“We soon establish that Bela was not a forgotten corner of the Indian Railways”

-Shubhranshu*

Rail Wheel Plant (RWP) Bela has achieved what we never thought was possible. We cast 8037 wheels in the month of December 2019 itself, close to the installed capacity of the plant.

This has happened for the first time in the history of the plant.

This outturn is 222% higher than the three years average (2493) for the plant.

Earlier highest figure of production was 4315 wheels in October 2019.

Bela achieved many firsts in this pursuit – 17 heats in a day on December 30.

Highest number of wheels (535) normalized in a day.

Highest numbers of wheels dispatched in a day and in a month etc.

A lot of hard work and planning went into this achievement over two months.

We didn’t have any assured supply of melting scrap, which was arranged by coordination with Principal Chief Mechanical Engineers (PCMEs) and Principal Chief Material Manager (PCMMs) across the country.

Quality and supply of lime and refractory was a serious issue. Machines were in state of serious disrepair.

All these were addressed by the team of brilliant and highly motivated officers of Bela. Involvement of Mechanical, Stores, Finance and CMT organisations was a hundred percent at all stages.

Officers, from Senior Administrative Grade (SAG) to Junior Scale (JS) spent late evenings and sometimes stayed overnight on the shop floor.

They wanted to establish that ‘Bela was not a forgotten corner of the Indian Railways’.

We also wanted to run the plant at full capacity to find the weaknesses and potential failure spots.

We have learnt many things from this run@rate and will soon overcome the bottlenecks we have identified.

Hopefully, from the year 2020-21 onwards, RWP Bela will be a major player among the PUs of Indian Rrailways.

(As told to kanfoosi.com)

-*Shubhranshu is a Chief Administrative Officer/RWP/Bela and one of the most brilliant officer of production behind Train-18 (Popularly known as Vande Bharat Express).