If it was about anything, it was about team-work. And, the rigours to which the group was willing to put itself through.
Stalwarts of the industry, editor of the magazine and the marketing head subjecting themselves to a gruelling day-long brainstorming just to take a grip of the processes followed in getting the nominations, parameters set and the road ahead leading up to the award ceremony.
Bestowing the impeccable prestige and status to the awards was the standard-setting efforts taken by the jury that met for deliberation in this virtual meeting. The jury consisted of the industry role-models and thought-leaders with illustrious careers in their fields.
The esteemed members of the jury present were Amol Nagar, Director Manufacturing Operations, Global Sourcing and Supply Chain, GE Aviation India Business; Jagdish Ramaswamy, President and CDO, Hindalco Ltd; Krishnan Sadagopan, Senior Vice President, Engine Development, Ashok Leyland Ltd; academician Dr. Manoj Kumar Soni, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, BITS Pilani; Mohammad Athar, Partner, Economic and Infrastructure Development, PwC; Partha Ghosh, Director Projects, Kalyani Steels Ltd; and the indomitable Rajesh Nath, MD, VDMA India with his long association with Manufacturing Today Awards.
Nath, an eight-time veteran as the jury member for the Manufacturing Today Awards, said “Through my eight years of association with Manufacturing Today, I have seen the jury only getting bigger and the awards getting better every year.”
The nominations
During the virtual meeting, the august body re-visited the processes and parameters of judging the nominations. The process for getting the nominations had started in the month of July 21, and the whole exercise was completed in 45 days.
In spite of the businesses facing severe challenges in the wake of the pandemic, the team had before them 374 nominations for consideration coming from some of the leading large and SME companies spread over 30 cities.
The selections
The jury was divided into three groups for the deliberations. Each of the members were provided with a score sheet having separate pages for each category. Jury members had to provide the grades that were summed up at the end to arrive at the winners.
Each of the teams were provided with separate virtual chat rooms for deliberations among themselves while at the same time being connected and communicating with the rest of the teams.
Worthy of taking note was that no gatekeeper hierarchy was put up to filter the nominations from reaching the jury members. Each of the eligible nominations were screened by the jury members personally. Unbelievable commitment from the jury to the cause.
“It has taken time and patience to go through the process to pick up the best ones. Some of them were really challenging to choose from. I think we have done justice to the whole process which you will see in the results,” said Nath.
The awards
This year’s award categories were: Excellence in Corporate Social Responsibility; Excellence in Human Resource; Excellence in Product Innovation and Design; Excellence in Operations; Excellence in Health and Safety; Excellence in Supply Chain; Excellence in Sustainability; and Excellence in Training and Skill Development are the categories in which the nominations were being scrutinised.
The new additions to the categories this year were Manufacturing Company of the Year; Smart Factory of the Year, Plant Head of the Year and Woman Manufacturer of the Year.
The jury was informed about the selection process metrics and criteria and parameters. They were requested to rescue themselves from judging any particular nomination if they had any conflict of interests.
Enriching experience
The distinguished members of the jury, seasoned though they all are, found the entire exercise highly engaging and educating.
Dr Soni, with a doctorate in energy efficiency, said he was impressed by the kind of environment-friendly efforts that are being taken in the industry. Among his subjects of inspection and interests were the spend of the businesses on eco-friendly activities and comparative figures of year on year achievement on energy conservation like fuel saved and CO2 emissions reduced.
“The kind of work that has been done by the industry is really commendable,” said Soni, who is into thermal engineering, energy efficiency and solar thermal thermo-dynamics analysis. The BITS Pilani academician engaged in collaborative industry learning programmes across manufacturing, power sector and many others was impressed.
Sharing that the jury meet function was a wonderful experience, Sadagopan said one can get to connect with like minded people as well as experts. “I will be thankful to Manufacturing Today for giving a wonderful opportunity to companies to get evaluated on a single scale. It was a very interesting but challenging journey. I hope we have done justice and it will encourage participants to do better in future,” he said.
Sadagopan emphasised that making enterprises realise the purpose of their company’s businesses and motivating innovative minds within these organisations to stand out among their peers are the benefits of creditable awards like these.
Commending the Manufacturing Today team for showing such courage and enthusiasm for organising such an elaborate event, Ghosh said it has taken tremendous back-office work, coordination and hard labour. “My honest congratulations to the organising team.”
Athar points out that the jury brought a huge diversity and richness of experience with them. “The way evaluation has gone about, it went into a lot of detailing,” he said.
He acknowledged that the evaluation process was very robust in its approach. “It was great to read about all those inputs that came from all those amazing sets of organisations.”
According to him, bringing competitiveness among organisations, encouraging people to give their best, encouraging innovators with assurance that their efforts will not go unnoticed, are the positive reinforcement of changes (these awards) will bring about.
Nath explained that the nominations that they got were from both from large and small companies were all very relevant and very pertinent. “The guidelines for selection were very clear. The information provided by the companies about projects was huge but adhering to the guidelines,” he said.
For the goal of making India a USD 5 trillion economy, he said manufacturing has to contribute a trillion. “Recognition of the importance of manufacturing and the endevours of the companies especially the MSMEs through such awards will encourage the companies and will also bring importance to the certain criterias,” said Nath.