In a bid to become a more gender equitable organization, the world’s leading bicycle manufacturer Hero Cycles has for the first time hired as many as 90 female employees to operations at its manufacturing plant in Ludhiana.
This is the first time, women have been recruited to work at the Ludhiana plant, which remains Hero Cycles’ largest manufacturing hub, producing almost 20,000 bicycles every day.
The women have been hired and trained to work across multiple dimensions including mainstream assembly operations, precision monitoring and design.
“We are proud to announce that women have marked a splendid entry into our workforce at the Ludhiana plant. To begin with, we have hired 90 women employees and we are sure they will bring about a paradigm shift in our plant’s operation and working procedures. We have hired women not just for frontal office jobs but also for mainstream operations positions at the plant. Assembly operations are a manpower intensive work that require high degree of precision, alacrity and eye for detail. The ladies have picked up those skills very fast, and are already manning the operations,†says Mr. Pankaj Munjal, Chairman and Managing Director of Hero Cycles.
At the plant, the line output as per industrial engineering norms has already been achieved within short time of their joining the workforce.
Hero Cycles is the world’s largest manufacturer of bicycles, and its Ludhiana plant remains its leading manufacturing facility. Hero Cycles has other manufacturing units at Ghaziabad and Bihta in Bihar.
“Women across the country are breaking new glass ceilings every day. Yet, there continue to be areas of work that do not hire women due to certain unwritten rules. We believe it is a myth that women cannot work effectively in manpower intensive jobs such as decal operations and assembly. In fact, women add greater diversity to the work force and bring in additional approaches of problem solving,†adds Mr. Munjal.
Having turned their Ludhiana plant pink, Hero Cycles (herocycles.com) is now looking to hire more women in multiple dimensions across the organization.
