When months of toil on a project ends on a happy note, the project is labelled a success. So it was with the 8th Manufacturing Today Conference and Awards 2019. As an industry, manufacturing may not excite those outside it. But within the industry, there is a sense of passion and deep interest. That’s because, this is probably the only industry where much innovation, technology, people orientation and novel machines are widely used across functions. It is also the reason we recognise each of these functions at the awards through our numerous categories.
Manufacturing Today has manifested itself as the only magazine to have uncovered the industry’s core skills, thus letting its readers understand the immense knowledge, technology, skill-sets, and impressive operations, it has to offer. The awards is our way of bringing together people across divisions and helping them glean new aspects of functions that hitherto was only hearsay or read in passing.
A quantum leap
We begin inviting nominations from June for an awards function that is held in September every year. The team invites industry heads to be a part of the Grand Jury and this year the Jury comprised SM Vaidya, EVP & business head, Godrej Aerospace; Dr Guruprasad Rao, director & Mentor, Imaginarium India; Jitendra Mahajan, chief supply chain officer, Marico; Bhanwar Lal Bishnoi, head, embedded systems design & development centre (EDDC), L&T-Electrical & Automation; Rakesh Tripathi, global head, heating business, Thermax; Dr Prem Sherin, head, marketing and sales strategy, Ambuja Cements; Bappa Bandyopadhyay, director operations and projects, Henkel Adhesive Technologies India; Jeffrey Jacob, partner, KPMG India; Shovik Banerjee, principal, AT Kearney; Shailja Arora, VP, business development, IndoSpace Development Management; Durga Prasan Das, plant head, RSB Transmissions (I); and Anand Mohan, executive director, Polarity Smart Bikes.
Nominations were invited from across the country and across organisations. We received 713-plus nominations from 45 cities. A novel move we made this year was going digital. Much work was done in the background, but the Jury had a relatively far easier workload in terms of screening nominations. The Grand Jury met on September 7 and after much discussions among themselves arrived at the winning companies. These were to be showcased at the awards.
What to expect
In spite of the incessant rains that Mumbai has been witnessing this season, the day of the awards, September 25, saw little rain. It was a respite as we had delegates and speakers travelling from 35-plus cities. With a touch of hubris, we would like to say that we had a full house for the whole day. The conference and awards is a full event that begins at 9:45am and ends with the awards at 6:30pm. This year again we held the event in Mumbai at Taj Santacruz going by popular opinion.
S Saikumar, MD, ITP Media Group (India) welcomed the delegates and thanked our presenting partner Aditya Birla Group, associate partner Loctite and infrastructure partner Indospace.
In his keynote address, Thomas Varghese, business head, textile, acrylic fibre and overseas spinning of Aditya Birla Group, spoke about how manufacturing has evolved, what has changed, customer centricity, SCM, innovation, sustainability and digital. “Standard mass manufacturing began with Henry Ford. It then moved in a phased manner to high quality manufacturing. Over the years, customers became discerning. Increase in customer power were driven by being value driven. This changed the game from mass manufacturing to mass customisation. The environment today is dynamic and today companies need to build on innovation, customer centricity, operational excellence, digitisation, people excellence, and overall be lean and agile. It is not a myth anymore that one department should stay in functional silos as to what is happening in other areas within the company. Supply chain is one of the most important elements today. So also innovation, product and process development and people excellence. All this counts in ensuring a global and sustainable manufacturing excellence. Today companies must adopt clarity in their manufacturing processes and only then will be able to deliver a world-class product.”
The first presentation for the day was made by Manish Singhal, business director India, general industry adhesives, Henkel India. “Adhesives are used across products, be it aerospace or smart phones or automotive or surgical needles. Loctite has permeated across the gamut of products and millions of products use this daily. With this product, leakages could be avoided forever. We have spent the last few approaching maintenance experts and this has helped them become maintenance free and corrosion free. We have 23 R&D centres across the globe and it has come up with radical new products.”
Redesigning the panels
It was time for the first panel discussion. Shaping the Factory of the Future, the panel was moderated by S Sathish, partner, operations transformation (India and Middle East), KPMG India. The panellists comprised Aditi Sharma, VP, quality, HSE & manufacturing, Cummins Group; Ajoy Lall, head manufacturing, commercial vehicles business unit, Tata Motors; A Krishna Kumar, SBU head, speciality alumina, Hindalco Industries; Amar Dhanwade, head, operations strategy, Welspun Group; Bhaskar Choudhury, manufacturing senior director, beverage, PepsiCo India; Partha S Ghose, president & chief, projects, Kalyani Steels; and Velmurugan S, plant director, Abbott India.
Sathish began the discussion by asking the panellists to speak on some of the noteworthy changes last few years and how customer expectations have changed. Krishna Kumar responded to that saying that change is constant. “Customers want to be competitive and they look up to companies like us to respond with products that will enable them to move ahead. Moreover, they want to be associated with companies that are doing sustainable business. Digitalisation has become a priority for us,” he added.
Choudhury of PepsiCo India, said, “Evolution is happening at a faster pace than before. Our neighbouring countries consume more soft drinks than India, while here consumers want healthy, tasty and nutritious.”
Sharma of Cummins pointed out that monopoly does not work anymore. “Our products are the best and we thought that no one could beat us to the game. But as the situation started changing, we realised that we need to ask the customer what they want. Our learning curve was slow in the beginning and that has changed drastically. Looking inward helped us and we moved from reactive to proactive to preventive and prognostic,” she added.
Velmurugan S of Abbott India said, “Today, customers want transparent information. They want fresh and novel products. This translates to business pressure on us. That has a cascading effect on the plant and the back-end.”
Ghose of Kalyani Steels said, “Ever changing requirements of quality are not going to go away. Environmental norms and pricing cuts are disrupting the manufacturing and supply chain. These take long to address and when you are done with these, newer challenges emerge.”
Lall of Tata Motors responded, “Customers today buy convenience and peace of mind. They want RoI on their investment. For us, total cost of operations matter as it has a direct corelation with customers’ future purchase.”
Dhanwade of Welspun Group said, “Technology is never a limiting factor. Managing people is very important. Then comes process. Maturity of data in each level of an organisation is very important and should be with the functions.”
We then moved on to the National Case Study Competition, which was the final leg of the Aditya Birla Group Presents: Manufacturing Today Reinventing the Future 2019. Held across five cities, the winners of the regional rounds made their final presentation here with the Jury to decide on the winner and runner up. The Jury comprised Mahendra Kumar Muttyapwar, executive president, Ultratech; Prof Rakesh Pathak, faculty member (strategy & governance), ICFAI Business School (IBS); and Manish Kulkarni, director, strategy and business development, BDB India. The teams that emerged winner in each of the regions were Mahindra & Mahindra (Rudrapur), Kirloskar Brothers (Indore), Atmastco (Raipur), AkzoNobel (Vadodara), and Hyundai Motor India (Chennai). Each of the teams presented their final case study to take home the coveted prize. The national winner was Mahindra & Mahindra, while the runner up was Kirloskar Brothers.
The second panel discussion for the day was Digitally Connected Supply Chain – The Way Forward in Today’s Manufacturing Business. Moderated by Akash Srivastava, partner, Deloitte, the panellists comprised Rajeev Mehta, chief logistics officer, Ambuja Cement; Adhip Pal Chaudhuri, head marketing, SBU Industrial, Balmer Lawrie; Amitava Das, VP, logistics & projects, Hindalco Industries; Bhanwar Lal Bishnoi, head, embedded systems design & development centre, L&T-Electrical & Automation; Chirayu Deolekar, head SCM, Schaeffler Automotive Aftermarket India; Nitin Kathuria, head supply chain, Marico; and Senthil Kumar KK, national manager, supply chain transformation, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages.
Srivastava opened the discussion by asking panellists to speak on how digitalisation has changed supply chains in India.
Mehta of Ambuja Cement said that he has worked on technology and change management. “It took us six months to get the objective right. Supply chain was a cost factor to other functions, but we needed to set things right before moving on to other spheres. In terms of change management, we started that even before implementing the technology. We approached others to understand how they are implementing technology,” he added.
Kathuria of Marico said, “FMCG is impacted by three issues, namely, GST, modern trade and e-commerce, and innovation from newfound e-commerce companies. Supply chain has become challenging. Consolidation of warehouses has worked well and there have been cost savings. From 36 warehouses, we now have 25 and there are scale benefits.”
Chaudhuri of Balmer Lawrie said, “Since we deal in packaging products there is much pressure on us to be just in time. Our main raw material is steel. We cannot afford to maintain inventory. Hence, we have a tight supply chain in terms of inbound and outbound.”
Das of Hindalco Industries said, “The supply chain of upstream and downstream has to be well-balanced. Customer centricity is most important for us in terms of finished goods. It was a necessity for us to become bostumer.”
Bishnoi of L&T-Electrical & Automation said, “There’s a sea change in the way technology and digital was used a few years ago and now. Industrial revolution and Industry 4.0 is mainly automation and AI. Forecast and demand and supply chain management is crucial and one has to be get it right.”
Deolekar of Schaeffler Automotive Aftermarket India said, “We have 70 plants across the globe and four in India alone. So components manufactured in Germany and sold across the world means a stringent supply chain. Digitalisation has helped us tremendously and there is a need to create full visibility across the supply chain.”
Senthil Kumar of HCCB said, “Most companies, in the name of digital initiatives, do multiple things in silos. They don’t talk to each other and customers are not consulted. At HCCB, we have our own challenges and have multiple state-of-the-art technologies. Creating a platform where each of these could talk to each other was a task. Most of our new factories are adopting new technologies and digitalised.”
The second presentation for the day was made by Sharad Gohil, MD, IndoSpace Capital Advisors. In his presentation, he said, “We began providing end-to-end solutions realising the dire need for it today. There are tremendous opportunities through our partnership with GLP. We have a sizeable portfolio in India and want to double it in the next five years. We have 35 parks across the country and we want to grow that to 45-50 million in the next one or two years. We have regionally focussed investment teams for land procurement and property management. Built-to-suit offerings is what customers like best about us.”
It was now time for the last panel discussion of the day: The CXO panel. With a topic like Co-Creating Strategies: The future of Manufacturing companies, the panel was moderated by Rajesh Nath, MD, VDMA India. The panellists comprised Anand Sontakke, sr. VP & COO, MAHLE ANAND Filter Systems; Ashish Saraf, head of helicopters, India & South Asia, Airbus; DS Ravindra Raju, president, manufacturing, Deepak Fertilisers & Petrochemicals Corporation; Krishnakumar Iyer, VP defence, Bharat Forge; Ashish Dwivedi, president, specialty chemicals, Grasim (Aditya Birla Group); Neeraj Bisaria, CEO & MD, Premium Transmission; Ravindra Dayal, executive director (Gujarat project), Maruti Suzuki India; and SM Vaidya, EVP & BH, Godrej Aerospace.
Nath began the discussion saying that with India set to target its ambitious goal of $5 trillion economy, it means that for the next six years India has to grow at 8% per annum.
Iyer of Bharat Forge said, “We created something called the apellant factory. There is much skilling required to make crankshafts and ammunition bodies. They require specific engineering skills. So we have faculty coming to educate our people to our factory on weekends. We pay for these workers’ skilling and training.”
Dwivedi of Grasim said, “Broadly, the industry actually does not feel the skills shortage. There’s a need to be ready for the future and much work needs to be done on that aspect.”
Raju of Deepak Fertilisers & Petrochemicals Corporation said, “Ours is a brick and mortar industry. Implementing Industry 4.0 meant lesser people. Skill assessment becomes difficult and when we started doing that, it helped us realise what was lacking. A technical training centre helped immensely.”
Bisaria said, “Only pertinent use of technology can help us reach the goal of $5 trillion. The current workforce needs to learn new things and it should be made interesting for them to learn faster.”
Saraf of Airbus said, “We buy 30 billion Euro of hardware and services. As integrators, we design and integrate. Everything in between is done by the supply chain. We created a digital technology office that focusses on skilling and on digital.”
Dayal of Maruti Suzuki said, “We send people to Japan for training. For the manufacturing engineers, we take the help of software providers who train them on layout and manufacturing excellence. We ensure that everyone is aligned with the new models of digital thinking.”
Vaidya of Godrej Aerospace said, “We have gone down to the last person in the company and made sure that each one is trained on bringing in a high produtive culture and competing with international players. It has helped us cope with modern way of manufacturing and skilling employees.”
Sontakke of MAHLE ANAND Filter Systems said, “Quality is not only what we supply to our customers but also what goes to the end customer. IoT and Industry 4.0 will help us track products and lessen damage. Recalls should be minimum and soon it will not stay voluntary.”
The discussion was met with applause as there were many takeaways.
It was now time to move to the Awards ceremony, which was the hallmark of the day.