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Smart ways to trap dust
The Ambuja Nagar plant has three raw mills for grinding limestone. The process of grinding limestone generates a lot of dust. It is imperative that this dust is prevented from getting into sensitive parts of the raw mill like its bearings.
Due to insufficient seal air pressure, finer dust particles entered the bearings, causing the system to trip. Such frequent tripping caused losses in production.
The Ambuja engineers studied the problem. After careful observation, they diagnosed that the hose pipe that brought air to the station was smaller in diameter than necessary. With great skill, the engineers replaced the small hose pipe by a bigger one thereby increasing the air pressure. They also removed some unnecessary valves besides reducing the length of the pipe to allow greater flow of air. These measures successfully increased the air pressure and eliminated the dust menace. This simple yet smart solution obviated the need of an extra blower.
The solution has lead to substantial savings running into lakhs of rupees.
Water nowhere!!! Water now here
The Bhatapara plant needs 2700 kilolitres (KL) of water each day. An acute shortage of water in the summer of ‘08 brought this plant to a grinding halt. A task force was formed to study the problem and come up with a practical solution.
In a matter of few days, the task force came up with a simple suggestion such as deepening of the existing water pits, besides drilling new bores. These simple initiatives kept the plant moving.
As luck would have it, the rains soon arrived filling all the boreholes.
Today the Bhatapara plant sends water tankers to the surrounding villages as its token of goodwill to the local communities. The days of water shortage are a part of history!
Creating a green oasis
Maratha Cement work has been awarded the Gold Award instituted by Greentech Foundation. This award recognizes the commendable control of the Maratha cement works over its emission levels and fugitive emissions. The plant can also boast of a modern environment laboratory which helps take precise measurements of plant emissions.
The Maratha Cement Works harvests rain water. It also routinely recycles waste water. These initiatives have enabled the plant grow lakhs of trees in its vicinity. In an area like Chandrapur, which is known to be dry and arid, these huge green patches are a tribute to the plant’s commitment to keep the environment clean and green.
Passion... plus perseverance
It is one thing to be driven by ideas. However, it is more important to be passionate about their execution. The young team at Bhatinda plant deserves commendation for achieving an all time high in production and despatches through sheer perseverance. The seamless coordination between internal units and outsourced logistics coupled with meticulous monitoring of production and sustained levels of high motivation made this possible.
No shortage of ideas
At the Sankrail unit, the production team was faced with major shortages of the main intermediate, i.e. clinker. The situation posed a serious threat to the business as continued non availability would have only helped the competing specialised ready mix producers of the East.
The team devised a special formula for its key customers and implemented it too. The reduction in clutter enabled the plant to deliver its key customers the required volumes on time. With meticulous planning, the plant also achieved a six percent increase in production which was unthinkable at some point in time.
The heart has its reasons
The Ambuja Manovikas Kendra (AMK), managed by Ambuja Cement Foundation, is a response to a heart–felt need. A team of dedicated professionals from various disciplines (including educators, caretakers and therapists) came together to help the mentally challenged children in and around Ropar in Punjab to overcome their disability to the greatest extent possible.
The initiative has seen a full scale school being run by the Foundation for these special children where a teacher looks after 6 to 7 children. An important part of this programme is working with the parents of these special children. As the main care givers, parents play a key role in the child’s development. The Ambuja Manovikas Kendra conducts special workshops for parents of the mentally challenged.
It’s the children at AMK who teach us a lesson: We don’t want your pity, we want your support and understanding.
Planting a better life
For generations, India's farmers have laboured in the field – getting poor returns for their toil and sweat. Ambuja Cement Foundation believes their livelihoods can be improved through modern agricultural systems and technology. The Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) or Agriculture Science Centre has been set up in Kodinar, Gujarat, as a result of a public-private partnership between the Government and ACF. A team of experts from various disciplines of agriculture provide multi-disciplinary services to farmers from seven blocks covering 45 villages. To encourage the adoption of best agricultural practices, on-campus as well as off-campus training sessions are held. These cover topics like plant protection, agriculture extension, agronomy, home science, horticulture, fishery and animal husbandry. Farmers have also been introduced to organic farming, which reduces the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers and restores soil fertility. Advice on multi and mixed farming through horticulture and vegetable farming has also helped improve soil conditions and augment the farmer's income. Where there are fragmented land holdings, wadi or orchard cultivation has been initiated, making the land usable and economically profitable. Scientists from KVK visit the fields regularly and offer advice and solutions to agricultural problems. Manuals on crop management in the local language are provided. ACF also runs a phone help-desk which provides telephonic solutions to farmers.
Teaching without classrooms
Ambuja Cement Foundation took up the challenge of taking education to the remote villages of India. Here tradition still held sway. While people might agree that education was a good thing, it was quite another matter to actually send their children, especially girls, to school. Would it really benefit them? Or would giving children new-formed ideas do more harm than good? ACF realized that a breakthrough was needed in traditional mindsets. The Foundation began involving village education committees in its mission. Once these committees were charged and committed, the rest would fall in place. And it did. With the support of village education committees, villagers began sending their children to school. At first there was teaching without classrooms, out in the open under the trees. ACF invested in quality of teachers, getting those who were passionate about imparting education (and not just earning a living). ACF also took care of other facilities and soon the programme gained momentum. A quiet revolution began to take place. There was a new awakening. Mindsets were broken. Education began to open new doors. Things would never be the same again.
Helping women help themselves
Self-help groups (SHGs) set up at all Ambuja Cements locations, are making a difference, especially in the lives of women farmers (who make up 70% of the agricultural workforce). Micro-finance has been a valuable tool in enabling women to lift themselves out a life of poverty and dependence towards independence and self-respect.
Self-Help Groups do away with the red tape and hassles of formal lending. Money is lent through a simple procedure and the recovery rate for loans is close to 100%. Among the income-generating activities that SHGs make possible are nursery cultivation, dairy farming, milk processing and marketing, soap and detergent making, manufacture of organic manure, retailing, stitching garments, embroidering and goat rearing.
With their new-found confidence in their abilities, village women are proving to be a valuable resource. The spirit of 'I Can' is especially evident among village women who have taken their destinies in their own hands.
ACF contribution
Ambuja Cement Foundation has invested in a host of healthcare initiatives that often make a difference between life and death especially in remote villages.
A team of Village Health Functionaries is trained to provide primary health care. They have been especially beneficial to new and expectant mothers, monitoring the health of both mother and child.
In addition, HIV / Aids programmes have been initiated at various locations, to give the right information about the disease and ensure preventive care. The results have been encouraging. ACF believes there can be nothing greater than the gift of good health.
Alternate energy source
Faced with rising cost of rice husk, the team at the Ropar plant zeroed in on agro waste fuels. The only hitch: the boiler could not handle these inputs.
Special new equipment and processes were developed to handle dung flakes; to shred wild lantana creepers and switch to low cost grabbers along with other innovations. ‘Operation agro waste’ has succeeded.
Poor farmers and backward Bangru tribes around Punjab / Haryana have found a new path to poverty alleviation.
Efficiency at its best
The Bhatinda grinding unit team deserves commendation for the way they clocked an all time high in production and despatches last year. They had to achieve seamless coordination between internal departments and outsourced logistics; ensure close monitoring and sustained levels of record breaking motivation
At a Sankrail unit meanwhile, idea generation was job no. 1 as a team battled acute shortages of clinker and the prospect of loosing volumes with specialized RMX producers in Kolkata. After exploring various options, the team finally achieved a breakthrough by devising a customised formula for these customers. It enables us to deliver on the critical customer volume and also incidentally, achieved an impressive leap of six per cent in production during this demand surge.
The maintenance teams at Rabriyavas deserve acknowledgement for the manner in which they applied innovation and ideas. In the first case they solved the problem of a fan vibration and stopped losses in clinker production, estimated at around Rs. 13 crores.
In the second case, they introduced the special on-line cleaning system around the booster fan. This gave us substantial gains in equipment life, trouble – free operation and a dust – free environment.
Success... despite crushing odds
Another notable story comes from Suli, Darlaghat in Himachal Pradesh. This concerns the break-down in the Overland Belt Conveyor (which is the backbone of the plant). The belt is a huge two and a half kilometer lifeline from the mine to the crushing plant. It snapped in two and a host of accessory equipment got damaged. The confidence of our team was the only lifesaver for the plant.
It was one thing to bring experts from across geographies and make everyone work during the Diwali holidays. It was quite another challenge to mobilize all tools, resources and skills despite hilly terrain and seemingly insurmountable impediments. But the belt went back to work in a record time of nine days against the original estimate of 25 days.
New ring of confidence
Sulphur ring formation in cement kilns is a chronic problem with all cement manufacturers who use limestone with high sulphur content or coal with high content of the same molecule.
The magnitude of the problem is severe at AmbujaNagar. During 2008 alone, over 48 thousand MT of clinker were lost due to this sulphur ring formation, which, in commercial parlance, amounted to a loss of over 7 crores.
Due to uneven kiln temperature and other reasons, the sulphur solidifies in low temperature zones of the kiln which forms a ring. Once the ring is formed, the kiln has to be stopped and allowed to cool. After the kiln is cooled, it is opened and with machines, the ring is broken to move out the debris. The fuel firing would commence only after the clean up operation is over. This process takes few days to complete during which production is suspended.
The Ambuja engineers studied the problem in its entirety. The main cause was condensation of vaporised sulphur due to uneven temperature within the kiln, besides high content of the molecule in coal, shape of internal sources of heat, raw meal and fuel variations.
The engineers, having studied the problem, devised an SOP which closely monitors all the critical parameters, which, when controlled, would prevent sulphur ring formation. The new SOP has been in use for the past six months and the shop floor people are happy that there is no ring formation!
Ingenuity
It’s impossible to get incremental market share
without increasing production capacity. Right? Wrong
Our Bhatapara Clinker station faced the seemingly impossible challenge of substantially stepping up cement supplies to fully tap into emerging potential and thus strengthen our market presence. However, available clinker output would have to be increased and this could mean substantial and long gestation investment. The task was made even more difficult when cement prices firmed up in the domestic market and local sourcing for clinker supply ran dry.
Our team decided that there had to be a way. So they went into a stint of comparison shopping and swiftly tied up supply sources in neighbouring Indonesia. The next problem was to find a convenient, customer friendly port.
Paradip was the obvious choice. But it was literally in the eye of the storm and hence vulnerable to disruption. Undaunted, the team took up the Herculean task. They re-configured the logistics with port and railway authorities; put in a flurry of initiatives to protect the clinker from flooding and damage during handling.
Everyone sat up and took notice as we rode the monsoon winds and ended the year with handling of 11 lakh Metric Tonnes (MT) of clinker – a record for the region! The results showed both in terms of operational excellence and market share:
- YOY cement production increased by 23 per cent without any fresh capex infusion
- Market share in the Eastern region increased from 9 to 11 per cent – a significant endorsement of the I CAN philosophy
I CAN
Innovation
The idea seemed far fetched.
But it eventually became a turning point.
At Rauri in the daunting hilly terrain of the Himalayan foothills, the team which was striving hart to complete the clinkerisation project, unearthed a new management truism: they discovered that the Critical Path in a CPM chart is all about taking the road less travelled.
The dilemma was simple. Civil and mechanical work had to be completed prior to laying the cable and pipe route. But the flip side was that this would delay completion of the project and make it impossible to fire the Kiln by the Decemeber 09 deadline. It was a chicken and egg situation. The engineers debated and brainstormed. They had to find a way to turn sequential work flow into swift and simultaneous executions. Thus came the break-through idea of building an overbridge for the cable and pipe route, allowing it to ‘fly over’ simultaneous constructions of the limestone and coal sheds. It was a fine piece of lateral thinking and it led to the critical path being redefined to enable faster completion of the cable and pipe route.
The team worked with renewed vigour, and at the end of the day it was time for an exultant ‘eureka’.
The new ‘fly over’ obviated the need for a circuitous, costly and time consuming route. It reduced labour and material costs because the new route shortened bridge length by almost a third. Most importantly, the time span was collapsed from 9 months to 21/2 months, enabling the team to keep the targeted commissioning deadline.
A substantial saving was just the proverbial icing on the ‘I CAN’ cake.
I CAN
Inspiration
From subsistence farmer to ‘lakhpati’
No, he didn’t rob a bank. He banked on ACF.
Prem Sukh from Kharda village in Rajasthan grew traditional crops such as Bajra on his 28 bigha land with practices in use since the time of his fore fathers. The returns he received were pathetic and were not even enough to take care of the family’s needs.
Determined to rewrite his destiny, Prem Sukh attended an agriculture training and awareness session organised in his village by Ambuja Cement Foundation(ACF). At these sessions he learnt about vegetable cultivation and drip irrigation and realized that it was a great way to diversify and increase his income
Taking a life-changing first step, he undertook a small survey of the market on his own. After the survey he concluded that growing brinjals would be a good bet for him. Prem Sukh grew the vegetable in a part of his land and used another part for horticulture plantation (like pomegranate, lemon and papaya.) He installed a drip irrigation system and continued to grow traditional crops on the rest of his land.
Prem was wonderstruck by the results. Brinjal cultivation gave him 20 times higher profit than traditional crops! In 7 months' time Prem's net earning had exceeded his wildest expectations.
It has been a life-changing transformation for an ordinary farmer who was till recently trying hard to make ends meet. Prem’s prosperity also has an unusual spin-off. He is contributing towards saving water a precious commodity in his desert state.
I CAN
Initiative
She rushed in, where other women fear to tread.
She’s now a poster girl for women’s empowerment.
Vali is a 19year old tribal girl from Limdabara village in Dahod, Gujarat.
She was determined to do better in life, but there was no place for her in the local work force. So she finally found work at a construction site in a neighbouring town. It was back breaking work with meager wages, since she possessed no skills.
When Vali returned to her village for a short break, she heard about the mason training being conducted there by ACF. An eager beaver, she took initiative and enrolled for the programme.
She was a quick learner and she picked up skills that help per find better employment opportunities in the traditionally male dominated construction job market. The ACF exposure also helped her to improve her communication skills, and reshaped her personality.
Came the day when Vali got the first independent assignment. This was just the she had been looking for. She earned between Rs. 150/- to 200/- and word soon got round. Gradually she established a reputation for herself.
Today Vali works independently on construction jobs. Flushed with enthusiasm, She is looking forward to taking on bigger challenges.
She has now become an inspiration for scores of the other woman who need just this sort of encouragement to transform their lives.
I CAN
