With the manufacturing sector going through a sea change, its FM partners have had to evolve in tandem. Apart from housekeeping, other FM services too have had to reinvent themselves. Operational SOPs now are very different from what they were before, and service-level agreements have emerged as the frontrunner in how FM heads and service providers choose to partner with each other. Also, during a turbulent year, effective people management is what has allowed some companies to sail towards a more stable horizon.
On 12th June 2021, almost 300 hundred delegates from four countries came together to attend a virtual discussion about hot topics like these, in a session titled ‘Redefining facility management in manufacturing facilities’. Organised by the VIS group in association with Sodexo India, the discussion featured expert panellists from manufacturing, FM heads, service providers and HR professionals.
Here are some useful highlights from the conversation:
It is practically impossible for people to not be close together in a manufacturing setup. We introduced simple flex barriers to prevent close contact, and used CCTvs to monitor people for maintaining Covid protocols. If a violation went beyond 30 seconds, an alert would be sounded.
In areas where people had to be together, we enforced double masking for that duration of time.
We also replaced biometric attendance with touchfree systems and also introduced touch-free hand sanitisation. I’m happy to say that we saw no hesitation to come to work amongst our employees.
-Jayasanckar Rajamanickam
Corporate EHS Head, Britannia Industries Ltd.
We have implemented touchless interfaces from tea/coffee dispensers and bins to visitor management systems. From a manufacturing perspective, on shop floors, we have divided our personnel into micro teams to minimise the risk of transmission.
-Atin Tandon
Cluster Director-Facility & REM, Asia-Pacific, Tetra Pak
We are now mapping employee convenience, from the pickup point to how they utilise the facility to when they go home.
-Salil Lal
Vice President Group IR & HR at Maruti Suzuki Ltd
We have been focusing on employee experience, but that is the tip of the iceberg. Maintenance of infrastructure is the park that is below the sea level.
From my point of view, we need to balance the bottom and top of the iceberg. The bottom is important from the uptime and production perspective. This is where maximum digitisation and automation will come into play.
Sangeeta Ray
Vice President – Siemens Real Estate – Asset Management Unit India & Bangladesh
More and more organisations are moving towards data driven ops. They want to acquire data as well as learn from it.
-Prabhu Ramachandran, CEO, Facilio
Running a canteen inside a facility is very different from maintaining it. We would like to have a single FM service provider manage both functions for us. FM companies need to evolve and become experts in all areas.
-Amit Saxena, Site Director, Merck
We have started implementing an online training model for our ground-level personnel. Wherever it has been employed, we have seen a marked improvement in productivity and motivation levels of employees.
-Leah Dango, Segment Head- Pharma & FMCG – Corporate Services, Sodexo India
All our efforts are focussed on how to make our organisation future-ready.
Supratik Bhattacharyya, Chief Talent Officer, RPG Group
