Krishna Khandelwal, Head Of Operations – Industrial Quality Solutions Division, Carl Zeiss India (Bangalore) Pvt. Ltd.

A global leader in Optics & Metrology Equipment

Carl Zeiss, a global leader in Optics & Metrology equipment established the India manufacturing operations in the year 2012 with two factories – one catering to prescription lenses and the other assembling CMM’s locally for their Metrology business. It was a tremendous commitment towards the market and also a belief in the capability of the people to deliver world class products. The factory assembles various models of the Bridge type CMM’s at the IQS operations facility in Bangalore.

At Carl Zeiss India facility, the company assembles Bridge type CMMs. CZ India assembles most of the global models and variants here. Other products that is locally offered in the market here are Gantry-type CMMs, Multi-sensor CMMs, Optical CMMs, 2D & 3D X-ray Machines, Contour and Roughness Testing Machines and also machines with a combination of both roughness and contour in one, 3D scanners, etc. It also offers software products along with the above systems such as PiWeb – Quality Data management software, Reverse engineering Software, Smart services for Machines, etc, which makes it a one-stop solution provider for software as well as systems in the Quality solutions business space.

Krishna Khandelwal joined Zeiss India in the year 2015 as Head of Operations for the Industrial Quality solutions business. The role involves leading the full factory operations team and covers all the necessary functions like quality, delivery, production, procurement & sourcing, logistics, capacity & manpower planning, team development, lean manufacturing and other continuous improvement measures. Supplier development locally is also a key area of work. The role entails full P&L responsibilities for the factory operations.

In 2015, the machines built were predominantly for the domestic market. The first steps to begin the machine exports out of India had just begun. Only one major model in India assembly was built then. Over the last few years, the IQS factory operations from India have dramatically expanded their exports to more than 25 countries, introduced newer models and technologies in the India basket and also scaled up the local content in the machines by a focused India sourcing strategy.

Growth focus

The team lead by Krishna has been continuously delivering exceptional results. Today, approx. 40% of their annual output is exported, with consistent increase in the footprint of their globally serviced market. The factory has been continuously registering double digit output volume growth while also increasing the breadth of the locally assembled portfolio. As he says “Our strategy is to focus on the Indian market by introducing new models, expand our existing capacity, introduce newer technologies, enhance the local content in these machines, scale up the India suppliers to be able to service all our global factories, build an engineering and development team for new products are some of the ways that we will focus to ensure successful growth of the company”.

Success mantra

“As a person leading the operations and called upon to deliver all of the above mentioned tasks, it is only possible if we have a fully motivated team working along with you. Maintaining open communication with the team, empowering and trusting them to deliver has helped me as a leader to build this high performing team. Extensive use of lean methodologies and digital tools have helped us to be efficient and also enhanced our transparency. Our part localization strategies and plans to develop these vendors to be global suppliers are all key factors contributing to our growth and will continue to do so. As a leader I will also play my part to support and ensure that the team remains focused and aligned towards our future growth aspirations,” reveals Krishna.

Future outlook

“As I mentioned before, we are continuously working to add new technologies and products to the India manufacturing basket. These will help our customers to ensure a defect-free process and product in their factories, thereby helping them win in the marketplace. Our focus to locally manufacture these equipment will ensure faster access and lower the lead times to our customers. Domestic part sourcing will also help us to economically offer these to our customers. In short, local manufacturing of our products here help us to economically offer our customers newer technologies at faster speeds,” underlines Krishna.

“This also syncs with the overall agenda of the government promoting “ MAKE IN INDIA “ mission to develop the Indian manufacturing industry scaling new global markets with top quality of its products. The ‘Make in India’ mission along with the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ initiative has surely given an extra incentive for the local manufacturing industry to develop and expand capacities and also increase the quality levels all across,” elucidates Krishna.

“Zeiss Industrial Quality solutions have a long history of helping companies improve the quality and efficiency of their processes and products. Our precision metrology equipment help the industry in improving the quality of their offerings to the market. We have played a great role in deepening the understanding of quality and metrology to the Indian manufacturing companies especially in the MSME sector”, adds Krishna in conclusion.