Know about ICF before I tell you about Train 18
GMs
of Indian Railways have been empowered like no other business head in India. I mean it. I have interacted with innumerable MDs and CEOs and I find that a GM of Indian railways is more than a CEO. IR GMs, therefore, have No excuses, for sub-optimal performance. If they do find an excuse, it should remind you of Pembroke in Shakespeare's King John, "Oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse". Well, in ICF, we exploited it to the hilt and broke many new grounds, riding on
this empowerment and our willingness to employ it without fear or favour.
Since
this is a series, I will make a digression today to put in perspective the
achievements of ICF before going into specifics of Train 18 projects. The
message is simple: if there is a will, there is a way. I seek the readers’ indulgence to first review
what we call ICF 12, i.e., the main achievements of team ICF in last 30 months
or so:
1) ICF became the biggest coach factory in the world circa 2017. This year with a nearly 33% jump in production of coaches, we would be the biggest by a wide margin.
2) ICF broke the stranglehold of pessimistic and cynical thinking prevailing in many quarters of Indian railways to turn out a truly world class product, the Train 18; now ready to pass on the concept to other trains. ICF has demonstrated the capability across the range of trains, and we must look to manufacture only train sets, say, in a matter of 2 to 3 years. It would include its elder sister, the Rajdhani type sleeper Train 18s, and its little sisters, the MEMU with only under-slung equipment for short distance main line travel and the AC EMU with only under-slung electrics for suburban areas.
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| Train 18 unveiled |
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| The little sisters of Train 18, MEMU with underslung equipment & AC EMU with underslung equipment
3) Reduction in the number of staff per coach
from around 10 some ten years back to around 3 by the end of this year;
achieved through improved productivity and judicious outsourcing, retaining core
activities for ICF man power. Figures for the last three years:
4) Transcended many
boundaries to have an impressive product line covering all types of regular,
special purpose and self-propelled coaches, unmatched in India.
5) The only unit of IR to
have a wide expanse of export performance; this year we delivered a world class DEMU train set for Sri Lanka.
6) The only
Carbon-negative unit on Indian Railways, thanks to great stress on renewable
energy sources like a wind mills and solar installations, apart from institution of significant
energy-saving measures.
7) Integrated waste
management in the entire premises, including factories and colonies with source
segregation, collection and disposal through composting and recycling, with very little being sent to landfill. Although built ages ago and therefore oldish and somewhat dilapidated, our campus is perhaps the
cleanest in Chennai
8) Revival of a dying
lake and revitalization of our environment through extensive and participative
drive towards greener ICF.
9) Zero tolerance towards gender-based harassment and unprecedented
measures to empower women employees; we have a number of dedicated gangs of
women, even in heavy fabrication, giving us better output than their male
counterparts.
10) The only factory perhaps in India which has visual art, both
murals and sculptures, melding with the industrial installations in the factory
and other parts of premises in a very striking and palpable manner leading to team spirit and motivation.
 
11) World class sporting facilities today
unmatched by any other IR unit or any organization in the city of Chennai
12) And many more such initiatives like transforming the Chennai
Rail Museum as one of the best in the city, the only industrial unit of IR to have implemented Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP) in a purposeful way leading improved efficiencies, powerful apps
and online applications for vendors, customers and staff (HRD), five model
colonies with common facilities like playgrounds, sporting courts, gardens etc.
not equalled by any other unit of IR, best self-sustaining community and
marriage halls, institutes and clubs on IR, a modernized hospital and so on.
I hope the readers understand that the spirit of ICF had to be captured before we move further in the Train 18 journey. Let me clarify that most of the achievements listed above needed a
straight-thinking goal-oriented mind set; that the team ICF was able to inculcate
among its members and achieve these landmarks. But Train 18 was out of the box;
a project languishing under hopeless debate for two decades; we took the bull by the horn and
did it. Clearly the best achievement, not only mine but of ICF itself. And
remember what Maxwell said, “Teamwork
makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a
big dream and a bad team.” I perhaps had some vision but without this great team I would have come a cropper.
Having primed you up a bit, I plan to bring you back to the Train 18 story of joy through blood, sweat and tears of team ICF in the next blog.
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This is insightful information about the ICF and proud to know the initiative undertaken
ReplyDeleteExcellent Article! You are so forthright in your views, I guess we require great engineers like you to take the country forward! Hope the politicians will live up to expectations!
ReplyDeleteSir, I am very much inspired with your speech on last saturday. Excellent transforming leadership style sir.
ReplyDelete