Dear Mr. Dinesh Diwekar,
Thank you very much for explaining the query raised. Yes, HR is definitely a part of the team, but it is the Industrial Engineering experts who lead the team as they know the process, technology, and can study the man-hours requirements at the technical level required and for which work spots.
They are the people who will pass on this information after calculating the shifts, relievers, leave reserve required, etc., to the HR people in terms of Manpower requirements - X nos. B.Tech with y years of experience in Z industries; X1 nos. of Engg. Diploma or ITI with y1 years of experience in z1 industries, etc., etc.
I appreciate your post considering that it takes years of managerial experience in a diversified field to even appreciate the manpower requirements of a gigantic greenfield manufacturing plant.
Dear Manish Sawankar,
I appreciate your enthusiasm and inquisitiveness, but please DO NOT QUOTE ME OUT OF CONTEXT and take cognizance of just a single sentence, in isolation.
While making that statement, I was not referring to the "MANPOWER PLANNING" activities which are well known to all experienced HR professionals and are done in a routine manner and simply comprise Forecasting the manpower based on superannuation, retention rate, likely requirements based on other factors, etc.
What I meant was much broader and deeper. I wish you had given some detail about yourself like:
whether you are from a manufacturing background and your experience in the HR field.
I was referring to the manpower requirements of a greenfield Integrated Steel Plant of 4 million tonnes capacity.
I'll try to make you understand the magnitude of the assignment. In India, there are just a handful of ISPs and all started with capacities of 1 Million Tonnes or less, and for which whole townships like Jamshedpur, Bhilai, Bokaro, Rourkela, Salem, Vizag, Burnpur, etc., were set up.
If you are not from the manufacturing sector or have never visited an integrated steel plant, it would be difficult to even imagine the manpower requirement and its assessment.
Iron and steel manufacturing is a continuous process, and there are various technologies available, each having its own cost (in millions of dollars) and the payoff is either quality, reduced cycle time, lesser wastage, energy efficiency, or most importantly MANPOWER COST.
Thus, for the same unit of manufactured product quantity, manpower required will be different depending on the technology and process used. It is a vast and specialized field. For this purpose, an HR professional, however best and experienced he is, CAN NEVER MAKE A MANPOWER ASSESSMENT STUDY, on his own single-handedly.
For example: Let us take a single Blast Furnace (A 4 MT plant will have 5 to 7 Blast Furnaces). Can you estimate the manpower requirements?
Can you say how many operatives at what level will be required to function at which work spots? What should be their competencies, qualification, experience, etc.? This is just a single sample question.
Let us take an easy example. In steel plants, at any time about 60 locos (locomotive/trains) are employed for the movement of hot steel ingots from Steel Melting Shops/Converter "Shops"; hot metal (molten iron) from Blast Furnaces, Moving Blooms and Billets from Continuous Casting "shops", moving finished rails (these days they are manufacturing almost a km long rails), plates, structurals, etc., not to speak of raw materials like iron ore, limestone, etc.
Can you, with your best knowledge in HR, assess the manpower requirements of the Loco team for each loco - how many Engine Drivers, their assistants, etc. - what will be their qualifications and experience? What about the Trackmans who change tracks, signals, gates, etc.?
Are you aware that in a Typical Steel Plant, there can be more than two thousand different designations for employees, each with its own JD, qualification, competencies required??
If the above sounds unfamiliar, I shall try to give you more relevant examples if you can tell me in which industry you work. Apart from the Iron & steel industry, I am familiar with Aluminium and Cement industries too. Please also appreciate the fact that there is more to HR than just what one reads in a B-school textbook or discusses with one's peers and colleagues.
Regards.