The Hindu Business Line : Man-machine mismatch affects Jessop revival

MR PAWAN Ruia does not consider money or market to be the biggest barrier in the way of achieving his target of getting Jessop & Co's turnover to Rs 500 crore in five years from a meagre Rs 45 crore in 2003-04.

What bothers him the most is the fact that even a year after taking over the company he has not been able to operate his plant and machinery for more than a single shift a day.

Basically, Mr Ruia's problems have its roots in a severe mismatch in the man-machine ratio across production lines in his company.

"Honestly, I did not apprehend that the situation would be so bad," Mr Ruia told Business Line.

"Some departments simply have too many people and there are some critical areas requiring skilled workforce which are severely understaffed or have no worker at all," he said.

Indeed, Jessop will manufacture a maximum of 81 coaches in 2004-05 against a capacity of 216 coaches a year.

But at the time the company was taken over by Mr Ruia, only 18 coaches were being produced every year.

"There is no point in making huge investments in plants and machinery at this moment as I simply do not have people to run them," Mr Ruia lamented.

The company has recently appointed a consultant, Sigma, to suggest the manning exercise, including redeployment and training.

The consultant will suggest an optimum manpower ratio at different levels.

"To cope with the problem we have already appointed 103 freshers, including 23 engineers, straight from the campus and are scouting around for experienced people, especially retired employees from Jessop and its sister PSU organisations, to fill up the gaps in areas related to production and management."

Among other things, the hired retired employees are grooming the freshers for the future and are also re-training existing employees for redeployment in other areas.

"We have to run three shifts by the beginning of next year," Mr Ruia said.

The company has already roped in the erstwhile chairman of Bharat Bhari Udyog Nigam Ltd, Mr R.P. Singh, as Managing Director, the former MD of Braithwaite, Mr S.S. Chatterjee, as Director, and the former MD of Jessop, Mr G.S. Bhattacharya, as Vice-President.

Mr A.K. Sahai, ex-chairman of Neyveli Lignite Corporation, has joined the company as the chief of its newly formed mining division.

Mr Ruia expects the mining division to take the lead in turning around the fortunes of Jessop in a big way.