GRSE - Ushering in a New Era of Excellence

By Editor 05-Feb-2021

The modern infrastructure facilities of the shipyard coupled with its vast expertise, gives Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd. (GRSE), Kolkata a significant edge over other domestic defence shipyards. Apart from shipbuilding and ship repair, it has diversified into engineering business with a product profile of Prefabricated Steel Bridges, various Deck Machinery Items and Assembly/ Testing/ Overhauling of MTU Diesel Engines.GRSE has a long-standing relationship with the Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard and the ongoing operations exhibit the level of satisfaction and depth of relationship. With the maritime security forces undergoing a massive modernisation drive, the shipyard aims at tapping the potential of strategic shipbuilding industry in India, thereby setting the sail for a voyage to excellence.

Building vessels ranging from 5 tonne boats to 24,600 tonne fleet tanker, Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd. (GRSE), Kolkata, has ably proved its mettle as a pioneer warship builder in India over the last six decades. The modern infrastructure facilities of the shipyard coupled with its vast expertise, gives GRSE a significant edge over other domestic defence shipyards. The company has been taking steps towards ensuring simplification of its process and procedures, adopting modern practices and technology, enhancing capacity, modernizing infrastructure and improving on governance.

Over the years, GRSE has responded to the varied shipbuilding requirements of the Indian Defence Services and has evolved from building simpler vessels to building larger and technically advanced warships.GRSE has developed capabilities for in-house design and shipbuilding and has made considerable contributions to the indigenous warship construction programme of our country. With the maritime needs continuously evolving, GRSE is constantly upgrading its techs and assets to lead Indian shipbuilding industry.

Legacy that Spans over a Century

The inception of Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Ltd. (GRSE), which was incorporated in 1934, dates back to 1884 when the company started as a mere ship repair workshop. During the Second World War by carrying out the construction, conversion and repair of 4000 merchant and naval vessels, GRSE has established its prime footprints in the shipbuilding industry. Later, the company was taken over by the Government of India in 1960.GRSE became a Miniratna Category I Company in the year 2006.

Array of Diverse Products

Shipbuilding is the key product offering of GRSE but diversified products and services including portable bridges, deck machinery items, pumps and engines are other focus areas where the company excels.Product diversification allows GRSE to rely on different product areas to generate revenue when the market conditions dictate a decrease in demand for shipbuilding.

GRSE is the only shipyard in India that has a dedicated deck machinery equipment facility or an engine assembling and testing facility. Having a dedicated, multi-disciplinary, design team on board, GRSE has established well-proven capabilities for in-house ship design and shipbuilding. Following the major infrastructure modernization creating integrated shipbuilding facility in 2013 and the revitalization of facilitiesat RBD Unit, a dedicated facility for construction of smaller warships, GRSE looks at a concurrent ship construction capacity from present 20 ships to 24 ships.

Strategies for Future

Looking at the future order of warship building for the Indian Navy and the Indian Coast Guard, in the next decade, existing customers alone could provide opportunities for a robust order book with full capacity utilization. GRSE also focuses on receiving orders from foreign countries. There is a commitment to a continuous increase in market share across product verticals and diversification of the customer base and geographical footprint, thereby minimizing exposure to only particular sectors, markets and customers.

In order to maintain its relationships with the Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard, GRSE continually advances and improves its technological capabilities and facilities, and meets future shipbuilding requirements. From constructing ships on a shorter timeline, to producing ships with greater technological capabilities, the Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard require constant innovation and improvements in efficiency from shipbuilders.

A greater percentage of revenue capital is planned to be invested in research and development in order to augment efforts in the development and design of warships along with the development of engineering products.There is an emphasis on promoting a “Green Concept”, thereby contributing to energy saving. On July 7, 2018  a virtual reality lab of CDO at 61 Park Unit was inaugurated to undertake line out inspection on the CAD model, user reviews of critical departments at a much earlier stage and marketing of future ship designs.

In Pursuit of New Skylines

The nature of warfare is changing every day and so the design of the Naval warships. To meet the new challenges, GRSE is imbibing new technologies like Virtual Reality Labs for carrying out the complete design on 3D modelling on a digital/virtual world.A state-of-the-art Virtual Reality Lab is already in place at GRSE for better ergonomics in design, faster approvals and reduced cycle time for shipbuilding. GRSE has tied up with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur to innovate an AI model for introduction within next two years likely. Ship projects under real time progress monitoring is being implemented and Industry 4.0 is being adopted for various manufacturing areas.