QUALITY OVER THE AGES - 100 YEARS OF S&T WORK SHOP, PODANUR

On the 4th of April, 2008, the Signal and Telecommunication Workshop at Podanur completed 100 years. This workshop has been manufacturing signal equipments such as Token less Block Instruments, Electronic Axle Counters, Double Line Block Instruments and Q-series Relays for the entire Indian Railways. The Hon'ble Union

Minister of State for Railways, Shri R. Velu was the Chief Guest during the function. ShriK.Subbarayan, Member of Parliement from Coimbatore presided over the function. The General Manager, Shri Rakesh Chopra, General Manager ICF, Smt. Sabita Gopal, General Manager ICF, Shri B. Krishna Kumar, CSTE, Southern Railway and Shri. R. Mohan, Divisional Railway Manager, Salem Division were also present.

Spread across an area of 12.11 acres at Podanur, just 7 km away from the Coimbatore City, the Workshop has been built over an area of 2.6 acres. Shri A.K. Saxena, the present Chief Workshop Manager, heads a family of 9 officers, 114 supervisors and 759 staff.

The total out turn of the workshop in the year 2006-07 was approximately Rs 31 Crores. This increased to Rs. 35.7 Crores in 2007-08. This year the workshop is targeting an out turn of Rs 41 Crores. The workshop has also tripled its production of Token less Block instruments from 2005-2006 and has registered an 8% increase out turn in Q-series Relays.

Action is in hand to identify those components or sub assemblies which require higher labour input and to specifically outsource the production of these parts to reduce the overall costs. This has been done to some extent resulting in the reduction of point machines from Rs.42800 to Rs.32950 per machine and the cost of double line block instruments from Rs 36,125 to Rs.33,450 per machine. Simultaneously, due to vendors developmental activities, the number of suppliers to the workshop has increased leading to reduction in the competitive prices of the sub items.

Indigenously built relays of the workshop also help to save substantial foreign exchange. The products like CRR and QBAT relays were earlier imported from Japan at a cost of Rs. 50,000 and Rs. 13,000 respectively. Their substitute product QB3 & Q BAT relays manufactures by the workshop cost only Rs. 2675 and Rs. 2610 respectively. In the last financial year itself, the workshop manufactured 2060 CRR relays and 269 QBAT relays. The cost of relays and point machines are of the same rate or even lower for the last 15 years, making the private manufactures keep the prices in check. This alone may contribute to the savings of nearly Rs 25 Crores per year to the Indian Railways.