On Thursday, the 20th June’13, at 7 o’clock in the morning, an assorted crowd of members, anns and annettes set out in a 20 seater bus for a factory visit organised by Rtn.Mahadevan, Director – Vocational Services.
The first halt was to visit Vasavibala Resins, which is Rtn.Pres. Siva’s factory at Thirumazhisai industrial estate. This factory visit was all the more interesting because breakfast was served there. What a sumptuous meal it was … Kesari, Vadai, Oothappam, Iddly, Pongal and Coffee straight from Rayar Mess! The factory staff helped serve the food right on the shop floor and we washed our hands in the lab sink!
The climb up and down various steel ladders, despite heavy protest from the satiated stomach, took us through the process of making polymer resin, which Siva sells to manufacturers of light roofing, bath tubs, boats, covers, railings, ladders and electrical equipment. The factory was well maintained and clean, an essential requirement since there are a myriad chemicals and pigments they store and track, to cook-up the large product mix in their range. We left after a photo session amidst the reactors and blenders of Siva’s factory to yet more amazing factory visit at Hundai Motors.
Rid of a customary drag of the cell phone in the pocket, (all phones and cameras were collected at the gate) we could turn our full attention to the sprawling 500 acre campus that churns out the largest number of cars for export from India. There was a sweet young girl from HR that greeted us and lead us through several videos, starting from rolls of steel until the car rolls off the assembly line.
Next, we actually went to the assembly line, which rolls out a car per minute. It was a marvel of detailed planing and perfect execution for every car is different from the next in line! Workers are taking parts travelling on a sub-line and fixing it onto a chassis that reach the line simultaneously. So as we watch, a Santro for export is fitted with a dashboard for right hand drive, another for left hand drive, the next in line is a Verna and so on. As we walk, we can see cars moving on conveyor above us to the next assembly line and engines coming up from below us to meet its chassis on the assembly line. It is strange that each car needs to be fitted with some 22,000 parts and very part comes just in time to be fitted where it belongs and there are no mix ups, despite sequential assembly of numerous models and their variants!
The body shop was the only other place we could visit. And it was really out of the world! Over a hundred robots were working all over the place, with only a handful of workers seen here and there. The robotic arms were spot welding sheet metal parts of various shapes, that came in from the press shop, into chassis, top and sides and then these four parts were literally stitched together in a flurry of sparks, to form the body of a car. This shell would then travel to the paint shop for a dip into several baths, to emerge in every colour of choice., before moving into the assembly shop, which we had already seen.
I have tried to present to those of you, who have missed out on this fabulous factory visit, a concise view of all that we saw and experienced. Hope it will tempt more of you to participate in future visits.
Regards,
Rtn. Thiagu
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