Thanks to the big ‘M' that combines lean with Green, the manufacturing cost at the Shirwal Plant has been reducing year on year for the last five years now! And it has managed this amazing feat despite the rising power tariffs, increasing minimum wages and growing fuel costs. A key element in this achievement according to Shariyarr is the positive and proactive involvement of employees.

"We believe that conventionally operators have been using only their hands; we have made our operators use their brains as well. We started the kaizen implementation as a result of which from zero contribution, every operator today contributes 12 ideas and even implements them per year average," he explains.

These ideas are in the field of quality, productivity, green initiatives, safety, cost and so on. These ideas have added substantially to the plant's success in terms of cost reduction over and above the contribution o the initiatives taken by the managerial staff. "We call them the cost take out initiatives and everyone contributes to them. You would be surprised that we take ideas even from our house keeping guys."

The Shirwal plant had a small valley like formation on a rocky hillock at its campus which could not use for many years. "So based on great idea, we created a water reservoir there which today stores 44 lakh litres of water.

Thus, while insulating ourselves for any water shortage problems, we have also created a water body that is likely to attract migratory birds soon. And importantly, we have not used any flat land parcel for this purpose," Shariyarr says.
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