What's Exciting About Manufacturing?

Trends in college admissions also point to a surge of excitement in manufacturing careers. Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT), Nagpur, has just raised the number of seats in the BTech Metallurgy programme by 50 per cent. This is in response to a massive recruitment of metallurgy students by the Aditya Birla Group, Bharat Forge and Tata Motors. NITC plans to double the number of seats in engineering streams like chemical, electrical, and electronics. �The government has realised that the manufacturing sector can no longer be ignored if India has to be made a globally competitive nation. And we see the changing scenario in colleges too,� says V. Krishnamurthy, chairman, National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council.

But why are students suddenly excited about engineering jobs? There are several compelling reasons. But at the core, the very nature of shop floor jobs has undergone a radical transformation.

Earlier, engineers were programmed to take a task-based approach. They were measured largely on the quantum of production. For example, how many cars or buses or tonnes of steel they produced. That is now giving way to a problem- or a challenge-based approach. Jobs on the shop floor are no longer about how many units of production you churn out. They are about innovation � in terms of product offerings, process efficiency, value engineering, cost reduction, etc. About 60 per cent of Tata Motors� employees have already moved away from task-based roles into challenge-based mode. �Innovation is now at the very core of a manufacturing job. The scope for innovation is more in manufacturing jobs than in the services sector. Engineers get excited about innovation. They want to get involved in it,� says Praveen Kadle, executive director (finance & corporate affairs), Tata Motors.

That�s why Tata Motors changed the way it runs its shop floors. A typical car or truck plant would have many production units such as an engine shop, a gearbox plant, a press shop, etc. Each would then have smaller units within them. Traditionally, the team members of each unit would only focus on numbers produced. But now, Tata Motors has empowered the teams. Each is responsible for cost, quality, shop maintenance, etc., with deliverables in each. The head of each unit is expected to run it like a mini company within a company. This holistic responsibility excites the team.

This has also created more responsibilities for younger employees. The average age of the employee who heads such units is between 27 and 30 years. Engineers with only five years� experience can aspire to such responsibilities.

That�s unprecedented in the manufacturing sector. But more and more companies now dare to break conventional practices. They want to increase the excitement in manufacturing jobs. Nothing illustrates this better than Hitori Yatai Seisan or the Single Workman Station, at Larsen & Toubro�s (L&T) electrical engineering division.

The moving assembly line has been a fundamental manufacturing practice. Each worker performs one particular task in the production of a component. There may be a handful, a dozen or even hundreds of workers in a line � but each will have only one task to perform in the entire production process. No individual can take full ownership of the product.

But L&T figured that employees would relish the challenge of complete responsibility for a product. So, it introduced this concept in air circuit breakers. It did away with the assembly line and asked workers to assemble the product fully. The worker now has full ownership � he makes the product from start to finish. Every air circuit breaker also has a serial number � this is as good as branding it with the name of the worker. �Ever since we introduced the concept of the Single Workman Station, our productivity has increased as the employee has a sense of ownership for the final product. This is a great motivation,� says R.N. Mukhija, president (operations), L&T. Such practices are rewriting the very DNA of manufacturing jobs.

Existing jobs are becoming more exciting. Newer and richer job profiles are also emerging. �There is a lot of innovation and a shift of emphasis to research and development (R&D). There are new kinds of jobs being created in the sector,� says Gangapriya Chakraverti, business leader (human capital product solutions), Mercer Human Resource Consulting. The newer jobs are being created in three broad categories: pure research, engineering design and new product development.