CII and BMGI Presents the Operational Excellence Summit: “Make-ing India the Global Hub of Best-in-Class Manufacturing”

Make-ing India the Global Hub of Best-in-Class Manufacturing

The Make in India program, launched by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, as part of a wider set of nation-building initiatives is a visionary step to put India on the global map. It has been devised to transform India into a global design and manufacturing hub. The program’s special emphasis on building world-class manufacturing facilities, adoption of technology, digitization of public sector processes and FDI investment augur extremely well for Indian industry. As much as the Make in India program provides a huge opportunity to Indian industry to excel and grow, it is imperative for Corporate India to increase their competitiveness and take the lead so as ensure that they capitalize on the opportunities that a growing India offers.

Against this backdrop of the Make in India Program, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) along with Breakthrough Management Group India (BMGI) as Knowledge Partner, is organizing a conference aimed at enabling the Make in India program on the platform of 7th India Operational Excellence Summit in late March at The Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi. The theme of the conference is “Make-ing India the Global Hub of Best-in-Class Manufacturing”.

The event comprised thought leaders from across the world with senior management representations from reputed organizations like Maruti Suzuki, Ingersoll Rand, Punj Lloyd Group, Coca Cola and Exxon Mobil to name a few and representations from industrial and governing bodies like the Niti Aayog & J&K State Industrial Development Corporation.

S Y Siddiqui, Summit Chairman & Chief Mentor, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, opened the inaugural session with an introduction to the key speakers. He talked about importance of Excellence for all businesses today. Citing Maruti’s example, he said it would not be possible for Maruti to export cars to Japan as well as lead customer satisfaction ratings in India, without a strong focus on Excellence. He also talked about ‘Designing for Lean’, a concept that puts Lean principles into a factory at the time of design of the plant itself. Mr Siddiqui also shared a unique 3-3-3 principle from Maruti as a means to Excellence: Every operator must know 3 jobs. Every operation must have three experts and Line Associates must know their work, one prior to their workstation and one post.

Naresh T Raisinghani, CEO & Executive Director, Breakthrough Management Group India when introducing the theme of the Summit, talked about the three “I’s” for inculcating Excellence in business. He stressed on the need to “Integrate Strategy with Excellence”, wherein Excellence projects are identified by the Leadership Team. The second “I” was to “Integrate Excellence in the Organization Culture” by creating a critical mass of Improvement Practitioners. The third “I” is to the need to “Innovate” with disruption in new products, services & business models being Essential to complement excellence.

Dr Arvind Panagariya, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog, Government of India provided an economist’s view of the Make in India program and Excellence’s role in it. He indicated that the Make in India has been launched to move India from an agricultural economy to a modern industrial economy with the emphasis to generate employment and to give a boost to the economy. He further iterated that manufacturing is at the heart of the primarily because India is a laggard in manufacturing as its percentage to India’s GDF in comparison to other developing & developed nations. He further highlighted the need for Excellence in manufacturing operations, which would provide a boost to growth in manufacturing.

The second session focused on the Panel Discussion: “Is Make in India Possible without Manufacturing Excellence?”. The discussion was opened and moderated by Naresh T Raisinghani, CEO & Executive Director, BMGI. The members of the panel were Ajay Shankar, Chairman, Expert Committee Constituted by DIPP & Former Secretary – DIPP, Government of India, Amit Sharma, Managing Director, J&K State Industrial Development Corporation (SIDCO), Sandeep Kalia, Chief Executive Officer, Valvoline Cummins Pvt Ltd, Vinod Sharma, Managing Director, Deki Electronics Limited, and Arun Awasthy, President & Managing Director, Delphi Automotive System Pvt Ltd.

In response to whether India needs to focus on manufacturing, Ajay Shankar highlighted that India needs to have a strong focus on manufacturing if India is to achieve her growth ambitions. He stressed that India needs to leapfrog into the global stage of manufacturing focusing on consistent and sound quality of her products as well as sustainable ‘green’ manufacturing practices.

Amit Sharma stressed on the need for manufacturing highlighting that it provides employment, raises the GDP and gives an overall economic push to the nation. Given the strong global competition.

Sandeep Kalia highlighted the importance of having a right blend of products that covers economical to premium offerings, which would require a higher level of innovation and quality. To build excellence in your operations, he recommended the idea of a “Manufacturing Day Out” wherein all manufacturing personnel meet with customers on a quarterly basis to understand their challenges.

Vinod Sharma believes that manufacturing provides employees with an opportunity for more happiness – by scoring on cost and value efficiency through simple tools such as 5S. He further elaborated that if India has to succeed on the world manufacturing stage, she needs to match Japan & Germany on quality, China on cost and Norway on the environment. Further, partnerships with various stakeholders is also essential be it with employees, logistics partners, power companies amongst others. To drive excellence successfully, Mr Sharma showcased Deki’s example of inviting suggestions from workers which get reviewed for acceptance by a Worker Committee and then implemented immediately. This has enabled Deki to remain competitive at a global stage where their costs were earlier much higher and the scale much lower.

Arun Awasthy talked about the importance of supporting manufacturing with Engineering & Innovation, citing Delphi’s example of how they support both their local and global markets through their engineering labs. He also highlighted on the need to strengthen the entire eco-system which includes suppliers that would promote excellence. He advocated the use of “function benchmarking” as a tool that would help set the bar of manufacturing practices high on quality.

The second session titled “Designing a Best-in-Class Manufacturing Setup: From Good to Great Manufacturing”, was chaired by Deepak M Muthreja, Principal Consultant, BMGI. Deepak provided the opening remarks for the session and introduced the speakers.

Varun Gadhok, Country Head – Manufacturing Solutions, Autodesk India Pvt Ltd, talked certain good practices in bringing new products to market. He advocated the need for personalization at the concept finalization stage, for collaboration at the design stage with internal and external partners such as universities and finally, having a flexible production system built around the principles of Lean.

In order to move from Good to Great Manufacturing, Ashok Wadhawan, President – Manufacturing Business, Punj Lloyd Ltd, talked about the need for strong processes in manufacturing. He introduced a unique concept of making India the “Back-Office of Manufacturing Processes”. To enable this, he highlighted the ability of building flexibility in our processes. To illustrate the point, Mr Wadhawan cited Punj Lloyd’s example where on the same line, they make nuclear products and aviation parts. He also highlighted the need for improving the manufacturing processes to deliver zero defects and using automation to enable this improvement.

Amar Kaul, Territory Vice President & Business Head, Ingersoll-Rand, brought to light the importance of Excellence in our efforts to remain competitive. He espoused the use of an A3 framework as a strategy document, which provides alignment between Operational Excellence efforts and driving business growth. He shared ideas for driving Manufacturing Excellence, including defining Standard Work and building engagement between the Leadership Team and people at the gemba.

The third session on “Sustainable Manufacturing” was chaired by Susmita Narayan, Senior Business Leader, Keysight Technologies International Pvt Ltd. Susmita opened the session and introduced the speakers.

Staring with an example from his personal experience, Anil Gupta, Vice President – Platform Strategy, DataWind, talks about a new CSR practice that helps drive sustainable development. He talked about the three pillars for sustainable development, which are economic, environmental and social. He goes on to elaborate what encompasses each pillar and how the three are related. Talking about the five truths of sustainable development, he explained what is required to ensure your organisation operates in a sustainable manner, such as use of renewable resources must proceed at a rate that enables replenishment to be sustainable.

Why is there a need for sustainable manufacturing? Akshay Deep, Head – Technical Services, Gabriel India Ltd, ponders this question while talking about how sustainable development is needed today more than ever before. Further on the question, he discusses some challenges that Gabriel India has faced, using ideas such as green manufacturing and orbit shifting innovation to address them in pursuance of sustainable development, under the 3 P’s; Process, Product and People. He talks about how Gabriel India re-designed a product by replacing a solid bar with a hollow tube, leading to a more sustainable product design.

Manu Bhargava, Key Account Advisor – Industrial, ExxonMobil Lubricants, talks about how improved and advanced tech lubricants can enable the manufacturing industry become more sustainable by helping improve efficiency of machines, while reducing the environmental impact of the same. He talks about key points of the Energy Outlook 2040, an ExxonMobil global energy study and the trends that would drive energy demands. He illustrated how a change in lubricant in a plastic injection moulding machine based on temperature and energy studies led to a significant reduction in downtime and improvement in energy efficiency and productivity.

Kunal Sharma, Associate Vice President of Operational Excellence (South Asia Region), Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd, talks about how continuous improvement initiatives can be an integral part of sustainable manufacturing. He starts by discussing the key drivers to run a successful continuous improvement program in a company, such as establishing the burning desire for the program and an ever-evolving diagnostic process. He talks about the need for successful change agents in the organisation to drive improvement initiatives, engagement of people and effective communication of success stories within the organisation to boost morale. He talks about how transforming the business to a sustainable model is not just about operational excellence, but also of innovation.

In the last session, which was the Valedictory session, Padma Shri Dr Pritam Singh, Noted Management Thinker & Chief Executive officer, LEAD Centre, talked about the need to build resilience in Indian businesses if they are to survive and thrive at the global stage. He offered his insights on how one could build resilience, ie by building strong leadership and looking within in order to understand what we did well today and planning what we will do tomorrow. He emphasized that leaders need to build an Olympian mind-set, where-in they encourage their employees to set their sights on new records and help them achieve those records. Dr Singh also stressed on the need for Indian companies to look at the world as their market, ie have a global mind-set. He also exhorted Indian businesses to work hard on the development of their employees and ethical governance.

The live recording is available here: http://www.opex-summit.in/

About Breakthrough Management Group International, India

BMGI is a management consulting firm focusing on Innovation Strategy, Innovation, Problem Solving and Business Transformation. Headquartered in the US, operating across 16 offices and more than 250 consultants worldwide, BMGI consults and leads organizational and business process transformation to improve performance, increase efficiency and effectiveness and reduce costs substantially.

BMGI has developed a loyal clientele that exceeds 200 active clients from across industries and delivered cumulative benefits to its clients worth several billion dollars with an ROI of 5:1 to 20:1. Some of the few major clients we have partnered with in their roadmap to success are Reliance Industries, ITC, Vodafone, Asian Paints and L&T, Accenture, Bajaj Auto, HUL, Marico, Oracle, Hitachi, Siemens, Philips, Unilever, De Beers, Avis Budget Group, Grameenphone, TNT Express, Brandix, Hulamin, ThyssenKrupp Electrical Steel, Arvind Textiles, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, Motilal Oswal, Tata Chemicals, Cognizant and Accenture.

Media Contact:

Deepak M Muthreja
deepakm@bmgindia.com
www.bmgindia.com
Breakthrough Management Group India