Manufacturing Today and Aditya Birla Group hosted the ‘REINVENTING THE FUTURE’ SUMMIT in Coimbatore
By TEAM MT
“MANY OF US ARE VERY GOOD IN OUR businesses. We are excellent in manufacturing competitiveness, productivity and efficiency. What is required is for us to go from being just good to great. Changing of good practices to great practices is really the challenge ahead for the industry. It is a transformation, and it begins when people choose big, audacious goals and a constantly moving target of excellence,” said Thomas Verghese, business head, textiles, acrylic fibre and overseas spinning, Aditya Birla Group, during his keynote speech at the Manufacturing Today Reinventing the Future Summit, focused on ‘Innovation at Work’, in Coimbatore. The event was presented by the Aditya Birla Group, in conjunction with Manufacturing Today, and saw support from SITRA (South Indian Textile Research Association). In addition, educational institutions such as the PSG Institute of Technology and Kumaraguru College of Technology partnered with us, while BDB India played the role of market research partner. The summit saw attendance from some of the key companies in Coimbatore, who competed with one another in various categories ranging from Quality, Safety and Cost Optimisation to Sustainability, Technology and People Initiatives.
Speaking about manufacturing excellence, Verghese touched on the importance of trending themes such as 3D printing and Internet of Things, while explaining that “things have really changed. The old paradigms are no longer applicable when it comes to manufacturing, even in India. In terms of labour wage cost competitiveness, we are quite competitive, in comparison to many other countries. Particularly in the last few years, the South East economies have witnessed phenomenal increases in cost. This is something which should be advantageous to India, because we have not witnessed the same kind of increase in cost. The need today is to get the industry technologically updated.”
Saikumar Shanmugam, deputy MD, ITP Publishing India, started the proceedings by explaining the structure of the competition and introducing the jury, who consisted of V Ganesan, executive president and unit head, Ultra Tech Cement; Rajesh Shankar, unit head, SKI Carbon Black India Pvt Ltd; K Suresh, president, Grasim Industries; and Manish Kulkarni, director, strategic initiatives, BDB India Pvt Ltd. It was then time to start the competition, where teams from various companies highlighted the best practices undertaken by them in their chosen themes.
We started with Quality, where L&T Valves Limited, Delphi TVS and Shanthi Gears (Murugappa Group) presented case studies. Delphi TVS’ winning presentation focused on measures taken for eliminating rejections by introducing checkpoints such as analysing problems, identifying causes, finding the root cause, data analysis and finally developing a solution for the problem at hand.
The next category was Safety, where GE (Oil & Gas) and SE Electricals Ltd (Suzlon) were joint winners for their respective presentations. GE’s presentation touched upon the safety enhancement of long-stroke actuators. This product has been incorporated by them in the US, Europe and Japan, and is made at the GE plant in Coimbatore. The complexity involved in manufacturing meant introducing an ‘action workout’, which is a problem-solving event for different functions from manufacturing to quality, which happens every quarter for a duration of five days. On the other hand, SE Electricals Ltd (Suzlon) took up a case study on elimination of injury and operator fatigue.
V-Guard tackled the issue of voltage fluctuation to emerge winners in the Technology category. They competed with Shanthi Gears (Murugappa Group) and Hyundai Motors, who highlighted innovative trends such as dry green oven concept and a project known as RTO (Regenerative Thermal Oxidiser) that are leading the way to the future. Kirloskar Brothers Limited (KBL) claimed the title in the Sustainability category when they explained their initiatives to reduce electricity and water consumption, as well as greenhouse gas and CO2 emission, besides adopting a green supply chain network. Reducing the SEC (specific energy consumption) at the KBL plant, equipment-wise efficiency improvement, vendor cluster formation near the premises, vendor communication through a portal and material conservation were some ways in which they achieved these targets.
ELGI Equipments and V-Guard gave stellar presentations to take joint-honours in the Cost Optimisation category. They explained how capacity utilisation, and quality and productivity improvement can keep one cost competitive and how rejection pareto analysis and target setting can help bring down a high rejection figure of 4,124ppm and therefore keep a check on escalating production costs. JK Tyres, Shanthi Gears (Murugappa Group), GE (Oil & Gas) and SE Electricals Ltd (Suzlon) also presented case studies in this area. Finally, we had presentations on People Initiatives. V-Guard won in this category for their case study on employee engagement. They spoke about enhancing profitability by improving productivity, having a monitoring system to track the employee involvement index, the launch of lean principles to eliminate waste and the use of motivational strategies.
In his closing speech, Ratan Shah, group talent mentor, Aditya Birla Group, said, “You come to the summit thinking that you know everything, but you keep learning with every presentation. We had presentations on cycle time reduction, waste reduction and re-orientation of the shop floor in order to bring benefit to the organisation. We saw innovations in technology and presentations on the people front.” He added that the summit served as a tool to infuse the manufacturing industry with some much needed excitement. “Not many people want to come into the manufacturing sector, because the service sector looks so attractive. But I always say that if you don’t manufacture, what will the services sell? So manufacturing is the key, the base for everything. If India is going to grow, it has to have a strong manufacturing base and for that, we need more excellent people like those present in this room,” he concluded.
And that excellence was rewarded by the jury, who had to choose the winning team between some neck-and-neck competition. However, they used years of experience to select the very best and we had an awards presentation ceremony that resulted in smiling faces all around.