Building the summer before it arrives

In the summer of 2023, Thenvayu shipped 7.9 lakh air coolers, 4.6 lakh of them between February and May. To meet that peak we had again run a third shift at Perundurai and Sanand and added about 700 short-term contract workers within five weeks. Peak contract headcount reached 2,350. First-pass yield on cooler lines fell from 96.1 to 91.4 per cent, and Perundurai recorded six reportable injuries during the season against one in the rest of the year.

For the 2024 season I proposed building 2.6 lakh coolers between October and January on two shifts and storing them in hired warehouses near our distribution centres. The chief financial officer opposed the plan. It would raise inventory by up to ₹96 crore at its highest point, add about ₹5.8 crore of interest and ₹7.4 crore of warehousing, and commit us to a model mix three months before retailers placed firm orders. Our sales head wanted freedom to respond to competitors' January launches. The managing director accepted the proposal with one condition: early stock was limited to the eleven models that had made up 80 per cent of the previous season's volume.

We froze those models in September, trained permanent operators for the early build and left the third shift unscheduled. Peak contract headcount in 2024 was 1,650. First-pass yield held at 95.6 per cent, and Perundurai recorded two reportable injuries during the season. Northern markets ran hotter than plan in May, and we met 93 per cent of peak orders, compared with 88 per cent the year before.

The cost was real. One colour variant sold poorly, and clearing 18,000 units at a discount took ₹4.1 crore off our margin. Working capital stayed above budget until July.

What I would do differently is fix colour and cosmetic variants much later. I now favour building motors, pumps and bodies early, and holding final assembly until channel stock shows which models are moving.

In August 2022, four months into my role as COO, a contract worker at Perundurai lost the tips of two fingers on a mechanical power press. The press was making cooler frame parts at the rate set in our standard. Its light curtain had been bypassed with a jumper wire, a practice the investigation found was common on the evening shift. I had approved that rate standard in 2016, as plant head, without checking whether operators could meet it with the guarding working.

I stopped all twenty-six mechanical presses at Perundurai and Coimbatore that night. The Perundurai plant head argued for stopping only the affected line, because fan and water-heater components depended on the press shop and we had no spare capacity. The labour contractor objected to our requirement that his workers complete the same induction and authorisation as our employees, at his cost. I agreed to share that cost but did not change the requirement.

Over eleven days we audited every press, fitted light curtains or two-hand controls where they were missing, installed key switches that logged every bypass and re-timed the rate standards with the guarding active. We bought ₹9 crore of pressed parts from two outside vendors to protect customer supplies, at a premium of about ₹1.3 crore. The retrofit cost ₹5.2 crore. We reported the incident as the law requires, supported the injured worker's compensation claim and offered him a permanent role as a quality inspector, which he accepted.

Press-line output fell by about 7 per cent once the new standards applied. It recovered to its earlier level over fourteen months through quicker die changes rather than faster strokes. There has been no amputation-type injury at any of our plants in the four years since.

What I would do differently is audit every rate standard against its guarding at the moment it is set, and give contractor supervisors a seat on the plant safety committee from the start rather than after an injury.

Mandatory star labelling for ceiling fans took effect in January 2023. Most of our fans were then induction-motor models rated at one star. Higher ratings at a competitive price required brushless DC motors, each driven by an electronic controller board. In 2022 only 4 per cent of our fan volume used them, all built from motor kits bought complete from a single supplier.

Three options went to the managing director. We could continue buying kits, which was quick but left us without control of the product's most important component. We could build everything ourselves, including a surface-mount electronics line costing about ₹64 crore. Or we could wind and assemble the motors ourselves and buy controller boards from an electronics manufacturing partner, built to our design and test specification. A promoter director favoured the full in-house route and asked whether an incentive scheme could support it. The production-linked incentive categories we examined did not cover our product, and our volume projections showed the electronics line running at about 35 per cent utilisation for three years. I recommended the third option, and the board approved it.

We invested ₹23 crore in winding, magnet assembly and end-of-line motor testing, housed in a new wholly owned subsidiary at Coimbatore. The first summer was difficult. Controller boards failed in the field at 2.8 per cent within six months, against a plan of 1 per cent, mostly from moisture and voltage surges in coastal and rural markets. Three models launched ten weeks late, and we lost display space with large retailers that season.

We added burn-in testing at the partner's plant, changed the conformal coating and began a monthly joint failure-analysis review. Controller returns fell to 0.9 per cent during 2025. Brushless motors reached 31 per cent of our fan volume in 2025-26.

What I would do differently is establish the joint failure analysis before launch. I treated the partner as a supplier to be inspected, when the design risk was one we shared.