Manufacturing Operations in Half a Year of Lockdown

22 March, 2020 - India observed the start of a nationwide lockdown. We all know how it played out from there.

Working as Operations Lead at Karkhana.io, this new challenge came with a lot of ups and downs. Manufacturing industry is tough. Period. Getting work done from vendors on an usual day is not everyone's cup of tea. Inconsistent pricing, uninformed delays, frequent reworks are an inseparable part of Indian manufacturing ecosystem as of now.

No one was clear in the initial weeks regarding how long the lockdown will remain. Our regular projects were at halt, new projects dried up, our vendor base of 70+ vendors all over the country came to a standstill.

In such times we felt the need to help our front line workers so we started manufacturing PPE. We were able to get in touch with our existing vendor base and add a few more to expedite the production of PPE. In just 4-6 weeks time we were up and working with a total of 13 different vendors spread over Surat, Baroda, Daman, Mumbai, Pune and Nashik. We were able to deliver 50k+ face shields and 250+ Intubation boxes in a short span of time.

Once the businesses started opening up we saw a surge for new projects . Most of the manufacturing plants were opening up but they faced issues like labor shortage, raw material procurement delays, no visibility over timelines among the many others. This made Karkhana.io an ideal place for customers to get a plethora of manufacturing services under one roof. Our Cloud manufacturing and distributed vendor base helped us to stay afloat and never hit rock bottom.

During all this chaos, we were still able to deliver VALUE. And among all the storms what stood strong was my Operations team - Umesh Nimmalwar, Shubham pitale, Tejashree Ingale and Palak Gupta . They made sure that we always had a solution to any problem that hit us. With the help of this small but dynamic team we were able to strengthen the manufacturing operations at karkhana.io

I don't know when we will be able to resume operations from our office. But this lockdown for me has helped to prove two of my hypothesis -

• Digitizing Manufacturing ecosystem in India is possible

In my 2 years+ of journey at karkhana.io, some common feedback i have received from vendors are - Aap log ye sab online nai kar paoge (Manufacturing can't be done online), Apne idar customer aur vendor ka milna jaroori hai (Face 2 Face meetings are must in manufacturing), Apko yaha aake hi QC karna padega (In person QC has to be done) and many others. The resistance to cloud manufacturing was enormous and also was quite understandable because that's how things have been done for centuries. But during these difficult times we were able to push our goal of digitizing manufacturing a bit further.

• Work from home for manufacturing is doable, though insanely difficult!

Before this pandemic, whenever we used to have team meetings regarding off on Saturdays or at least work from home, I used to be the first one to refuse - as working from home for a manufacturing or operations engineer comes with a different set of challenges. Most of the time is wasted on calls, flow of information is hampered, chances of miscommunications are more. But here I am, typing this article from my bed with an adjacent tab opened tracking the live orders under manufacturing at 9 different vendors.

We at Karkhana.io understand that a perfect balance for any manufacturing project lies in Cost, Quality and Timeline. But one thing that we keep close to our hearts at Karkhana.io is COMMUNICATION. Communication is the key for any project that we undertake here. And above all what keeps me going everyday is a great team here at karkhana.io - Sonam Motwani, Zishan Khurshid, Abhay Habbu, Pranav Nikam, Rahul Boriwal.

Thank you.