Manufacturing sector needs to look inwards for growth

MUMBAI: The key to success in manufacturing is not in just pumping in money into factories and gigantic plants but in targeted investments to improve quality and innovation, panelists at the India Manufacturing Excellence Awards (IMEA), presented by The Economic Times in partnership with Frost & Sullivan, said.

Industry stalwarts at the panel including—Dr V Sumantran , vice chairman of Hinduja Automative, Aroop Zutshi, global president and managing partner at Frost & Sullivan, Pradeep Banerjeeexecutive director, supply chain – Hindustan Unilever-—said that while the government plays its part, the manufacturing companies needs to look inward and focus on quality, innovation, R&D and public-private partnership to emerge stronger.

Despite the infrastructure bottlenecks, the pieces are falling in place with a National Manufacturing Policy, they added. But that may not be enough to solve all the problems as growth has started to stagnate and the low share of manufacturing-to-GDP raise more concerns for the government.

The new policy, cleared by the cabinet in October, aims to create nearly 100 million jobs and increase the share of manufacturing in India’s gross domestic product to 25% by 2022, from 16% now. Expressing his views on the occasion, Dr V Sumantran , president at Hinduja Automotive, said the key to the National Manufacturing Policy will be its implementation.

But he also advised the manufacturing sector that while the government plans about the policy implementation, the manufacturing fraternity also needs to look inwards in terms of quality and processes improvements rather than relying on government policies for growth.

While China may be considered as manufacturing capital of the world, India still has an opportunity to gain an edge. “The quality journey in the manufacturing industry is absolutely important. China, for all its growth, hasn’t quite earned a great reputation for quality, so India still has an opportunity to do that and it’s going to come from real emphasis on quality and leveraging on IT,” Dr Sumantran added.

Meanwhile, the India Manufacturing Excellence Awards acknowledged the best facilities in India that have achieved and sustained manufacturing excellence. Reliance Industries won the Super Platinum Award for continuous production for over 1,000 days, whereas Diebold India from Goa was runners up for the Super Platinum Award.

Sundaram Clayton from Chennai, Wyeth Limited, Goa and Piramal Healthcare - Pithampur won the platinum awards, whereas, Fiat India, Tata Motors and Titan Industries won the Gold Award. The IMEA awards was conceptualised and instituted by Frost & Sullivan in 2004 to support companies in their journey towards building a competitive and lean organisation.