The Faridabad Plant of Jaycee Autofab started its journey of excellence about two years ago on October 18, 2012, at the fifth CII National Cluster Summit. Two team members had attended the three day Summit and returned to the plant with ideas and the hope of bringing about a positive change at their plant.

They even showed the recordings of the Summit on a DVD to all other team members. And so, under the leadership of Sanjay Agarwal, the Plant Head, it was unanimously decided to follow the CII JCB Cluster Road Map at the plant.

The first Phase of this journey lasted from October 2012 to December 2012. "This included creation of a proper plant organisational structure along with assignment of roles and responsibilities to each team member.

We also formed the Steering Committee to keep a check on the progress," shares Agarwal. The plant was divided into six zones and a leader was appointed for each of the zones giving them all a sense of leadership and responsibility. With more than two and half decades of relevant work experience at his back and the passion for excellence, Agarwal himself led from the front.

He had a clear vision about why he was undertaking this journey. "Self satisfaction, customer delight, cost competitiveness, recognition & rewards and, of course motivation are the key reasons why we ventured into this," he says.

Recognising the importance of employee engagement, Agarwal and the management started ‘Employee of the Month' concept from November 2012. This not only motivated the shopfloor employees to perform at the individual level but also encouraged them to get aligned with the overall objectives of the plant. Employee suggestions were now getting noticed and implemented with the 3R concept (Recognition, Respect & Reward).

"Next, our plant started 5S activities and established the JCB Quality Command Centre," This further enhanced team engagement through common display of Kaizen, customer feedback as well as ratings and team photographs including that of the ‘Employee of the Month'. "We paid equal attention to sustainability issues and initiated the energy saving drive. We replaced all the Sodium Vapour Lamps with CFL & T5 Lights in the lighting area," Agarwal shares.

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