RPGCOM :: June 2009

Special Feature
The heat is on!

Three inspirational stories of how RPG group companies battled heavy odds, creating “Hot Spots” to overcome challenges.

The power of collective ideas can hardly be underestimated. Whenever new challenges crop up, it is this strength of people coming together, working together for a common solution, which often sees some of the biggest challenges being overcome. Boundary-less cooperation always fuels innovation and some teams, organizations and workplaces always buzz with palpable energy.

This, in sum, is a “Hot Spot”: a place where cooperation fuels new ideas, new solutions to the toughest problems.

As a group which fiercely protects the innovative spirit of its employees, RPG has always believed in the power of collective thought. In this special feature, RPGCom brings you Hot Spots in three companies where people came together and solved problems initially thought to be daunting and insurmountable.

The Raychem story

The year-end was approaching and meeting targets and customer needs in March 2008 was an uphill task. With only two weeks left, a couple of holidays and weekly offs intervening and labour issues at Kaman adding to the problems, the T&D and Infocom division was faced with a grim situation.

Employees from all divisions, cutting across ranks, came together with great excitement with the sole objective that they needed to not only meet the customer’s needs but to surpass them. The task was even tougher as they needed a new set of workers to support operations who would have to be trained in the technical areas, a process which normally would span at least two to three weeks.

Making most of this opportunity, people came together in a spirit of cooperation. They were up for the enormous task. They were ready to do the job, and challenged the mindset that people would take time to get trained and be productive. The cross functional, cross-division team planned together, went ahead identifying workers and trained them in a few hours to make them produce transformer kits etc. Each one of the team members took charge of the situation so well that the productivity for those few days was more than expected (Rs. 8.7 crore worth of production against Rs. 8 crore).

Clearly, a great example for others to emulate.

KEC : Battling the storm

Oman had declared a red alert warning for Cyclone Gonu on June 3, 2007, the strongest tropical storm to hit the East Coast. The cyclone had winds of 260 kilometers (160 miles) per hour.

The cyclone hit Oman on June 5 and caused widespread damage to the power transmission system. Six High Voltage (HV) transmission towers of 132kV were washed away with the floods and another eight towers were badly damaged. Each of these towers supplied electricity to large parts of the country, and the destruction caused a shutdown on Jahloot Grid station, which feeds a region which has more than 40 villages and 5 major towns. This lack of electricity hampered relief work in cyclone affected areas.

All the transmission companies were proposing to restore the lines in a minimum of three to six months, and KEC employees immediately inspected the incident site. The situation was alarming: there were no approach roads, the climate was hostile, there was no food & water supply to the sites. But typically up for any challenge, KEC then offered to restore the line within a week’s time at the site.

KEC erected 40 to 50 wooden poles (nearly 4kms.) in the place of the fallen towers and restored one circuit to power the darkened region. The company organized materials, men and machines at site on June 12, 2007 and completed the entire work within eight days and commissioned one circuit on June 20, 2007.

KEC was highly appreciated for this prompt solution to restore power transmission by Oman Electricity and Transmission Company (OETC) so that relief work could be carried out easily in the cyclone-hit areas. The company also received an appreciation letter from OETC.

CESC : The SPM challenge

The CESC story is equally interesting, surrounding the capacity expansion plan for the company’s showpiece Budge Budge Generating Station (BBGS). The plant, which had a capacity of 500 MW was up for expansion with another 250 MW unit to be added. The problem, however, was that with the ministry of environment and forests reluctant to give environmental clearance for another unit, clearance was finally obtained with a special condition: Suspended Particulate Matter (SPM) in flue gas would have to be restricted to 75 mg/Nm3 for Unit-1 & 2 and 50 mg/Nm3 for Unit-3. The existing SPM for two units was (100+100) mg/Nm3 as per design and what was worse, there was no space available at the location for augmentation of ESP, and no other technology was also available in the market.

The task of SPM reduction from 100 mg/Nm3 to 75 Mg/ Nm3 seemed impossible, and the capacity expansion of BBGS itself was at stake. Clearly, a very tough situation for CESC to find itself in. But true to tradition, the company viewed this adversity and challenge as an opportunity. A group of excited & energised people came together to find a solution – all team members were willing and eager to cooperate.

The team then learnt about “water fogging” technology being used successfully in the USA and tried it, without success. But undaunted, the team decided to explore further. The group got bigger and more united in its quest for finding new ideas to meet the challenge. Everyone joined in the brainstorming sessions. However, nothing really new emerged. It was then that the need for “Boundary Spanning” – getting inputs from outside their own boundaries – was seen as necessary. Team members started to look outside their boundaries. The team leader started interacting with other power plants in India.

New ideas emerged from CESC’s Titagarh Generating Station. Leadership played a key role by appreciating talent, resolving conflicts, synchronizing different activities and establishing a rhythm thus creating Productive Capacity.

The “Ammonia dosing” system was then developed and tried – and yielded successful results. The SPM level dropped to 60 mg/ Nm3 and the MOEF accorded clearance for Unit-3!

The Hot Spot created enormous value for the organisation – and what was more, provided a life-enhancing phenomenon for the team. That Hot Spot, created for the BBGS Unit 3, however, did not die. The team felt energized and vibrantly alive. Water fogging was then done by importing supersonic nozzles from the US, making SPM levels drop further to 40 mg/ Nm3.

A few months later, two energy saving projects were developed in-house and they received accreditation from UNFCCC as energy saving projects under the Kyoto Protocol.

BBGS became the first power plant on earth to achieve such laurels. An inspiring story indeed.