October 27, 2012

Experience : Industrial visit to Bhilai Steel Plant

Industrial visit to Bhilai Steel Plant, a Government of India undertaking had been organized by OPEP club of Indian Institute of Management Raipur on 18th Oct’12. A batch of 57 students, 55 from Post Graduate program and 2 from Fellowship program participated in the industrial visit. It was a great opportunity for all of us to gain knowledge about the technical and managerial work flow and operations of manufacturing industry.
Bhilai Steel Plant is one of the largest producers of Steel rails in the country with annual production capacity of 3.153 MT of saleable steel. It was established in 1955, with the collaboration of India and Russia. The main consideration of setting up the plant in Bhilai is because of the easy availability of Iron ore near the city. The Iron ore of BSP comes from 3 mines, Dalli Rajhara, Nandini and Hirri.
In the industrial visit we were accompanied by  Mr. Panna lal, to be with the students and explain the processes, and functioning of the departments. First department which we came across was Rail & Structural Mill, we were explained how raw material is converted in to the rails of various length. The set up of the process was autonomous and so well designed that it was self illustrative in itself. We saw the complete production line of the rails and also the raw material and finished goods inventory. The other products manufactured in this department were angle, rods and TMT bars.
Then we headed to Blast Furnace, there were 6 Blast Furnaces. It was a fantasy to watch hot sparkling metal flowing and getting collected into a container. It was amazing to witness the performance of those tough and automatic processes, one needs to appreciate the human precision and brain who have designed them, which made all the complex process simple and perfect.  The next department in line was coke oven, where we saw how COKE is prepared, which is the input for the blast furnace and the purest form of coal. Apart from these we also visited Merchant Mill, Wire Rod Mill, Steel Melting Shops and Plate Mill.
The industrial tour was concluded by the warm and energetic interaction with the DGM-HRD Mr. TCS Prasad, who had promptly arranged all the necessities for the tour. We also thanked Mr. Prasad for his support to make the trip as educative as possible.
I am very thankful to all the members of the OPEP club for organizing and streamlining the very educative and exhaustive industrial visit for us.

The article has been contributed by Namrata Sharma, who is presently a first year Fellowship student at IIM Raipur. She can be reached at fpm12003.namrata@iimraipur.ac.in

No comments:

Post a Comment