An industrial visit gives an opportunity for management students to have a hands-on experience of the industry – through observation and interactions with the workforce.

First-year MBA students of the Department of Management, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri, accompanied along with faculty members Mr. Suresh Appukuttan and Mrs. Rajasree got the opportunity to visit one of the largest lifts and elevators producing company Schindler and SAN Engineering & Locomotive Company Ltd.

The visit to Schindler India’s Bangalore office was held on January 24, 2020. The following were the key take ways of the visit:

• Schindler was founded in 1874 in Lucerne, Switzerland, and is one of the leading manufacturers of elevators, escalators, and moving walkways as well as a top provider of vertical transportation maintenance and modernization across the globe. The Group has over 1,000 branch offices in more than 100 countries, in addition to production sites as well as research and development centers in Brazil, China, Europe, India, and the United States.
• The core values of Schindler are Safety, Quality, Integrity and Trust, Value for the customers and People Development.
• Safety is a core value they manufacture and install lift facilities with automatic doors.
• More than one billion people use their elevators and escalators every day.
• They also have a dedicated training facility which reflects the value the company places in People Development.

The visit to SAN Engineering and Locomotive Company Ltd. was held on January 25, 2020. The following were the key take ways of the visit:

• SAN Engineering and Locomotive Company Ltd. is a 100-crore company established in 1969. Formerly known as ‘Suri and Nayar’.

Through a formal presentation of the company, the employees introduced us to the history, background, products and markets of the firm

• San Engineering has branches in Bangalore, Mysore, and Hyderabad manufacturing locomotives, gear products, Ventra Locomotives respectively.
• The firm manufactures locomotive mainly used for power, cement and petroleum industries.
• They also have their manufacturing units in Goa where they manufacture “Barges” (small ships used to transport goods), SAN 2-seater Sports Car, and fishnet in Gujarat. They also design specialized vehicles for defense.
• While manufacturing the locomotives SAN Engineering focuses on load strength than speed.
• The manufacturing unit of locomotive engines was visited that included diesel, electric, hydraulic and flameproof locomotive and special purpose rail vehicles that had the power ranging from 1600 HP to 2600 HP.
• Another section of the unit manufactured materials and spare parts which are used to build the engines.
• The employees explained how locomotive engines are assembled and their applications
• The manufacturing units manufacture turbo reversing transmissions, diesel-hydraulic locomotives, diesel-electric locomotives, heavy-duty Cardan shafts and gearboxes and power packs for a variety of applications
• Transmission and the drive elements are manufactured in-house using state-of-the-art machining centers and gear profile grinders
• On the shop floor, various employees explained about the different departments
• SAN manufacturing facilities were located in two plants – equipped with advanced, high precision CNC horizontal and CNC vertical machining center’s
• The in-house five-axis machines provide SAN with the advantage of producing bevel gears and motor parts with great precision
• The gear grinders are capable of manufacturing gears to very high standards.
• The manufacturing unit is aided by the R&D division that leads the SAN development program, a SOLID EDGE unit with advanced design capabilities, an integrated machine shop and a metrology laboratory.
• The shop floor visit exposed us to risks involved during the process of manufacturing

The students and faculty members stayed at the Bengaluru and Mysore campus of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham and on their way back to the Amritapuri campus, they visited the Mudumalai National Park and Tiger Reserve about 240 km from Bangalore. Overall, this industrial visit trip was a fun-filled learning experience.