Name: Champion Components (P) Ltd.
Location: Faridabad, India
Established: 1967
Current size: 85 employees
Products: Sheet Metal Components & Engineering Fabrications for automobile, construction and agricultural sectors
Customer: Earth moving equipment OEM’s

Champion Components (P) Ltd is a family owned business founded by Mr. SC Bhatia in 1967 as a small scale unit to produce fabricated engineering components. With his fortitude and determination, he turned the small company into a leading light engineering industry of Faridabad.

Today the company is producing sophisticated engineering components for automotive, cement and agricultural farm equipment sectors. The company has the distinction of delivering quality products to its customers since last four decades. Today the company is managed by a team of three young directors who are having good experiences & qualified professionals.

The young management is genuinely interested in bringing world class manufacturing (WCM) practices. Before subscribing to SCORE program, for a year, they participated in the LEAN cluster program run by National Productivity Council (NPC) and made sufficiently good improvement. With the introduction of SCORE program in India, Champion’s management, thoughtfully examined the range & scope of SCORE program and enthusiastically enrolled for the SCORE Modules.

Starting from a small workshop, company now produces voluminously big fabricated parts, as a result face day to day challenges of work place space constraint as also mix up of parts & components.

Growing from a small organization to a light engineering industry, the employee strength grew to 85 people and with heavy part fabrication, workplace occupational safety and organizing workplace became a big problem. Employees had no voice in how work is organized.

With large size of the product and variety of fabrication processes, it was real difficult for the employees and management to organize the workplace. Though worker would be concerned about his output but the prevalent work place practice(s) became a hindering factor for worker efficiency. Many times worker was not aware of product & company concerns; as a result, factory would result in disorganized work place, leading to safety issues and lot of unwanted material stored here & there.

“With increase in business and product range, space was becoming a constraint and so accommodating varied parts fitting into limited space, was becoming a challenge of its own kind”, mentions PK Verma, the Quality Manager.

Champion’s management heard about SCORE from Faridabad Small Industry Association (FSIA). “After LEAN, I was looking for an improvement program that would help us to address our challenges and become more competitive” explained the company’s Director, Manish Bhatia.

Meeting the Workplace Challenge

After the Training of Enterprise (TOE) of SCORE program, an Enterprise Improvement Team (EIT) was formed which started meeting regularly for about 3-4 times in a week. The EIT consisted of 3 workmen and 5 management cadre staff, including the Director.
Initially it was confusing, where to start, but as workers involvement grew, 1S & 2S initiative started gathering momentum in every nook & corner of the factory. 1S & 2S initiative in the company led to freeing space from different areas of the factory. “We are still sorting many old inventories of goods and tools & deciding about them” mentions Manish, Director. “In fact a proper dining space had come out for workers to properly rest and take food, once the space was freed”, he added. Workers are now shedding old stored junks, which was kept for years.
Weekly EIT meetings were held on every Tuesday. 10 minute daily meeting brought the whole shift in the involvement of workers, as daily sharing of production targets and concerns not only improved the Management-Worker dialogue but also boosted workers morale in enhanced participation.
Thrilled with the response, Director of Champion, once gave complete liberty to workers to red tag all items in respective work area so that appropriate decision could be taken to decide about the old inventory. In this process, approximately 0.6 Million Rupee worth of material was scrapped.
Employee Suggestion scheme in its renewed vigor is prompting worker to suggest improvement in workplace practices. “Workers are now excited and wondering their participation in the whole initiative whole heartedly as they are being talked of day to day problems”, says Dalbir (Worker). “Daily meeting has immensely helped to know our daily targets”, adds Dalbir.