Praxair in India?

Yesterday, we took a tour of Automotive Axles, a local company specializing in the production of heavy duty axles mainly used for trucks. Driving through the city of Mysore, the sights and sounds of the city, its rickshaws, scores of people crossing every which way in the street, cows and goats roaming aimlessly throughout downtown, Automotive Axles was definitely “out of place”. Needless to say, I was skeptical to see the manufacturing processes taking place within Automotive Axles.

Part of my job is to assess a customer’s manufacturing facility and form a business partnership that can be mutually beneficial for both parties. For the customer, those benefits can be described with terms such as increased productivity, lower costs, competitiveness in the marketplace, and shareholder value. As a result, I’ve had the opportunity to visit dozens of companies and speak to hundreds of employees ranging from floor supervisor to CEO. After working with world-class manufacturing facilities in the United States, I expected Automotive Axles to be an archaic version of a true manufacturing plant riddled with problems, bottlenecks, and OSHA violations.

Much to my surprise, Automotive Axles was an ISO 9001 company that closely resembled heavy manufacturing firms in the United States. Here, in the middle of Mysore, stood a company that could rival the likes of axle manufacturers throughout the world. And here’s the kicker. After talking to the plant manager about manufacturing processes and product supply, I found out that they were using Praxair microbulk tanks for supply of their welding gases.

In an attempt to not bore you to death, a microbulk tank is essentially a smaller version of a full sized bulk tank, filled with liquid product that is vaporized to deliver a continuous supply of gaseous product to the end user. I was thrown for a loop. I knew that my company had a few plants in India, but I never would have thought our supply chain would reach to remote areas such as Mysore. Friedman describes supply-chaining as “a method of collaborating horizontally- among suppliers, retailers, and customers- to create value.” Obviously, this is working for our friends at Automotive Axles in India. This was not ordinary plant tour for an MBA course. In the blink of an eye, I had switched roles from an MBA student studying abroad in Mysore, India to a company representative for a product crucial to Automotive Axle’s manufacturing process. This place never ceases to amaze me…