Wednesday, December 07, 2005

The Ravi C Gems series - Part 1

This is a small compilation of some of the wittiest one-liners to have escaped the mouth of Professor Ravichandran (or RaviC as he is known in WIMWI circles), who is one of the sharpest profs I have ever met...He has a great philosophy to his life and work too. The following is a collection by some enthu faccha last year of some of the statements he made in Operations Management class. I will be following up this effort with some of the sparklers I remember from CCCS class this year as well...


On students pretending to go through their material to avoid being cold called:

“You people have a nice way of avoiding me. Whenever I ask a question ... you start looking in your books, as if you are very busy...!”

"Looking away..Like newly married brides"

"This is not your contention but confusion and at best you can have confusion coz it’s your birth right"

“I am stunned by your intellectual inferiority .....”

On the projector being out of focus:
"This is unfocussed...just like the PGP program"

On the Toyota case, workers apathy to the seat problem,

"Here you are jumping up and down like an intoxicated monkey, and you go to the workers and he shrugs and says,' is there a problem?'"

The one in which he explains cycle time:

"Cycle time does not mean that you take three women and expect to have a child in three months, it will still take nine months"

RC: What would you want? Freedom or Air-conditioned Buses?

StratStud Student: Both.

RC: You cannot get both. That would be like having a mistress and a wife. One in Manila and one in vanilla (some other place actually). Or one in Chennai and one in Delhi. That will be like Blitz Company. There will be special orders and large orders...

StratStud Student: That's a philosophical question.

RC: There is nothing philosophical about it. It is very materialistic.

On Foreign Students

"... They are real engineers....unlike the Indians!" (Referring to foreigners
In context of the exchange students I guess...)

On self:

"I am a sadistic monkey, u know"

" when my son was 3 years old... yes he actually once was even though he thinks he was born at 15"

“Have taken the responsibility of getting 2 sons into this world...Not that it takes much of an effort..... With some people it might be a problem. But with me.. It didn’t take much effort....... its not very difficult. Provided you get the chance”

In a session on scheduling:

RC: so what should blitz do to correct its schedule?

Student: Sir, it should improve its scheduling policy.

RC: You know, now that’s like going to a doctor and telling him "I'm not well" and asking him what should I do and the joker says "Get well".

On being distracted by a student chewing on his gold chain:
"You are the bottleneck of my attention.....You take my attention away from the class....I should really do something about this"

On a nervous student dropping things from his/her desk and not daring to move a muscle to avoid attracting attention:

“That’s why housekeeping is important in JIT. If your workspace is organized and things are running smoothly you don’t attract any attention..”

On feeding a bottleneck:

“like a pregnant woman constantly craving for something to eat before having a baby??”

Height of cold call: A poor classroom theatre attendant coming in to serve tea in the wrong CR:

RC: “Arre yeh kya humarey liye hai”?

RC helping himself to a cup of tea: “See that’s what happens when you outsource without proper information sharing.”

On averages/mean as a performance measure:

Student : Sir, the queue length is 2.25 people.

RC: 2.25 people? Doesn’t make sense does it?

Student : err…ummm…

RC: That’s like the census of India saying that the average family size is 3.2 people. That means a woman in the family is almost perpetually pregnant. Correct?

On asymptotes:

Student : “The function gradually approaches 0…”

RC: “that’s like saying that asymptotically we all die…”

“Isko koi samjhao bhai”

On a student missing from class and the class rep unable to locate him in the dorm:

“So what should we do now??.. Let’s organise a party with band-baaja and go find him…

…That’s ok, I’ll lead the party since I have nothing better to do. So who’s coming with me??

On the same AWOL student:

RC: “…WIP gone missing”

On scheduling conflicts:

Student: “It arises because of shared resources.”

RC: “You mean like Princess Diana or Draupadi..?”

On asking a student for an example and him/her giving an inappropriate one:

RC: "Which is your favorite LP problem?"

Student : "Adani Wilmar"

RC: "Adani Wilmar?!?!? Was it an LP problem or a transportation problem??"

Student: "sir there we had to find the optimal route from the ports to the factories by an LP formulation"

RC: "it's like I ask you for your favorite bird and u say mosquito....it has wings and it can fly....so it's technically correct!!!”

Dunno the context:

”Vishwamitra had zero WIP...he had compressed cycle time a long time back”


Ranga

17 comments:

Vishal Grover said...

Pardon my sarcasm, haven't had the (mis?)fortune to be in RaviC's class, but he sounds more like a smartass than a wit.

Anonymous said...

nice comments from RaviC

V said...

my first class here was with RaviC.. the intro case during orientation. Great fun :D .. you realise his value after seeing all those profs who tolerate insane amounts of fart

Colourking said...

yeah, true... he does make you think very carefully about what you speak...

Hemu said...

Nice to hear about Prof Ravichandran and the class experiences, wish many more are in the pipeline, and do share.

Adi Oso-Groot Finch said...

could ye send him over to C for the 6th term... would like some sarcasm training before i leave.. n then i hear he's a good teacher too

Unknown said...

I wish I attend his classes before getting out of IIM A...

Anonymous said...

sahi hain bhai...lage rahe...waise agli baar hindi me post karna.....angrezzi me thoda kam samajh me aata hain

Anonymous said...

fucking brilliant!!!

Unknown said...

Fun post!

Anonymous said...

Hi!!!
Today's Ravi's Comment in Logistic Management class:

So you are unmarried ?!. I thought you are bachelor.

Anonymous said...

Brilliant...he is Kotler,Porter and Boman Irani all rolled into a complete package

Unknown said...

He is an extreme person.You cant predict him.His wittyness is awesome.

Anonymous said...

perfect wit...brilliant!

Anonymous said...

once when referring to Manmohan Singh, in the backdrop of the inflation and the liquidity crunch(Oct 2008)when he had come to Jaipur for the CIO 100 talk.
"..you may be a world-class economist but still you will screw up the economy..."

generic cialis 20mg said...

Interesting article, added his blog to Favorites

Anonymous said...

Latest one-
RaviC (to students standing outside the classroom) - Why are you people Standing outside ? Go inside , listen to the awesome orators .... laddoo wadoo khao ...

Student ( with a pretentious innocence ) - Are we getting laddoos inside ...

RaviC - Ladoo chahiye ? .. salaa mere sasural men aaye ho ..

 
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