Escorts to cut 800 jobs

Tractor manufacturer Escorts Ltd said the company plans to cut around 800 jobs by March 2015 to make the company more frugal and concentrate on lean manufacturing.

The company has already started the process of reducing workforce and has offered a voluntary retirement scheme (to around 300 people), apart from a few who were asked to leave for ‘non-performance’ and some who are retiring in the coming months.

“We are restructuring to be more performance-oriented and to make Escorts known as a blue-chip company again in the coming days and for that we want better talent,” Nikhil Nanda, Managing Director, Escorts, told Business Line.

In the recent past, the company had asked many employees from various verticals to leave as well as over 65 people from the senior management who were not performing, he said.

Without sharing the number of contract workers, Nanda said the company had around 5,000 (blue collar and white collar) permanent employees right now, which would be brought down to around 4,200 by March 2015.

Though the company already has a pool of young talent, it was looking for more across all verticals, especially with the advent of new technology in its factories, Nanda said.

“We are a global company and have already started importing products such as Ferrari tractors for the last two years and will be manufacturing them here soon. Therefore, we have to get new talent which is quick on its feet to make our company technically strong,” he said.

Nanda said Escorts had appointed McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group India to shape the company and save on unwanted costs.

“We have already started seeing the results. There have been savings of around 5 per cent on material costs on our farm products,” Nanda added.

The company has eight plants in India (seven in Faridabad and one in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand) and one in Poland, which manufacture between 16hp and 110hp tractors.

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