Towards Shop Floor Success

Organized by Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association (IMTMA), the 13th edition of National Productivity Summit (NPS 2019), held on August 20 – 21, 2019 at Bangalore International Exhibition Centre (BIEC), Bengaluru, pointed out umpteen production bottlenecks in the Indian manufacturing and demonstrated effective practices to attain productivity gains. An overview…

Every year, IMTMA organizes National Productivity Summit with the view to showcase best practices in manufacturing and help the industry enhance its productivity and competitiveness. Through insightful keynotes, live case study presentations, plant visits, success stories, the summit highlights the need to embrace an integrated approach to increase manufacturing productivity, and the ways to make it possible with efficient team, processes and technology.

This year, however, NPS stood out to be a tad different than its predecessors; the composition of the audience which used to be 60 percent from the auto industry was this year 75 percent from the non-auto industry. Many hailed this change as progress and a good sign that other industries involving metalworking have started to participate in the yearly summit.

Bhaskar Bhat, Managing Director, Titan Company Ltd, did the honors of inaugurating NPS 2019. Also present were P Ramadas, President, IMTMA; Indradev Babu, Vice President, IMTMA; and V Anbu, Director General & CEO, IMTMA; and Shailesh Sheth, Past President, IMTMA.

Expert take

Giving the summit a befitting start, Bhat, in his opening address ‘Impact of Productivity on India’s Manufacturing Competitiveness’, focused on the challenges the Indian manufacturing industry currently encounters. The challenges, he stated, are primarily centered on the additional cess levied on the manufacturing fraternity, high logistics cost, the skill mismatch, and the spending on R&D. He emphasised on the strong implementation of Automation, Digitization, Industry 4.0 and investment into R&D to improve India’s productivity in all sectors.

Ramadas, in his welcome address, stated, “This summit would achieve its objective only if you take back the learnings from here for the successful implementation and application in your individual organizations. This gathering is unique where the manufacturers and users are sitting shoulder to shoulder to learn the ways to achieve quality and be updated about new facets of manufacturing. Going forward, I am sure we will reach much higher levels of manufacturing.”

P Ramadas, President, IMTMA and Bhaskar Bhat, Managing Director, Titan Company Ltd, at the inaugural ceremony.

TV Mohandas Pai, Chairman, Manipal Global Education, graced a special session held for CEOs and delivered his address on ‘Winning in the Digital World’.

Around 60 CEOs from the Indian manufacturing fraternity attended the CEO Meet.

 

Enriching keynotes

Keynotes make for the summit’s substantial part where industry experts impart their knowledgeable and experienced views on a gamut of topics. This year’s edition featured three keynote speakers. G Parthipan, CEO, Rane TRW Steering Systems, spoke on ‘Adopting modern manufacturing technology to enhance productivity’; Dr Babu Padmanabhan, Managing Director and Chief Knowledge Officer, Steer Engineering, presented his take on ‘Innovation as a powerful tool to enhance productivity’; and ‘Thriving in the era of disruption – How organizations stay afloat’ was presented by Sandeep Kumar Maini, Chairman, Maini Group.

TV Mohandas Pai, Chairman, Manipal Global Education, graced a special session held for CEOs and delivered his address on ‘Winning in the Digital World’. The session convened 60 CEOs from the Indian manufacturing fraternity.

Case studies and plant visits

This year, over 150 case studies made their way to the summit from which 11 were shortlisted and presented live at the event. These were from BHEL, Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing, Carborundum Universal, Bosch, Rane TRW Steering Systems, SAAB Engineering, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd and Mahindra & Mahindra, Gala Precision Engineering, Khutale Engineering and UCAM. All these companies contested for the IMTMA-ACE Micromatic Productivity Championship Awards 2019.

“We need to constantly focus on bridging the knowledge that adds skills in the industry and to make the industry technologically more contemporary. In the last two days, we have witnessed several examples of manufacturing excellence to realize the vision of manufacturing contributing 25 percent of our GDP from the current 16 percent,” said Sheth.

Pre-summit plant visits were organized to Ashok Leyland, TVS Motor Company, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India, Volvo Trucks, Dynamatic Technologies, and Volvo Construction Equipment, which proved to be an ideal opportunity to closely witness some of the best productivity practices being put into action.

Planning ahead

NPS has always been well received by the industry players keen to gain insight into the best practices adopted by their peers and implement in their own manufacturing processes. To help them mark their calendar well in advance, IMTMA has already scheduled the 14th edition of NPS in August 2020 at Pune.

 The IMTMA-ACE Micromatic Productivity Championship Awards 2019

The next National Productivity Summit is to be held at Pune in August 2020. Calendars be marked.

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