Antony Urges OFs to Stick to Quality, Delivery Schedules

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

New Delhi, May 18 (UNI) Defence Minister AK Antony today called upon Ordnance Factories to maintain quality and delivery schedules to keep their customer-base intact.

Stressing the need to give a fresh momentum to the country's indigenisation efforts aimed at achieving self-reliance in the field of defence production, the Minister said a major part of the responsibility to achieve this goal lay with the ordnance factories.

Inaugurating a Conference of General Managers of Ordnance Factories here, the Defence Minister expressed the hope that the meeting would chart out a futuristic roadmap for the ordnance factories.

''There is an urgent need to thoroughly review the fixation of targets, placement of indents and authorisation for expenditure'', he noted.

Minister Antony said the procurement procedure of OFB too needed to be streamlined to avoid time and cost overruns.

Referring to complaints regarding product-quality as well as customer-feedback that deliveries were not on time, the Minister said customer satisfaction was and should be the guiding force of any enterprise.

Noting that OFB had so far been functioning only as a departmental production agency without any commercial orientation, the Minister said ''In fact, the OFB should strive to become commercially proactive''.

He further called upon the Defence Production agencies to ''shed old mindsets and excessive secrecy''.

Urging the ordnance factories to equip themselves to face competition and re-orient themselves as proactive and viable commercial organizations, he called upon them to work in close tandem with the end user namely the Armed Forces so that production and supplies were planned and executed in a scientific manner.

''Our objective should be long-term planning for target fixation and production....'' Underlining the need for high-level consumer satisfaction, the Minister asked the ordnance factories to seek feedback reports from their consumers on a regular basis and carry out time-bound re-appraisal based on the feedback and rectify the defects in their product.

Referring to the defence procurement procedure, the Defence Minister asked the ordnance factories to strive to maximise transparency in their financial dealing and management as procurement was done on a large-scale and from various sources.

In his key note address, Defence Production Secretary KP Singh complimented the ordnance factories for having played a crucial role in achieving self-reliance in defence production.

However, self-reliance in defence not only meant self reliance in production but also self-reliance in developing new products so that the Armed Forces were fully equipped to meet all kinds of threat the nation faced, he said.

''The performance of the ordnance factories in this sphere is not encouraging....'' Secretary Singh further observed that the ordnance factories had not shown the ambition of developing major products and been ''content with the role of a technology recipient''.

In this connection, he asked the ordnance factories to emulate the example of the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited which had developed world class products like the Advanced Light Helicopter and Intermediate Jet Trainer.

The Defence Production Secretary pointed out that OFB was in the armament business where major customers were the Armed Forces and the paramilitary forces.

''OFB does not have the luxury to choose its customers and, therefore, has to earn the respect from the customers for product quality, timely deliveries and cheaper products to earn the good will... Unfortunately, the Indian Army does not perceive OFB as a manufacturer of defence equipment of global quality standards....'' He further noted that the huge manufacturing infrastructure available with the factories would always play a crucial role in the national defence and time had come for the efficient utilisation of these productive resources.

The General Managers of all the 39 Ordnance Factories, senior officials of the OFB, Ministry of Defence and the Services are attending the two-day conference.

UNI

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