Early in the morning we started the trip to Pune. The trip tooks about 4 hours and 174 km.
During the journey we made some new experiences. After a while we stopped suddenly to take a state police officer with us, which is common in India. He left the bus after 45 minutes. 2 km before we arrived we heard a loud noise and realized it was one of the tires: Our first flat tire, how many more to come? Fortunately we were able to drive to Rieter, where our main destination was.
Rieter is a textil industry company which has its headquarter in Winterthur, Switzerland. Excited to visit a Swiss company in India we were welcomed with a lunch. Surprisingly some of the Rieter manager and apprentices joint us at a delicious Italian meal.
After the lunch Maya Gadgil and Mathias Litzke introduced the ZHAW / School of Management and Law to our hosts, Per Olofsson and Frank Capece, emphasizing their strategy for India. Afterwards Mr. Olofsson presented the history and future of Rieter. With this informations we started our tour to the factory. Impressed by the organisation and implemented Lean Management we walked around the plant. Mr. Capece could answer every question. The main benefit of this tour was to see how Operation Management is working in reality. We could match the learnings from the lessons with the implemented processes in Rieter. They are also ambitious to introduce the Swiss way of apprenticeship in India called VET (Vocational Educational Training). It was a very impressive afternoon.
During the trip home there was an active discussion of the impressions from the visiting. Finally arrived at the hotel “Lemon Tree” we checked in and went to dinner.
Was a great day!
Regards from Pune