TEAM SPECIAL ....Self-managed teams in India Inc Divests Power

 Self-managed teams take to shop floors 

India Inc Divests Power To Tackle Strife

Mumbai: Dealing with labour issues has always been a daunting task for companies. In the last few years, corporate India has been witness to some of the ugliest sides of worker unrest. It’s here that a concept called self-managed teams (SMTs) is now finding acceptance among a growing tribe of manufacturers. With Dr Reddy’s Laboratories and PepsiCo India being some of the early adopters of SMT, a few large corporates like the RPG Group are now warming up to the concept.
    An SMT obviates the need for a supervisor and it largely consists of people managing the facility by themselves. Around 500 people are working on this principle at RPG Group company Ceat’s tyre factory at Baroda.
    Here’s how it works: The work schedule is defined by the planning department based on a fixed product mix. The schedule is forwarded to individual workers. Besides, there is a maintenance engineering department which swoops in whenever there is a machine breakdown of any kind. So the worker deals with the planning and maintenance departments directly, thus eliminating the need of a supervisor. This essentially brings down costs as well.
    Workers are trained on how to hold meetings and plan their work accordingly. There are charts on the machines which tell them about the goals and the actuals. If the actual is lower than the goal, then a gap analysis is done to find out the root cause, followed up with corrective action. Disciplinary rules are also self-managed here, while appraisals are based on deliverables. So there is no room for ambiguity.
    “Even some of the best run companies are facing huge labour problems. SMTs are an innovative way of dealing with the issue,” said Arvind Agrawal, president (HR), RPG Enterprises. He further added, “The workers are young people who have passed out of class 12. We pay for their educational upgradation also. We don’t want them to spend their life on the shop floor. So during weekends and evening hours, they attend classes to become diploma holders. We push some of those who are diploma holders to get engineering degrees. Our idea is that these young workers explore arenas beyond the shop floor. That way, there is a constant churn on the shop floor.”
    Since there is no supervisory cadre, there is empowerment. “We tell them you are not merely a cog in the wheel. This brings about a lot of responsibility among individual workers,” said Agrawal, whose belief is that in the long run all human beings need careers and want to grow.
    Ceat, which has pumped Rs 100 crore into this plant, found that productivity levels had shown an improvement. “Initially, there were hiccups and the top management had to equally have the confidence. But now, it has been stabilised. Encouraged by Ceat’s success, the group wants to make this a norm in any new establishment,” said Agrawal.
    PepsiCo India had in 2005 started the initiative of SMTs at Palakkad with the intent of empowering teams at the shop floor, driving ownership within workmen and establishing a workmen-led line management. “A clear benefit of this practice is that it ensures participative management with the ownership of a spectrum of issues — ranging from dayto-day and ongoing to complex ones — resting entirely with the shop floor teams,” said a PepsiCo India spokesperson.
    Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, on the other hand, was the pioneer of this concept when it started SMT in Yanam (Pondicherry) in 2002. “The concept of SMT is based on the inherent belief that ‘people are good and capable’. A self-managed team is a group of empowered, self-managed and committed individuals who plan, organize and manage all the day-to-day activities in a manufacturing facility. Their areas of operations include managing the entire gamut — manufacturing, packaging, quality control and assurance, warehouse management, and engineering,” the company said.
    Dr Reddy’s Laboratories has implemented SMT at all its new plants.
    Experts believe it would do companies good if SMT is implemented at the workplace as well — a radical thought, but not entirely impossible in certain sections where supervisory levels have limited scope.

DEMOCRATIZING DECISION-MAKING
    With mostly workers running a plant, an SMT obviates the need for a supervisor, which saves costs too
    Individual workers get a schedule based on fixed product mix, with maintenance dept standing by for support
    They are trained on holding meetings to plan work, while charts on machines inform about any fall in output
    In case of a fall, a gap analysis is done followed by remedial action with appraisals based on deliverables

SOME COS THAT FACED LABOUR UNREST RECENTLY
l Maruti Suzuki’s plants

l Bosch’s Bangalore unit

l Moser Baer’s Noida plant

l Hyundai & Nokia’s Chennai units

l Bajaj Auto’s Pune facilities
l M&M’s Nashik unit

Namrata Singh TOI130720