''Ordance Factory'' gets new chief
Saurabh Kumar, IOFS, took over as the director- general of Ordnance Factories and the chairman of the Ordnance Factory Board.
Hyderabad: Saurabh Kumar, IOFS, took over as the director- general of Ordnance Factories and the chairman of the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) following the superannuation of P.K. Shrivastava.
The newly appointed the director-general is from the 1982 batch of the Indian Ordnance Factories Service (IOFS) and an MTech in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur.
An expert in the manufacture of ordnance, Mr Saurabh Kumar was on deputation to the minis-try of defence in New Delhi as the director of planning and coordination from 2002 to 2009.
During this period, he was involved in drafting the Indian offset policy for defence purchases and the ‘Make’ procedure in the Defence Procurement Procedure of 2003-04, which incorporated the recommendations of the Arun Singh Committee.
Mr Kumar was instrumental in piloting the proposals and obtaining the approval of the Government for setting up two new greenfield Ordnance Factories at Nalanda and Korwa in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
Mr Kumar also spearheaded the modernisation programme which included the induction of robotic forging technology, new generation CNC machines and predictive maintenance at ordance factories which not only increased productivity and quality but also led to the production of ‘Pinaka’ rockets.