Khandala Plant Visit

The sixth visit on the ECA list was our Manufacturing Plant at Khandala. I caught 04:23 am Churchgate slow train in the morning, reached our Asian Paints HO at 05:30 am. A tempo traveller was arranged for ten of us, five from IT and five from Finance. We started at 05:45 am from HO towards Khandala. One mini snacks box consisted of Tropicana juice, a slice of cake, Lays wafer, Unibic biscuits. Since all woke up before the crack of dawn, we dozed off except for two (who guided the driver with the route). We crossed many tolls, had breakfast, etc. Finally we reached Asian Paints Khandala at 10:30am. We made the gate pass in the Security block and wore the safety shoes and took our helmets from the Admin block. Then we had breakfast in the canteen. First there was a presentation on the overview of the plant. It started with the employee hierarchy and the block structure. There are blocks: Production, Engineering, Quality Assurance and Environment Health Safety, HR, Safety, Admin is further classified into Accounts, Security, and Material. There are RM (Raw Material) godowns for Pigments and Powder; Barrel godowns for Additives, Liquid Tank Farms, Emulsion/Resin Tank Farms for Binders, Monomers and Solvents. Then we were briefed on the manufacturing practices and norms to follow. At 11:30am, our tour started. It was difficult to walk in the March midday sun with the heavy shoes and the helmet on our head. But the excitement of watching things led us through. First we walked through the Water Based Paint Block and then the Solvent Based Paint Block. We saw the buckets and tins moving on the rack and then getting filled with paint, a lid closed on it and finally the bar-coded stamp. Then we moved to the Packing Material Godown and Finished Goods Godown. There were trucks aligned on one side of the block and the other side was ASRS (Automatic Storage and Retrieval System). There was a connection between Packing block and ASRS where the paint containers moved from one side to another. Then we saw the Powder Godown wherein different chemical components which are required for paint were in powder form. The next was EHS block wherein the process of decomposition, reuse, recycle, etc was elaborated. We had lunch at around 01:30 pm. The next presentation was on Automation. We desperately wanted tea then. Having tea and snacks, we moved forward to the mixers; got the working of TSDs (Twin Shaft Dispersion). The next was Quality Control Laboratory wherein the prepared paint samples are tested for volatility, viscosity, etc parameters. We were done for the day but the HR didn't let us go without a surprise viva about the plant visit. We left around 05:45 pm and as usual got trapped into traffic. We had dinner in a hotel in Navi Mumbai and reached Santacruz station at 11:20pm.