Industry leaders at the India Sustainability Summit stressed that green is the way to go.
BY TEAM MT
Frost & Sullivan recently concluded its sixth edition of the ‘Green Manufacturing Excellence Awards’ (GMEA) and India Sustainability Summit (previously referred to as the Green Manufacturing Excellence Summit) at Hyatt Regency, Mumbai. The organisation has been promoting awareness and adoption of sustainable development practices across Indian manufacturing companies through a healthy benchmarking and incisive feedback process under this awards platform. Multiple sub-parameters ranging from sustainable strategy, risk management, stakeholder engagement, occupational health and safety systems, environmental management, and social accountability are tracked under the aegis of sustainability through this platform.
At the India Sustainability Summit, various organisations from the Indian manufacturing sector were gathered under one roof to share their knowledge and experiences from their sustainability journey. Best practices from companies across industries were shared along with strategic keynote presentations by industry stalwarts who play an integral role in the field of sustainability in India. The importance of risk management and mitigation was stressed upon as this is crucial for the longevity of any business. Afterall, sustainability and collaboration is the way forward to address radical and frequent changes in the externalities of business environments. The key takeaway from the summit was to inculcate the concept of long-term thinking, involving risk management and mitigation, stakeholder engagement, and a broader perceptive of sustainability in the mindsets of Indian corporations. Nitin Kalothia, director, manufacturing and process consulting practice, Frost & Sullivan reiterated this in his keynote address. He highlighted, “Sustainability is an indispensable part of being resilient, proactive, and progressive with changing times.
Companies need to collaborate with its key stakeholders across the value chain to maximise the benefit of this initiative, stand-alone focus will not be sufficient”. He added, “Organisations need to invest into sustainability projects with a long term focus and for doing that they need to have a medium to long term sustainability plan that will be the guiding document for seamless decision making”.
Frost & Sullivan strongly emphasises a concise and structured framework that needs to be adopted by organisations in order to excel in their sustainability initiatives, evolving from long-term risk identification, building a sustainable supply chain, and understanding stakeholder requirements. Organisations need to balance their business’ economic challenges with a sound and clear understanding of the environmental and social impact along with a concrete action plan for mitigating the same. Showcasing this concept were some presentations made by UltraTech Cement, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Grasim Industries, Schneider Electric India, Mahindra & Mahindra, ITC, United Breweries, and Wrigley India. The topics covered ranged from sustainability, risk management and product life cycle management to safety at the workplace.
This year’s award model brought together experiences from the previous editions to include the concept of ‘shared value’ that involves creating an economic value in such a way that it also generates value for all the stakeholders by addressing their needs and challenges. The re-engineered model supports shared value by giving equal importance to creating partnerships with all those who have an interface with their organisation.In its second year, the safety excellence model took companies through a detailed safety assessment built on five broad parameters (safety management systems, process, equipment and employee safety, and occupational health). The highest scoring companies were recognised for ‘Excellence in safety’ during the 2015 Green Manufacturing Excellence Awards banquet.
Moving forward, Frost & Sullivan plans to increase the scope of these award platforms to cover service sectors like, banking, hospitality – hotels and tourism, construction, logistics and airports. With this change, they also expect sustainability to gain a wider spectrum of visibility and enhance learning among corporates in India.