Teams in Vadodara and indore competed with top-notch presentations at the summit.
In its fifth year, and much knowledge sharing, Aditya Birla Group presents Manufacturing Today Reinventing the Future summit began this leg with Vadodara and Indore. Over the years, the summit has only grown stronger and more vibrant, as was visible with the level and quality of presentations put forth in these two cities.
The annual event, presented by Aditya Birla Group for the last four years, has become an inspiring and keenly awaited knowledge sharing platform for manufacturing professionals in Plant Operations, Production Management, Quality Control, Technical & Engineering and HR.
Continuing with the theme of ‘Great Teams at Work’, several reputed companies from within and neighbouring cities participated on a single platform across six broad topics: Cost Optimisation, Quality, Technology, Safety, Sustainability and People Initiatives.
Vadodara
The keynote address was delivered by Kiran Patil, COO & Executive Director, Rawan Cement Works. In his speech, Patil said, “The Aditya Birla Group has a global footprint in manufacturing and has 130 world-class manufacturing plants across the globe. About 65% of its workforce is engaged in the manufacturing sector. The Group was named Best Employer in India 2018 by Aon Hewitt.”
The jury consisted of Kiran Patil, COO & executive director, Rawan Cement Works; A Krishna Kumar, jt president, Hindalco; Diptiman Majumdar, VP, pulp & fibre, Grasim; Atul Kansal, VP, cement, UltraTech Cement; Madhu Vadali, asst. Professor, mechanical engineering, IIT Gandhinagar; and Manish Kulkarni, director, BDB India.
The companies that participated were Reliance Industries (Dahej), Blue Star (Wada), Johnson Matthey Chemicals India, Aerzen Machines India, Mahindra Accelo, Windsor Machines, GE Power, Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages, Bajaj Auto, Atlanta Electricals, Mahindra Intertrade, and Axalta Coating Systems.
Bajaj Auto, who were adjudged regional winners in Vadodara, gave a presentation on Quality. The team spoke about how they adopted non-destructive online inspection techniques to check components and ensure a vast improvement in quality.
The Blue Star Wada plant which was one of the winners in Technology spoke about how under the category of total employee involvement (TEI), it identified, initiated the projects which had challenges like deskilling & automation of critical process, productivity improvement, fatigue, quality issues, cost, energy conservation & morale of operators on shop floor.
A joint winner in technology was the Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages team. They had successfully implemented reduced neck finish of their bottles that resulted in weight reduction and closure weight.
GE T&D, a winner in People Initiatives, worked well to spread awareness of lean manufacturing to catalyse a cultural change. This requires employee engagement and seamless team work as well as development of critical skills to instill the problem solving culture.
In Sustainability, Reliance Industries came up with water saving schemes to utilise the water present in different effluent streams. The implementation helped in reducing overall water consumption by 150 m3/hr and same amount of effluent generation at PTA-DMD. The schemes not only helped saving the water which is rare resource but also helped bottom line of production cost. Similarly, another winner in this category was Johnson Matthey.
Indore
The Aditya Birla Group engages in many initiatives to help manufacturing professionals partake in knowledge-sharing and, in turn, grow.
A total of 13 teams presented their case study, in the aforementioned six categories. K Suresh, Unit Head of Staple Fibre Division Nagda, Grasim Industries, delivered the keynote. In his speech, he said, “Manufacturing is a key driver of the Indian economy and sharing of best practices creates an eco-system of co-learning and knowledge-sharing amongst the young manufacturing professionals. We are also happy that this year the focus has been on women in manufacturing.”
The companies that participated were: John Deere, TAFE, Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages, Liugong, SRF – PFB (Plant 1 & 2), Lupin, Cummins, Bajaj Auto, KBL, Blue Star – Dadra, National Steel & Agro Ind, Dabur, and Mahindra & Mahindra.
Jury members for Indore comprised HS Dagur, Unit Head, Grasim Veraval; Sathia Raj, Joint President, Head Central Procurement Cell, Ultra Tech Cement; Vrajesh Parikh, Vice President, Grasim Chemicals; and Manish Kulkarni, Director, BDB India.
Blue Star – Dadra, were announced regional winners and they won for Quality. They were applauded for their presentation on how they overcame the problem of manual inspection and deployed technology to improve quality of air-conditioners. The result was that line rejection due to wrong circuit was eliminated, ability to identify wrong circuit at the origin was enhanced and there was no wastage due to rejection. Also, risk of cooling deficiency at customer end was eliminated.
TAFE was declared joint winner for Quality. The company has reduced axle tube oil leakage and improved productivity, quality, cost, increased safety and helped the environment in the entire process.
In Cost Optimisation, there was a tie between HCCB and SRF.
HCCB needed to reduce the loss caused in finished goods in terms of leakage & breakage and and gas volume. A structured analysis like truck detention and temperature correlation analysis, temperature profiling during transit, containment force analysis, etc., were done. Basis the analysis outcome certain delivered package quality improvement initiatives were taken to reduce the overall FG loss.
On the other hand, SRF realised that if it used PET flakes as raw material in packaging, it would entail savings of Rs 0.84/kg that is equivalent to Rs 4.62 crore per annum at 55,000MT production. How the company achieved that was a marvel.
John Deere was the winner in Safety, The company John Deere was determined to reach the “Vision Zero” goal in the long-run: zero occupational accidents at workplace, commuting to work, as well as in private households. The focus was on sustaining and nurturing the culture through a proactive approach towards attitude and awareness to occupational safety, self-responsibility, and accident prevention. The team aspired to create long term culture based on global standardisation, programme implementation and behavioral sensitisation to each and every employee.
The company also won in People Initiatives. Working in three functional work streams, development, culture building & sensitisation and society of women engineers, John Deere aspires to propel change in the mindset and behavior of all employees to create an environment conducive for overall development.
The technology winner was again Blue Star. Here it set up a testing system that is highly flexible, can adopt to new requirements easily, boosts productivity and enhances quality in the product and process.
Overall, both the cities saw an enthusiastic response and the knowledge sharing was par excellence. An event worth attending.