Tata Steel – An Inside Perspective

Maintenance is an integrated part of Operations in any manufacturing firm and it’s role increases proportionately with the size of the firm. Maintenance function can be broadly classified into two areas.
 Mechanical Maintenance
 Integrated Electrical Maintenance
We now look into the Mechanical maintenance area in an integrated steel plant.
Integrated steel plant means that the firm makes finished products like cold rolled sheets from basic raw materials like iron ore, coal, and fluxes. The role of Maintenance is to ensure equipment availability as per annual business plan of the firm.
The sheer size and complexity of process requires a dynamic maintenance process and hence Tata steel the world 6th largest steel manufacturer adopts Total Quality Management (TQM) practice in to achieve this target.
Components of TQM:
 Daily management: Deals with sustenance of current level of performance
 Policy management: Deals with future high level performance.

Individual responsibility for different work is assigned and the data is collected. For better understanding of data graphs are attached with individual data. A review is done on this data on a monthly basis and all the deviations are noted. The action plan for those deviations are made and implemented on next month. Since working in a steel plant is hazardous, due importance is given to safety aspects. Tata Steel focuses on continuous improvements, hence suggestions from individuals are encouraged, and progress on those is tracked through this. (Concept borrowed from Total Productive Maintenance, TPM)One important misconception about daily management is that people consider it as a daily affair. Daily management can be done on monthly or weekly basis. Policy management in maintenance function is not of much use as not much of significant changes are happening in this.




Written on experience gathered while working in Tata Steel Limited by
AshishKumar (PGP 24187)