Planning of human
resource should be practical enough to match the dairy plant requirements.
Proper planning ensures determination of optimum manpower strength and quality
for recruiting process. Various aspects like details of dairy unit operations,their
labour requirement with respect to number and skill is considered as input for
planning. In some areas trained and skilled manpower is employed with desired
experience and qualification, whereas as in other areas only physical qualities
and behavior aspects are looked into. In order to have effective planning of human resource
we shall discuss below various influencing aspects:
i.
Functional Requirement of Plant
Planning
consideration of dairy plants includes requirement of various functions.Management
of milk shed and procurement of milk, processing, maintenance and utilities,
materials management, accounting and finance, marketing, quality assurance,personal
management and management information system are the most prominent functions
of dairy organizations. Independency of these functions varies greatly on the
size of organization and style of management. Therefore, manpower planning may
include requirements of these functions with respect to nature, volume and level
of specialization. In general, manpower requirement is in the form of ordinary(unskilled),
semi skilled and fully skilled workers. Less skillful job involving physical labour
is done by unskilled workers, whereas jobs with more technicalities require semi-skilled
or skilled personnel like technicians, operators, supervisors, typists,marketing
staff, accounts clerk / accountant / officers and managers. Qualification and
experience are determined as per the level of responsibility and degree of technicality.
Generally, candidates with basic qualification are employed and later on
suitable exposure and training is provided to improve their skill. Continuous assessment
is done to ensure proper training and implement motivating schemes.
ii.
Organizational Structure
Manpower planning
has to go with the organizational structure involving and interworking all of
its functions. A most commonly used organizational structure of dairy plant is
given in figure. The working of departments other than plant work is done in
day shift, whereas plant work is done in one or more shifts based on workload
or market requirements. A typical shift structure is depicted in figure.
Production, maintenance and quality control functions require round the clock
working through shifts. Usually three shift operations are common in dairy
plants. Shifts are headed by senior managers and supported by lower management
level functional in-charges for processing, production, quality control and
maintenance. Each of these functions is provided with required manpower in each
shift. Shift in-charges head all the line functions of the their shift.
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| Organizational Structure for a Dairy Plant |
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| Structure of Shift in Dairy Plants |
iii.
Factors Affecting Human Resource Deployment
There are numerous
factors that influence manpower requirements of dairy plants.In manpower
deployment, two important aspects, namely, skill and strength(number), are of
great consideration. Most significant factors are being discussed below:
i)
Capacity and Size of Dairy Plant: The installed capacity
and its expected utilization in the future have considerable influence on
workmen deployment.Some times due to size and shape of plant and its
technicality more workmen are required in-spite of low plant capacity
utilization.
ii)
Products and Product Technology: Pack-sizes and
complexity of production are the two highly influencing factors. Liquid milk is
sold both in retail pack size and bulk (Cans / tankers etc.). Milk products are
also manufactured in retail packs and in bulk depending upon the marketing
requirement. It is observed that retail-packing operations demand higher number
of personnel as compared to bulk packs. Dairy products are as simple as market
milks and as complex as cheese and accordingly, the product technology has
influence on the manpower requirement.
Products that are manufactured through automatic plant machinery require less
manpower, whereas indigenous technology based products using human art and
skill require more manpower.
iii)
Level of Automation: Level of plant automation varies greatly from plant to plant
and function to function. Old and traditional plants have less automation compared
to modern plants. Automation requires less manpower and result in better
product hygiene. In automated plants labour requiring operations like product
shifting, transportation and filling are carried out through conveyor,pumps and
suitable equipments. In the modern dairy plants, monitoring of plant operations
and process parameters is done through sensors and controls.
iv)
Equipment Requirements: Equipment features such as
requirements relating to material loading/unloading and cleaning process has
influence over manpower requirement.
v)
Number of Shift Operation: In general, a complete operation of
dairy is done in three shifts, but in several cases it is also done in one or
two shifts.Some times number of shifts are increased due to constraint of milk
availability,process / packing machine and/or storage facilities. In such
cases, bottlenecks decrease throughput of plant and increase working hours. In
dairy, normally
milk procurement
and marketing is done in two shifts i.e. morning or day shift and evening or
night shift, but in most of the cases due to continuity of operation, the
operations are divided into three shifts viz; 1st,
2nd and 3rd shift(each of 8 hours). Therefore, these factors must be
considered while planning manpower requirement.
vi)
Legal Provision: Labour welfare department enforce guidelines with respect to
working and rest hour / period to prevent harassment of personnel. While planning
manpower requirement these guidelines and other state legislation should be
considered in judicious manner.
vii)
Seasonal Variations: Dairy business has a great influence of seasons and festivals.
During summer month, milk procurement goes down, whereas demand for milk and
milk products in market goes up. Similar variations are also seen during
festival period. The above changing situations do influence manpower requirement
to meet operational compulsions. To deal with such trends, dairies need to hire
or reduce workers on temporary basis. The employment or curtailment of
worker is possible only for un-skilled category, whereas the same is normally
not practicable for jobs requiring skilled personnel.
viii)
Centralized or Decentralized Operations: Some times dairies have
raw milk reception and chilling operation away from the main processing plant.These
plants receive only chilled raw milk in bulk through tankers. In such situations
manpower requirement reduces to a great extent due to absence of can milk
reception, sampling, testing and cleaning operation. Similarly, provision of
bulk storage do influence manpower requirement.
ix)
Degree of Contractual Arrangement: Some of the dairy plants
cope up increased workload through contractual job arrangement. Such
arrangements are done for cleaning of cans and crates, product packing and
product shifting/movement. Sub-contract of production, packing and
transportation work has become more common. Such arrangements drastically
reduces extra and regular workers
requirement.
iv.
Manpower Quality Aspects
As discussed above
dairy plants involve ordinary to specialized and labour intensive to automatic
operations. Operation and maintenance of sophisticated plant machinery,
laboratory instruments and other services including book keeping,accounting and
marketing do require trained manpower with basic qualifications.The selected
manpower is then further trained according to the requirement of operations. In
order to have proper quality, some basic criteria are to be laid
down as discussed below:
a)
Operation of Dairy Plant & Machinery: The candidate should
have basic knowledge of machines. As far as possible candidate should be ITI
qualified in the trade of Fitter or electrical with required practical
apprenticeship training.Matriculate or non-ITI background candidates with
appropriate experience may be considered for process machinery operations.
b)
Chemical Analysis: Laboratory work-involving analysis of raw and finished products
by scientific testing requires candidates with chemistry background and
therefore graduates in Chemistry, Dairy/Food technology/Agriculture are suitable
for such jobs.
c)
Microbiological Analysis: Dairy products need to be tested for
their microbiological quality. Various analyses like efficiency of cleaned
surface, hygiene of surrounding atmosphere and bacteriological quality of
ingredients and finished products etc. are done to ensure this aspect. To carry
out this work, professionally qualified candidates with B.Sc in microbiology/
Dairy /Food technology are suitable.
d)
Material Management: Now a day due to high degree of competition and cost, the
procurement and safe storage of various materials has become highly scientific
and specialized job. An experienced science graduate or qualified material
management professional would accomplish such jobs with effectiveness.
e)
Marketing and Distribution: Highly perishable nature of milks
and milk products requires experienced personnel to carry out the operations
and promotional activities.
f)
Accounting and Finance work: Dairy plant requires two types of
accounting.One is related to accounting of various materials (physical
accounting) during manufacturing. Whereas, other type of accounting relates to
financial transactions related to fund flow. Technical background personnel
would better do former type of accounting, whereas latter type of accounting
requires skills and knowledge in accounting and book keeping including
financial analysis and preparation of books of account.
g)
Supervision and Managerial work: Dairy plants involve
supervision of numerous operations and personnel. In order to effectively
supervise the work,entire operation is divided in to shift operations and
section wise work (refer Tables). Shift or section in-charges look after the
work and people under their jurisdiction. In order to have effective
supervision, the in-charge should be professionally qualified and have good
grasp of the entire work. Dairy plant production work is normally looked after
by dairy or food technologist /engineers, whereas quality control is headed by
qualified dairy/food technologists,chemists or microbiologists. Utility section
is headed by technical professional;such as dairy, mechanical, electrical or
chemical engineer. Manager of the dairy plant should be highly experienced
technologist or engineer with sufficient knowledge of
planning, administration and information technology. Milk procurement
activities are suitably headed by veterinary, dairy or agriculture graduates
having experience of organizing dairy co-operatives and looking after milk
procurement routes.
v.
Determining Manpower Strength in Dairy
Manpower planning
includes determination of number of personnel along with their qualification.
There is no fixed guideline for calculating number of personnel.However
understanding the functional requirement and Organizational Structure along
with other influencing factors as detailed in the paragraph will be of immense
help. We are illustrating below examples focusing on major dairy functions.
a)
Milk Collection: Bulk reception may require one operator and one helper,whereas
can reception would require 9 to 14 persons depending upon level of automation.
Suitably trained personnel are required for skillful operations like grading,
weighing and sampling. Straight through or rotary washer requires atleast two
persons, whereas one worker each is required for can scrubber, steam block and
inspection of can condition and cleaning status. One operator is separately needed
for looking after operation of general cleaning & milk movement from dump
vat to storage tank.
b)
Milk Processing: To carry out milk processing one operator with one dairyman is
required. These dairy personnel may also look after the work of CIP cleaning work.
c)
Milk Packing: Milk packing machine needs one person per head. Two persons for
crate washer, two people each for crate loading and unloading and two people
for crate stacking in cold room are optimum. One extra person for cleaning and
pouch weight monitoring is desirable.
d)
Creamery Section: One operator per shift for butter manufacture per machine, two
workers for butter movement to ghee section and two person for ghee making are
required. One skilled packing machine operator would be desirable in each
shift.
e)
Indigenous Products: The manpower requirement depends on level of automation and
layout of production facilities including product mix and product technology.
f)
Powder Plant: Plant operations including bagging and arranging bagging
material required two to three persons per shift in a fully automatic plant.
However, at low level of automation the manpower requirement will be more.
vi.
Manpower Planning for Shift
Manpower planning
of shift operations is determined in two situations:
a) As an integral
part of planning to determine and select manpower for dairy,based on shift
operation. In this case, the factors discussed in paragraph needs to be assessed for meeting requirements
of shift-operations, monitoring,accounting, quality analysis and management.
b) Second situation
of manpower planning for shift arises in the event of revising shift strength
on account of change in production schedule, changing of personnel in the shift
and shift rotation. Planning process in this case would include assessment of
manpower availability with respect to skill and strength, products and
production schedule, weekly offs, leave and other holidays, plant operations and
work to fulfill the production schedule.
In turn, on
totaling manpower requirements of all the shifts, we get overall manpower requirement
of dairy plant.
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