Twenty-nine years from die maintenance to plant network

Mandate

Bring plants, supply chain and engineering under one accountability, and make the seasonal peak safer and less dependent on short-term labour.

Outcomes

• Kept the 2024 cooler peak on two shifts by building 2.6 lakh units early; peak contract headcount fell from 2,350 to 1,650
• Guarded and re-timed all twenty-six mechanical presses after the August 2022 injury, with no amputation-type injury since
• Raised brushless motors from 4 to 31 per cent of fan volume through an in-house motor line
• Moved 420 recurring winding and paint-line roles to direct employment from 2024

Decisions in context

The COO role joined three things that had previously met only at the managing director's desk: the plants, the supply chain and manufacturing engineering. That mattered most in the season. A sales plan could no longer reach the plants without a capacity, workforce and materials plan attached to it. My first months were dominated by the Perundurai press injury, which forced a review of every rate standard in the company, including one I had approved. Since then my work has centred on three choices described on this site: building cooler stock early, guarding and re-timing the presses, and taking brushless motor production in-house. I also sit on the board of the subsidiary that houses the motor line. I report to the managing director, present quarterly to the board and report on safety and supply risk to its Risk Management Committee.

Reason for the move

Current role; seeking one independent directorship alongside it, with my board's consent.

Mandate

Run the plants as one manufacturing system and open a third plant closer to western and northern markets.

Outcomes

• Commissioned the Sanand plant in April 2021 at ₹186 crore, twelve months late after pandemic restrictions
• Brought quality, safety and maintenance procedures at three sites onto one basis
• Reduced fan warranty claims from 2.1 to 1.4 per cent of units sold

Decisions in context

Moving from one plant to all of them changed the questions I asked. Perundurai and Coimbatore had developed different maintenance habits, inspection records and contractor arrangements, and each believed its own was correct. I spent my first year putting them on one basis, choosing whichever site's practice had the better evidence rather than imposing headquarters preferences. The Sanand project then took most of my attention. We chose Gujarat to shorten delivery to western and northern markets, and the plant opened twelve months late because construction and equipment installation stopped during the pandemic. I learnt to report a delayed project honestly, with the revised cost and the reasons, rather than an optimistic new date. Warranty claims on fans fell over the period, largely from better winding and balancing checks. I did not yet own supply chain, which limited how far I could change the seasonal peak.

Reason for the move

Appointed COO when the managing director combined plants, supply chain and engineering under one role.

Mandate

Stabilise quality and delivery at the plant producing pressed parts, painted components and coolers.

Outcomes

• Reduced paint-shop rework from 7 per cent to under 3 per cent
• Brought contractor supervisors into the daily production meeting
• Raised on-time dispatch in the cooler season from 81 to 92 per cent

Decisions in context

Perundurai was my first full responsibility for a site, and it showed me how much of a plant's performance depends on decisions taken elsewhere. The paint shop's rework came partly from our own process and partly from pressed parts arriving with oil and burrs; we fixed both, with the press and paint supervisors reviewing defects together each morning. Contractor supervisors had never attended the production meeting, although their teams ran half the cooler lines in season. Bringing them in improved dispatch more than any equipment we bought. I also made a decision in 2016 that I regret: I approved a press rate standard without checking whether it could be met with the guarding active. That standard was still in force when a contract worker was injured in 2022. It explains the safety discipline I have applied since.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead manufacturing across all plants.

Mandate

Reduce defects from suppliers of laminations, winding wire, castings and bearings, and build a reliability record for field failures.

Outcomes

• Cut incoming defects from about 2,400 to 650 parts per million
• Introduced rolling twelve-week schedules for the twenty largest suppliers
• Set up a field-failure analysis process linking returns to supplier and process causes

Decisions in context

Supplier quality changed how I understood defects. Our worst suppliers were often small family businesses whose dies and furnaces suffered because we ordered erratically, then demanded urgent volumes. Before raising complaints with them, I persuaded our planning team to give the largest suppliers a rolling twelve-week schedule. Defect rates fell faster after that change than after any audit we conducted. My team of twenty-two also built a field-failure process. Returned motors were opened, measured and traced to a supplier lot or a process step, so that warranty data told us something useful rather than simply totalling a cost. The parent company's procedures gave us a strong framework, but applying them in India required judgement about which suppliers could improve with help and which could not. By 2011 I wanted responsibility for a whole operation, not one function within it.

Reason for the move

Recruited by Thenvayu to take full responsibility for a plant.

Mandate

Make end-of-line testing and test records reliable enough to support customer and parent-company audits.

Outcomes

• Moved end-of-line motor test records from paper to a traceable electronic log
• Reduced customer complaints per thousand motors by about half over four years
• Completed a part-time postgraduate diploma in operations management in 2005

Decisions in context

Kestrand's parent company expected a level of documentation that some colleagues regarded as excessive. I came to see test records differently: for a customer installing our motor in a fan or pump, the record was the only evidence that the unit would survive heat and unstable voltage. As quality engineer I worked on the winding and test lines, and from 2005 I managed the plant's quality team of fourteen. We replaced paper test sheets with an electronic log that linked each motor's results to its winding batch, which made customer complaints traceable for the first time. I studied part-time for my operations management diploma during these years, mostly on weekends. The role gave me a disciplined view of quality systems and a lasting respect for what a single test record can prove or fail to prove.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead supplier quality and reliability for the Indian business.

Mandate

Keep lamination dimensions and burr height within customer limits on high-volume press lines.

Outcomes

• Introduced a die-maintenance log that tracked strokes between regrinds
• Set up burr-height inspection at the start and end of each shift
• Recorded the timing of defects and injuries, which pointed to extended shifts

Decisions in context

I began my career beside a tool-room foreman who could hear a worn die before the measurement showed it. My job was to turn that knowledge into records: strokes between regrinds, burr height at the start and end of each shift, and the dimensions customers checked on receipt. The company ran long hours to meet orders, and I saw two injuries in three years, both late in an extended shift. I had no authority to change the shift pattern, but I kept a notebook of when defects and incidents occurred, and the pattern was hard to ignore. The owners were fair employers with very little margin, and I learnt what small suppliers face when larger customers order erratically. I left to work inside a complete quality system, wanting to learn how a larger manufacturer prevented problems rather than reacted to them.

Reason for the move

Joined a multinational motor maker to work within a full quality system.