Chief Operating Officer — Industrial-Equipment Business

The mandate

Cash is tied up across an industrial-equipment business whose factories were built around different product histories. Customer advances fund long engineering cycles, yet the order book no longer converts predictably into cash. The Chief Operating Officer will reconnect commercial promise, engineering release, procurement, production and installation.

The perimeter covers approximately 2,450 employees and material partners across factories, project delivery, sourcing, planning, quality, field installation and service readiness. Product families include configured and engineered-to-order equipment with long-lead castings, controls and bought-out packages. The role owns operating performance; sales retains customer relationships, engineering retains design authority and finance governs accounting and liquidity. The COO must make those interfaces work as one delivery system.

Working-capital release cannot be achieved by cancelling useful stock or delaying suppliers indiscriminately. Inventory contains genuine project buffers, obsolete specifications, unallocated purchases and scarce parts whose absence would jeopardise commissioning. The first task is to establish which is which. Material must be traced to a demand, engineering baseline, physical condition and decision owner. Excess becomes a commercial, design or disposal action rather than an anonymous warehouse target.

Order intake also needs operational consent. Contracts sometimes include dates, acceptance terms, liquidated damages or site dependencies that have not been tested against capacity and supply. The COO will introduce a disciplined gate before commitment and a rapid exception path for strategically important orders. This is not permission for operations to avoid ambition; it is a mechanism for pricing and governing the actual execution risk.

Factory improvement will focus on flow rather than local utilisation. A machining centre can appear efficient while feeding work that cannot be assembled. The leader will use constraint-based schedules, frozen near-term priorities, shortage visibility and daily recovery ownership. Engineering changes after material commitment require quantified cost and schedule authority. Expedites should decline because the operating system becomes reliable, not because people stop recording them.

Customer acceptance is part of production. Documentation, certification, software configuration, operator training and installation access will enter the master schedule alongside fabrication. The business needs a clear definition of finished work and a senior forum for customers whose own site readiness prevents shipment. Commercial teams must negotiate storage, milestone or resequencing terms without disguising delayed acceptance as plant inefficiency.

The outgoing COO is leaving for health reasons after a short transition. Several credible initiatives exist, but they compete for the same engineering and plant resources and have not been combined into one cash-backed plan. This urgent replacement must preserve continuity while challenging assumptions quickly.

What you will own

• Integrate order acceptance, engineering release, sourcing, production, logistics, installation and customer acceptance.
• Establish item-level ownership for raw material, work in progress, finished equipment and customer-held inventory.
• Reset plant schedules around system constraints and confirmed engineering baselines.
• Govern changes, shortages, expediting, supplier recovery and subcontract capacity.
• Improve first-pass quality and close documentation before dispatch readiness.
• Build project operating reviews that reconcile physical progress, margin, cash and customer commitments.
• Decide capacity, make-or-buy and inventory actions with finance and engineering.
• Develop plant and project leaders able to resolve cross-functional problems without executive escalation.

The first 12 months

During the first 60 days, visit every major operating site, follow representative orders from contract to cash and reconcile inventory records to physical condition. Identify the twenty largest cash blocks, their root causes and the decision required. Freeze unsupported purchases and schedule changes without interrupting safety-critical or customer-critical supply.

By month six, install one order-control rhythm, recover priority supplier and engineering constraints and agree realistic acceptance plans for delayed machines. Reduce unallocated and obsolete inventory, improve bill-of-material stability and make each late milestone visible with financial consequence. Talent decisions should clarify plant, planning, project and procurement accountability.

At twelve months, release at least ₹275 crore of sustainable working capital, reduce inventory days by 20%, improve on-time customer milestones by 15 percentage points and cut past-due work in progress by half. No gain may rely on extended supplier terms beyond agreement, premature revenue recognition, impaired safety stock or deferred quality action. Forecast cash conversion should remain within 7% for three consecutive quarters.

What the sponsor will measure

• Cash released through better flow and decisions rather than balance-sheet cosmetics.
• Orders accepted with credible capacity, design and site assumptions.
• Fewer late changes, shortages and uncontrolled expedites.
• Reliable customer milestones including documentation and commissioning.
• Stronger plant and project leadership with visible ownership.
• Safety, product conformity and supplier trust protected during acceleration.

The person

You bring 18–22 years across engineered products, capital equipment, industrial projects or similarly complex manufacturing. You have held end-to-end operating accountability across multiple sites and can show how you converted an unstable order book into delivery and cash. Pure lean consulting or procurement savings experience without customer-project ownership is insufficient.

Your previous remit should encompass at least 1,700 employees and partners, ₹4,000 crore of annual activity or a comparable international portfolio. Evidence must include an item-level inventory recovery, an engineering-change intervention and a customer acceptance problem. You should understand Indian supplier markets, factory labour and project contracting and be prepared to work onsite frequently despite the hybrid designation.

Compensation and terms

The fixed range is ₹3.2–4.6 crore plus performance variable and long-term incentive linked to cash conversion, delivery, quality, safety and leadership. This permanent hybrid Pune appointment reports to the Group Chief Executive or designated executive sponsor. A notice period up to six months can be considered where transition planning is credible.

Confidentiality

The enterprise, sites, product families, customers and cash exposures are confidential. Identifying detail is released only after mutual fit, conflict screening and a signed undertaking. The brief combines facts to protect the organisation; applicants must not approach employees, customers or suppliers to infer its identity.