In March 2011, I was working as a vendor for an American based company, whose sister concern is located in Nacharam, Hyderabad. Van Mc Neil Precision Manufacturing Pvt Ltd, offered me an opportunity to take over their operations. Since we were in the same line of activity, which is, machining high precision components for various defence, automobile and medical sectors, and as I was always looking for an opportunity to grow, I grabbed this one. Initially it was difficult for me due to various reasons. It took time for the guys to accept me as their new boss, age politics, new style of operations and many more. Six months of efforts it took to build a team of 25 skilled youngsters. Moulding a couple of young guys to be the programmers from being operators, some technical helpers to good operators was an arduous task. I always believed in patience as the only key to the operator's hearts and minds. To be able to drive new ideas into their heads, was a herculean task. Today, I see a ray of hope in the company's growth. Although our outputs and revenues are not as high as what we expect, we have ensured that the company can look forward to a sustainable growth.
In October 2011, the company had a few jobs to take up and the output was Rs.30,000/-, while the pay off was up to Rs. 3 lakhs. End of October, We had a review meeting, which transformed the unit. We decided, profit or loss, we will take up jobs, to meet our pay off of Rs. 3 Lakhs/month. We started reviewing success rate of the number of orders received Vs no. of quotations submitted every month. By end of November, we had raised our Order book to One Crore Rupees, which was remarkable. Now, that the business development is done to a considerable amount, the technical team had to take over. The projects were very critical. It involved operators working for upto 2 months, night and day to prove the technical feasibility for manufacturing the components.
Continuous improvement, implement new quality systems, inspection techniques, production cycle time reduction, Failure analysis, post and pre-machining inspections, were some specific area that I worked on to be able to achieve both quality and delivery requirements.
Since we also believe that every aspect of the organization needs continuous improvement, the business development activity also has not stopped. We are looking for a bigger order worth Rs. 6 Crores, by March 2012.
At work, not a single day passes by without a challenging event. To be able to withstand this pressure and still live was a challenge by itself. Constant calls from vendors for payments, constant pressure from the banker to pay off my loan, consistent performance demands from the customer, added pressure and made us very inefficient. Despite this, We ensured that the pressure is not passed on to our boys to be able to get best out put from them. All of us expect our subordinates to deliver like how we would, expect them to understand the way we would, take up responsibility the way we would. One thing we all forget that he is our subordinate, which means, due to his or her limitations he is there. A constant mentoring and motivation is required for them to take initiative. A lot of compromises, a number of arguments lost, quiet a few sleepless nights and being receptive to new ideas brought about this change in the function of the organization. To display character and mettle during these tough times was truly a challenge too.
We have been able to build a team of 25 highly enthusiastic young boys, who believe in the organization and its growth plans. The company that was in the verge of retirement has now come to a point where, we can look forward to a big future. Now, we have started looking for other opportunities in the market, where we can extend our services.
I would like to thank my team for having cooperated with me. I also would like to thank my colleague Mr. Raghava for having put up with my idiosyncrasies and still stand by me during the tough times.
