50 Manufacturing Companies – Schaeffler India

In the manufacturing environment, Schaeffler India is challenged to continuously develop capabilities and competencies to keep pace with customer and market dynamics. As a leading global technology company, it has always outpaced such dynamics in automotive and industrial space with its high precision components and systems solutions. The creativity that is adopted in its plants in India is a blend of global as well as local trends of operational efficiency, lean manufacturing and QCD. Operations in India are managed with five pillar organisation model: Technology, tool management and prototyping, industrial engineering, special machinery and production.
To ensure KPI based success of these key initiatives, it has a well-designed Shop Floor Management (SFM) system that ensures transparency, accountability and sustainability. SFM acts as a management tool to accelerate exchange of information with four crucial elements to interact and improve defined KPIs – Shopfloor management meetings, communication cascading, problem solving and follow-up.
The Team Leader concept helps to improve the span of control and ensures employee oriented management down the line. In Schaeffler, Team Leader is a facilitator of improvement activities, analyses deviations in QCD and provides first level support for process deviation from standard.
Mathur says that digitalisation plays an important part in the development of industrial manufacturing and enables the evolution of smart factories. In the digitised factory of the future, machines and equipment, robots, goods and products will be interlinked in networks. “Digital data will be exchanged, processed and initiate new processes in a matter of seconds. The production machines will control themselves, as the workpieces and components on the line autonomously communicate where they need to be transported to and how they are supposed to be processed downstream. Digital and/or dynamic models offer significant advantages when analysing systems with complex planning or optimisation in areas of system controls, conveyor technology, value stream, factory planning, logistics and material flow systems,” he adds.