The 9th Annual Manufacturing Today Conference and Awards, 2021, presented by the Aditya Birla Group on 9th September, 2021, lived up to its reputation of being the most excitedly awaited event in the industry.
With luminaries from the industry in virtual attendance through the day, the event hosted three very power packed panel discussions on topics of most relevance to the industry, followed by the felicitation of the jury and finally culminated in the awards ceremony.
Rashmi Naicker, ITP Media Group (India), after a short introduction to the event invited Bibhor Srivastava, Country Head, ITP Media (India) Pvt Ltd., to deliver the welcome address and initiate the event.
The event was powered by Loctite, exclusive Lighting Partner Havells, Engineering Design Partner Autodesk and HVAC Partner Blue Star.
“The award ceremony is among the most treasured occasion for our organisation. It provides us with an opportunity to recognise and acknowledge the good work undertaken by the individuals and the companies, to address the whole manufacturing community and to share their achievements, their successes and plans for the future,” said Srivastava in his heart-felt rendition.
Concluding his opening address, Srivastava called upon E R Raj Narayanan – Chief Manufacturing Officer & Business Head – Ultra Tech Cement Ltd to present his welcome note.
Welcome note
Welcoming the attendees to the event, E R Raj Narayanan shared his insights into the future of manufacturing in India. Taking an overview of the last decade that had been wonderful for the sector, he noted that the percentage of manufacturing to GDP has increased from 16.8% to 17.4%. He quoted Oxford Economics to establish that by 2025, the percentage would be 17.96%. The global consumption is also expected to reach 62 trillion USD; twice that of 2013. India’s contribution to that global manufacturing is on the rise too, doubling from 1.49% in 2000 to 3.06% in 2018 and is expected to reach 3.36% by 2025.
Reforms towards manufacturing led economy, government initiatives like Make-in-India, the Production Linked Incentive scheme, large cut in corporate taxes from 34% to 25%, measures to take advantage of shifts in operations away from China, liberalisation of FDI regulation in contract manufacturing, relaxation for single brand retailing and a cut in corporate tax rates from 27% to 17% for new manufacturing companies were among the many other topics that he delved on.
“With all the policy changes and the momentum achieved so far, the manufacturing sector in India has the potential to reach 1 trillion USD by 2025.” Broaching upon various engaging subjects including digitalisation, innovation and sustainable operations, he concluded by saying, “I strongly believe that the manufacturing sector in India is well placed to take advantage of the emerging opportunities.”
Recipient of the Aditya Birla Group Chairman’s Outstanding Leader Award, 2018, Narayanan’s sweep of his views shared in a ten-minute discourse in itself made it a must-attend event.
Industry keynote address
Naicker invited Vipin Sondhi, Managing Director & CEO, Ashok Leyland Limited., to deliver his keynote address.
“The automotive industry has been a shining star in India’s economic growth contributing 20% to industrial GDP, 6.5% to overall GDP, 35% to manufacturing GDP, and generating huge number of direct and indirect employment,” said Sondhi. Drawing attention to the current difficulties he said, “The automotive industry is facing an immediate challenge of rising commodity prices especially steel and a global shortage of semi-conductors which we have to overcome.”
Through his presentation he covered the journey and outlook of the automotive industry. Taking stock of the government’s call for Aatmanirbhar Bharat he noted some of the sectoral reforms. He dwelt on upcoming technology trends in the industry in detail and talked of preparation for transformational change and sustainable development goals.
Partner presentation
Next to be invited for presentation was Manish Singhal, Business Director India, General Industry, Henkel Adhesives Technologies India.
Talking about the Loctite value story, Singhal first set out to give a perspective of the mammoth scale at which Henkel operates. World’s number one adhesives producer, with a business of 25 billion wash loads of detergent per year and selling 20 hair colourants every second world-wide, the company has a massive presence across verticals of adhesive technologies, beauty care and laundry and home care.
“Present in more than 200 countries, the company is striving for three times more sustainability, three times lesser consumption and three times better energy utilisation by 2030,” asserted Singhal, laying out his company’s ambitious plans.
Singhal elaborated on the products and solutions the company has to offer with focus market segments of General Manufacturing (GM); Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO); and Vehicle Repair and Maintenance (VRM).
This was then followed by three insightful panel discussions, each concluding with a question answer session brimming with enthusiastic participants.
Return, Recover and Rebuild: Re-Establishing Processes in Manufacturing
The first panel discussion was moderated by Anshuman Sinha, Partner, Kearney. Other luminaries present on the panel were Ranganathan Iyer, Group CIO, JBM Group; Zurvan Marolia, Sr Vice President and Head of the Manufacturing Council, Godrej & Boyce Mfg; M V Sivakumaran, VP Manufacturing, CUMI; and Mukul Agrawal, Chief Sustainability Officer, Birla Cellulose, Aditya Birla Group; and Sushil Deshpande, Senior General Manager, Blue Star Limited.
With a flourish, Sinha painted the entire canvass of his session of the panel discussions comprising stalwarts from a very diverse set of industries. “The macro challenge of the manufacturing sector’s target to contribute 25% of India’s GDP; which means a lot on productivity, on institution building, on ease of doing business and on availability of talent. On the other hand, were the more immediate concerns of getting people back on the shopfloor, of health issues and of sustainability pressures post pandemic.”
“Caught unawares and unprepared during the two pandemic waves, the industry has to be ready with a comprehensive risk mitigation plan and its execution for the future before getting on the work content,” said Deshpande.
Marolia too, dwelling on retention and retraining of employees, began with his thought on disruption. “Pandemic has fast forwarded change for us. At the same time, it has let us hit the pause button and forced us into zero based thinking on process re-asses,” he reflected.
Giving an overview on technology disruption, Iyer said, “When we look at automation, the issue is not the quality of manpower but the quality of products reaching the customer. So, automation is there to help us increase customer satisfaction and therefore the budget is not the problem.”
Asked for his views on scalable initiatives of i.40, Sivakumaran said, “I would like to view the effect of industry 4.0 as setting of a perpetual value creation.” He went on to elaborate how, “The planning, the factory and the support systems were the key levers of business operations that industry 4.0 can impact.”
Asked to comment on sustainability, Agrawal was blunt. “If we continue to do business as we have been usually doing, many of the industries will not survive and much of the bio-diversity will also be lost.” He went on to explain how global companies like his have to be aligned to the global wish lists on sustainability and how it leads to value addition and better returns. “We are investing US$ 170 million on technologies to recycle and recover materials,” he affirmed.
Sinha dug deep and wide in to the subject of discussion in a very engaging session.
Smart lighting: a presentation
Vidyashankar Krishna – JVP & Marketing Head – Professional Lighting, Havells, made a brief presentation with an engaging video clip of revolutionary changes happening in the lighting world.
“Lighting is now intelligent. It is occupying a very important place in the way we design our workspaces,” he said and let the audience a peek into an amazing new world of lighting of what he called ‘smart lighting’.
Celebrating Women in Indian Manufacturing
Chaired by Nirmala Behera, Executive Director – Group HR, RSB, the second panel included Arthi Sairaman, Director, MTAB Engineers Pvt Ltd; Elizabeth Richard, Assistant Manager, Visteon Electronics India Pvt Ltd; Mohini Kelkar, MD, Grindmaster; Rajani Kesari, CFO, Ambuja Cements Ltd; and Shobha Dixit, Director, Alpla India Pvt Ltd.
“For India to continue its growth trajectory, it has to tap into all available workforce, and if India fails to bring its women into workforce, it will face huge supply gap,”
Behra set the context adding further, “There is a dearth of women in top leadership, just 3% of CEO in Fortune 500 companies are women.”
Employment opportunities for women in manufacturing, gender gap and challenges faced by women, exploring the working environment and how technology can be leveraged by women were the subject she tried to bring the focus on in the panel discussion.
There is a need for companies to have deliberate strategy to make manufacturing workspace attractive and secure for women,” said Sairaman. “The manufacturing of today is not the same as the manufacturing of the days of their parents. It is much more sophisticated sector influenced significantly by digital technologies,” she added touching on the role of technology in empowering women.
“We have taken a top-down approach and made a strategy to have at least 5% women in our workforce and even appointed 50% women in one of our plants aimed at reaching the overall figure of 5%,” said Dixit drawing the urgency of reducing the gender gap in the discussion.
For Kesari, it was not just the women but the organisation that benefits from diversity. “A diverse workplace, especially one with gender diversity, helps an organisation to have new perspectives.”
“We women are good at multi-tasking,” said Elizabeth Richard emphasising the intrinsic strength of women for leadership role; whereas for Kelkar, “Role model for women can also be men.”
The inspirational gathering of women leaders in manufacturing continued to discuss the place of women in manufacturing in great detail.
Manufacturing Revolution & Evolution: The Future Outlook
Discussion in the third panel was moderated by Ambarish Raj, Business Head and Senior Principal Consultant, BMGI. Included in the panel were the stalwarts of the industry- Ashwani Bhargava, Director & Supply Chain India Enterprise, Boeing India; Shohab Rais, Chief Operating Officer – Indian Chemical Business, Tata Chemicals Ltd; Kaustubh Shukla, Advisor and Former COO- Industrial Products Division, Godrej & Boyce; Partha Karmakar, BU Head Professional Lighting, Havells; Tentu Venkataramana, Head of Manufacturing, L&T Special Steels and Heavy Forgings; and Parminder Singh, Country Head, Design & Manufacturing / Media & Entertainment, India & SAARC, Autodesk.
“Indian manufacturing is positively poised and we have an opportunity to reach a trillion US$ by 2025,” Raj steered through a maze of wide spectrum of subjects during the panel discussion that he moderated.
Talking about extracting opportunities from emerging trends, Parminder took note of growing trend towards customisation. “From shoes to commercial vehicles, customisation is going to be the trend. Using data to automate the customisation and re-skilling of workforce are other emerging trends.”
On digitalisation and building platforms for integration of businesses in seamless value chain, Shukla said, “Digitalisation has become almost like a fad. Organisations must understand, it is a means to an end; growth, profitability and customer delight; and not an end in itself.”
“We should not disrupt the production system,” was Bhargava’s clear and emphatic retort to how companies should manoeuvre to balance their technology roll outs and existing systems.”.
Venkataramana brought to attention the difficulties the industries are going through. “Since, 2008, markets have gone down, volumes have gone down. For companies that have invested in, the returns are lower than the weighted average capital cost.”
Many seemingly simple but profoundly effective real workspace examples of leveraging technologies were presented. Karmakar said, “Earlier, lights would be switched on and off at the beginning and end of the shift but now technology enables usage and dimming of lights as per specific need and thus helps optimisation of usage of power.”
“We brought significant improvement in performance variability and performance efficiency resulting in reduced rejections; using IIoT, data analytics and data imaging; by first identifying the best performing parameters and creating its digital twin,” said Rais.
Raj kept probing the panellists through an engaging sessions of shared experiences that were truly insightful.
With three back-to-back panel discussions behind them, we were pleasantly surprised by the overwhelming participation of attendees in each of the three Q&A sessions that concluded the panel discussion.