Ordnance Factories Board
Ordnance Factories Board (OFB), consisting of the Indian Ordnance Factories (Hindi: भारतीय आयुध निर्माणियाँ), is an industrial setup functioning under the Department of Defence Production of Ministry of Defence, Government of India. It is engaged in the production of arms, ammunition and other equipment for military and civilian applications. Headquartered at Ayudh Bhawan, Kolkata, it consists of forty-one Factories, nine Training Institutes, three Regional Marketing Centres and four Regional Controllers of Safety.
OFB is the world"s largest government operated production company and the oldest industrial organisation run by the Government of India. It has a total workforce of about 150,000. It is often called the "Fourth Arm of Defence" and the "Force Behind the Armed Forces" of India. It is also amongst the top 100 arms manufacturers in the world and was ranked at #46 in the list released by disarmament watchdog SIPRI for 2010, up from #55 in 2009. Its total sales were at $2.4 billion, with arms sales bringing in about 80 percent of its revenue. Every year, 18 March is celebrated as the Ordnance Factories Day in India.
Read more about Ordnance Factories Board: History, Indian Ordnance Factories Service (IOFS), Products, Customers, Criticism
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“I know no more affecting lesson to our busy, plotting New England brains, than to go into one of our factories with which we have lined all the watercourses in the States. A man hardly knows how much he is a machine, until he begins to make telegraph, loom, press, and locomotive, in his own image.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—H.L. (Henry Lewis)