SAIL, Siemens sign pact for upgrading technical skills

The country's largest steel producer, SAIL, has entered into an agreement with engineering major Siemens for upgrading technical skills of its human resource and for bringing down the maintenance cost.

On Friday, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between SAIL's Management Training Institute, Ranchi, and Siemens for a period of two years, SAIL said in a statement.

"Steel Authority of India (SAIL) has undertaken a massive modernisation plan for expansion and technological (upgrading). In order to operate these modern plants equipped with state-of-the-art technology, a lot of efforts are being made to upgrade the competence of its workforce," the statement said.

It said the agreement is aimed at enhancing safety standards in work, ease in adoption of new technology and improving equipment availability to support higher growth in production and reduction in the cost of maintenance.

"The advantage of this MoU is that all concerned technical personnel of SAIL plants and units can get trained with the help of a single commercial terms and conditions, which will greatly facilitate the process of training," SAIL said.

The company is undertaking expansion at its steel plants to almost double its overall capacity to 26.3 million tonnes by 2010-2011.