An Indian automobile engineer, who was a plant head of Mahindra Ideal Lanka (Pvt) Ltd. (MILPL), car assembly plant in Welipenna left the island after successfully completing this training mission. Following his departure, the plant will be run by a 100% Sri Lankan technical workforce.
Engineer Sadhasivam Durairaj told the media that he completed his two-year technology transfer mission and plant head role and he had utmost confidence that Sri Lankan technicians have the competency to create a product according to the specifications of Mahindra & Mahindra, India.
“I trained around 50 technicians and found that working at an assembly plant producing a quality product had come naturally to them. I saw that training was mainly required in areas such as standardisation, plant safety, and shop floor discipline. Over the period, they learned quickly and they adhered to standards and specifications. I’d simply say that they were good learners and followers.”
“We procure around 30% parts locally and are ordered based on the monthly needs and procured on Just-In-Time (JIT) basis. Similarly, other consumables and imported pag, shipment and customs clearance,” he said.
When asked about the assembly plant’s production capacity, Sadhasivam said, “The annual capacity is 5,000 units, now we produce 100+ cars per month and we will ramp up daily production as market demand increases. Presently we have assembled KUV100 Manual Petrol variants, and we have planned to add KUV100 AMT Diesel variants in the time to come.”