India’s Finest Workplaces : Ashok Leyland : Episode 1

Ashok Leyland, flagship of the Hinduja group, is the 2nd largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles in India, the 4th largest manufacturer of buses in the world, and the 10th largest manufacturers of trucks. Headquartered in Chennai, 9 manufacturing plants gives an international footprint – 7 in India, a bus manufacturing facility in Ras Al Khaimah (UAE), one at Leeds, United Kingdom and a joint venture with the Alteams Group for the manufacture of high-press die-casting extruded aluminum components for the automotive and telecommunications sectors, Ashok Leyland has a well-diversified portfolio across the automobile industry. Ashok Leyland has recently been ranked as 38th best brand in India.

A global network of over 550 touch points that facilitate on-road service for millions of vehicles. With technology-enabled customer engagement processes and knowledge on the specific applications of the product range, Ashok Leyland sales team are well equipped to fulfil customer’s needs. Ashok Leyland manages driver training institutes across India and has trained over 8,00,000 drivers since inception. On-site service training for technicians are provided by Ashok Leyland’s service training institutes located in 9 locations across India.

Some of the salient HR Best Practices and programs undertaken by the company :

MISSION GEMBA

launched in 2005, is one of our most successful initiatives aimed at information spread, developing skills, empowering employees to reach world-class levels of quality, cost and delivery with recognition and reward for performance. ‘Gemba’ means ‘real place’ in Japanese, refers to the shop floor. The manufacturing units are divided into function-based ‘Gembas’, totally over 100 now, and each ‘Gemba’ is run as an independent ‘business’ by empowered ‘Gemba Unit Leaders (GULs) chosen based on their performance track record. ‘Mission GEMBA” has triggered an attitudinal transformation of the workforce, operational excellence to decongest bottlenecks and continual improvements in several core areas.

IMPROVE

A home-grown employee engagement programme now into its 20th successful year,it has emerged as a platform to showcase the best projects by our employees on productivity improvement, efficiency enhancement and cost cutting. An annual, company-wide contest, it goes beyond the existing Quality Circles (QCs) to include new cross functional employee teams too. Having assumed the proportions of a mass employee movement, Improve sees more than 50% of our employees participating and the impact of these projects to the bottom line till date has been to the tune of over Rs. 400 million. Future Leader Programme (FLP)–Class will tell and this is a systematic attempt at identifying and nurturing future leaders.

MISSION YES

Powered by Youth: is a programme aimed to engage and harness the substantial “youth power” available amongst us to meet the emerging business challenges in a vibrant and energetic culture focused on competitive attributes of Speed, Innovation and Attitude

BLESSING

Opportunities for the discerning is the credo of this unique HR initiative that we have introduced in our Pantnagar Unit. Aimed at developing shop floor skills, youth who have passed 12th grade are recruited and educated or trained by us, at our expense, in partnership with a renowned technical and training institute. Isn’t this a novel way to earn while you learn on the shop floor?

Green Shield (best unit for environmental sustenance)

Wrapped in lush greenery, the Management Development Centre (MDC) at Hosur evokes a sense of calm and peace of mind that is ideal for a seat of leaning. Neatly appointed, it is equipped with all the requisite infrastructure like air conditioned classrooms, a well-stocked library, a computer lab, a multi-purpose convention hall and excellent boarding, lodging and leisure facilities. So whether you would like to hone your creative abilities or develop your personality or just learn a little more, the MDC is where you should head for where till date, more than 1,000 (including 200 non Ashok Leyland) programmes have been conducted.

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“India’s Finest Workplaces” on Times News Network is a series that highlights organization’s work environments, showcases their best practices adopted to dramatically improve the work culture within their workplaces. It encapsulates interactions with important stakeholders & employees from the companies & showcase the featured organization as the India’s Finest company to work for. With India’s Finest Workplaces (IFWP), we reach out to the young workforce of India & create an aspirational value about the perks of working for the companies getting featured in the series.

For Series Participation : corpcomm@gmonlinegroup.com