Mr. Krishna Khandelwal – Head of Operations : Industrial Quality Division, Carl Zeiss India (Bangalore) Pvt. Ltd.

Mr. Krishna Khandelwal – Head of Operations : Industrial Quality Division, Carl Zeiss India (Bangalore) Pvt. Ltd. being featured in Manufacturing Heroes – An initiative by DIVYA MEDIA recognising the Enshrining untold stories of the heroes from the manufacturing sector

Helping improve quality & efficiency, Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer.

At Carl Zeiss India, we build CMMs. I joined Carl Zeiss as Head of Operations in the Industry Quality Solutions division In the year 2015. My 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.

When I started here, the machines built were predominantly for the domestic market. The first steps to begin the machine exports out of India had just begun. We used to build one major model in India assembly. Over the last few years, we have dramatically expanded our exports to more than 25 countries accounting for approximately 50% of our output, introduced newer models and technologies in the India basket and also scaled up the local content in our machines by a focused India sourcing strategy. .

At Carl Zeiss India facility, we assemble Bridge type CMMs. We produce four different variants of the same. Other products that we offer 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. We also offer software products along with the above systems such as PiWeb – Quality Data management software, Reverse engineering Software, Smart services for Machines, etc, which makes us a one-stop solution provider for software as well as systems.

Growth Strategies

We have been consistently growing at double digits with newer models / technologies being added continuously and also growing our export market footprint.

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.

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 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.

Future Thrusts

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.

Helping the ‘Make in India’ Mission

Manufacturing industry is a very small component of the overall Indian GDP. For us to ensure jobs for all our young population and also to realize our true potential as a country, Indian manufacturing has to grow to a very high level and at a great speed. It is here that the ‘Make in India’ mission along with the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ initiative counts as it has surely given an extra incentive for the manufacturing industry to develop and expand capacities. Indian manufacturing can grow and build many products and components not only for the domestic market but also to meet the global needs.

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.

One who is building up world-class products in Indian factories and scaling them up to meet the full growth potential and also right skilling and developing a team to mange this is a true manufacturing hero to me.”