is now a retired businessman in Mumbai. Both my parents passed away at a young age and we were raised by my uncle and a grandmother. My schooling was in my home town of Amreli in Gujarat. After SSC in 1962, I joined Khalsa College, Matunga in Bombay. From 1964-1968, I was at IT-BHU and studied chemical engineering.

In 1968 came to USA on a J. N. Tata Scholarship and joined Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago to pursue my graduate work. I completed my M.S. (1970) and Ph.D. (1975) both in chemical engineering. In 1985, I finished my MBA with marketing management from Keller Graduate School of Management in Chicago.

From 1976 to 1982 worked at the Institute of Gas Technology in Chicago doing energy R&D work. From 1983 to June 2000 worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories (initially in Holmdel - New Jersey and then in Naperville - Illinois).

Q-2: How did your experience in AT&T Bell Laboratories and Lucent Technologies helped you in your present career?

At AT&T Bell Laboratories, I got a great opportunity to work on a pioneering project of quality planning and implementation. I joined American Society for Quality (ASQ) in 1987 and became a Fellow of ASQ in 1995. I was fortunate to learn from masters such as Dr. Deming and Dr. Juran. I served on ASQ National Board of Directors for 6 years, two years as Vice President. In the last 21 years as a member of ASQ I have developed an incredible network of friends all over the world. I am active in the quality management field on a global basis. I have given keynote addresses in Europe, Far East, Latin America and the Middle East.

I continue to nurture my global network and add value which in turn provides me great opportunities to expand my sphere of influence through professional conferences, seminars, workshops and consulting assignments.

Q-3: Why did you decide to establish Business Excellence, Inc.?

After working in corporate environment for around 25 years, mostly as internal consultant in quality management area, I decided to try on my own to become an external consultant. In June 2000, I started my solo practice in Naperville, Illinois. The Business Excellence, Inc. offers organizational assessment in the areas of leadership development, customer focus, employee engagement and process management. We also provide recommendations to our clients and help implement those recommendations to achieve organizational excellence.

Since 2000, we have served numerous clients in manufacturing and service sector as well as non-profit organizations globally. Our philosophy is very simple – engage employees, delight customers and achieve process excellence to create lasting value for our clients.

Q-4: Please tell us more about the latest developing field of Information Integrity. Please also provide more info about management terms such as leadership development, customer satisfaction, employee engagement and continuous process improvement.

Since 2001, I have been involved with the Information Integrity Coalition (IIC), a not-for-profit organization. The Information Integrity is the accuracy, consistency and reliability of the information content, processes and systems. The mission of IIC is to enable society to use and exchange information with confidence. The major agenda of IIC is: Recognition, Awareness, Education, Research and Standards. For more information, visit www.informationintegrity.org.

At IIC we manage annual Excellence in Information Integrity Awards (EIIA) Program which I have chaired in 2007, 2008 and managing it for 2009. The EIIA Program is open to any organization (for-profit or non-profit) globally and it is free of any cost. For more information, visit www.EIIAward.org. Since July 2007 I have served as a Director of IIC and in June 2008 became Secretary of IIC.

Leadership Development is an on-going journey for an individual that requires a desire to learn and continually develop own leadership by observing great role models and assessing personal strengths and areas for improvement.

Customer Satisfaction is critical for the survival of any organization. This requires systematically listening to your customers, analyze what you learned, take actions to improve areas of dissatisfaction pointed out by your customers and sustain your areas of satisfaction.

Employee Engagement is crucial for an organization to remain in business. This requires understanding employee needs and fulfilling those needs so all employees get motivated to work towards achieving organizational goals and objectives and delight their customers.

All work is done through Process. Therefore it is critical to understand a given process first, then find out whether the process is in control (if not, bring it under control), and use the data to improve your existing processes to achieve organizational excellence.

Q-5: Your advice to engineers looking to start business management consulting companies?

*Become an expert in your areas of interest.

*Join professional organizations to develop your network of professional contacts.

*Volunteer your services in professional organizations.

*Learn from your network about starting your own consulting business.

*Develop a list of advisors who can guide your new company.

*Starting your own business is a challenging job, be patient and persistent.

Q-6: You also taught as an Adjunct Professor at Stuart School of Business, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago.

*Since 1993, I have served as an Adjunct Professor at Stuart School of Business at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

*I have taught “Quality Management” covering aspects of leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, workforce management, process management and business results.

*For the “Supply Chain Management” course I have covered major aspects such as Supply Chain Strategy, Facility Management, Inventory Management and Information Technology Management.

*In 2008, I taught “Quality Assurance Project Management” course at the School of Continuing Studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The focus of this course was to cover all aspects of project management covering project selection, project team formation, work flow, critical path, project reviews and project conclusion.

Q-7: Please tell us more about Blind Foundation for India, which was started by you.

Knowing that there are 15 million blind people (one out of every three blind people in the world) in India and 80% of blindness is either preventable or curable we decided to start the Blind Foundation for India (BFI) in April 1989 at the urging of Dr. Rajendra Vyas, Honorary Secretary General of National Association for the Blind, India. BFI is a US registered 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit charitable organization. The charter of BFI is to prevent and cure blindness and educate and rehabilitate incurably blind people in India. We have an overseas coordinator (Shri Kishor Shah) and a field officer in India. We work with around 75 medical partners throughout India.

We have around 5,000 donors in USA and Canada. Annually we send out an appeal sharing the progress made in combating blindness. So far we have raised US$3.5 million and performed 90,000 free Cataract operations, gave Measles vaccinations and Vitamin A to 90,000 children for prevention of blindness and donated 83 Mobile Vans to medical partners to transport eye doctors to villages and bring patients back for Cataract operations. We have also provided 9,000 Braille kits to blind children for their education. We have a small Board of Directors (6) and I have been a Founding Director and President of BFI since 1989.

We have worked with The Rotary Foundation for over 15 matching projects to stretch our donations to help projects in India. For more information on BFI, visit: www.blindfoundation.org.

Recently, I have joined a core group of Pratham USA, Chicago to raise awareness and funds for putting 100 million children in school and learning well in India. More information about Pratham USA, visit: http://www.prathamusa.org/dnn/Chapters/Chicago/tabid/135/Default.aspx.

Q-8: Please describe your college days

I had a great time at IT-BHU during my stay at Morvi Hostel. We used to manage our small vegetarian dining club of about 15-20 engineering students. Those were the golden days! Lot of hard work went in to learn chemical engineering. I had great professors such as Dr. Gopal Tripathi (Petroleum Engineering), Dr. Agarwal (Unit Operations), Dr. G. N. Pandey (Kinetics), Dr. Mishra (Unit Operations), Dr. Varshney (Heat Transfer), Dr. Vijay Batra (Thermodynamics), etc.

In 1964, the chemical engineering department doubled the number of seats from 30 to 60. So, in 1964 when I joined as a second year student, we had 8 people form Bombay and 12 from Gujarat. So, 1/3^rd of the class was Gujarati. I used to study for the first 8 months, solve all previous years’ exam papers and prepare good notes. In the last month I would not study as my notes will be circulating among my friends. I would work with my classmates to solve their difficult questions during the last month. In the end, I would gain more knowledge by working with them and able to do well in the exams. This may be the early seeds of my teaching interest here in USA in the business school!

During strikes on a yearly basis at BHU (week or two weeks) we would generally go on a trip to Nainital, Lucknow, Hardwar, Rushikesh, Laxman Jula, Dehradun, etc. We went to New Delhi for TOFEL and GRE exams. In the final year, one of the favorite activities was to wait for the postman to bring the news about US college admissions. I had acceptances from 4 different schools but chose to join IIT Chicago as my senior IT-BHU friend Mr. Prakash Naik was already at IIT.

At IIT Chicago I had an easy time going through the coursework as many subjects were covered in depth during my undergraduate days at IT-BHU. I had an experimental research for my M.S. and Ph.D. which required working late through the nights as I was sharing the equipment with other senior students. I made great friends during IIT days and started my new passion of fund raising for worthy causes. In 1970, we showed 9 different Indian films at IIT to raise funds during the East Pakistani Refugee crisis. We did several projects to supply clean drinking water during big draughts in India. I also traveled to various states in USA and places in Canada.

Q-9: Please tell us about your personal life

*Married to Dr. Nila Vora. She is an Internist working at Loyola University Medical Center’s Outpatient clinic in Darien, Illinois.

*Older son Ashish Vora is a computer scientist with an MBA and works at McKinsey & Company in Chicago, Illinois in their technology office.

*Younger son Anand Vora is an economist and works at Navigant Consulting in San Francisco, California.

*My hobbies are travel, photography, reading, mentoring, networking (professional and social) and philanthropy.

*My personal philosophy is to learn the best there is available from formal and informal resources, apply new learnings and share them widely.

*I have been fortunate to have so many great mentors all along my life. They include several teachers in high school, professors in colleges and several managers in work places. In addition, network of great quality professionals have influenced my thinking and actions.

Sir, it was nice talking to you.

I want thank you Yogesh for giving me an opportunity to share my views with our IT-BHU friends. I want to commend your Chronicle team for doing a wonderful job on a consistent basis.

Manu K. Vora, Ph.D., MBA, ASQ CQE, ASQ Fellow

President and Founding Director, Blind Foundation for India

ASQ Grant Medalist (2001), Lancaster Medalist (2005)

Adjunct Professor, Stuart School of Business, IIT Chicago

Chairman and President, Business Excellence, Inc.

P. O. Box 5585, Naperville, IL 60567-5585, USA

Tel: (630) 548-5531; Fax: (630) 548-5532; Mobile: (630) 660-3869

E-mail: manuvora@b-einc.com/

Business Excellence, Inc: http://www.b-einc.com/

Profile of Dr. Manu Vora on IIT, Chicago website: http://www.iit.edu/profiles/alumni/manu_vora.html

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