CII and BMGI Presents Manufacturing Innovation Conclave 2013

DELHI and MUMBAI, July 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

As the knowledge partner for Manufacturing Innovation Conclave, held in The Taj Palace, New Delhi on the 21st June 2013, BMGI [http://www.bmgindia.com/index.php ] presented how innovation can lead to an exponential growth in manufacturing. The event was organized by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) that works to create and sustain an environment conducive to the growth of industry in India.

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The event comprised thought leaders from across the world with senior management representations from reputed organizations like Tata Quality Management Services, Hero Motor Corp, DataWind Ltd, Siemens, HCL Infosystems, Jabil Global Services, Robert Bosch Engineering India, to name a few and representations from industrial and governing bodies like National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council, Government of India and CII Haryana State Council.

The event was organized in four sessions where the inaugural session looked at the need for innovation in Indian manufacturing industry. The second session reflected on how innovation is a new paradigm for growth followed by a panel discussion to explore making India the factory of the world through innovation and the closing session focused on innovation beyond product to solution.

Should India be the factory of the world or Germany of the East? Setting the context for the inaugural session, Mr Arvind Kapur, Chairman, Regional Committee on Manufacturing Competitiveness, CII North Region, welcomed the audience and introduced the speakers. He opined that the labour arbitrage will not last too long and the only way India can retain the competitive advantage is through innovation.

Sharing the percentage GDP spends on innovation across the world, he ascertained that while India is an entrepreneurial company, she is not an innovative nation with only 1% or less of her GDP being invested in innovation. He conveyed that CII along with the Government of India has initiated a pilot project called Global Innovation & Technology Alliances (GITA) with a vision to strengthen India's innovation ecosystem and to enable effective institutional mechanism for driving innovation and provide end to end support for the same.

With the GDP growth touted as the slowest in a decade, how would the manufacturers react? Mr Nirmalya Banerjee, Business head, BMGI probed the audience with a teaser and asked them if it was through cutting costs? He said that in cutting the costs, solution is denied to the customer and it is the customer who stands to lose. The other option is to focus on growth and this growth is possible through innovation, he added. With the average company lifespan reducing consistently, the process of growth, Mr Banerjee said, can only be supported by innovation as he shared how innovation can be incubated in Indian manufacturers. He also presented the structure of Rapid Innovation Events (RIE), which is BMGI's unique methodology to bring concepts to action.

The key note address was delivered by Mr Sunil Sinha, CEO, Tata Quality Management Services. He shared that the ROI for innovation post the melt down in 2008 has been encouraging and sees no reason why the organizations wouldn't invest in innovation. He alerted on the traditional practices of being risk-averse, lengthy product development times and inadequate metrics for measuring improvements. Sharing the fact that about 1.8 bn new consumers will enter the world, 15 years from now, innovation has to be at the centre of strategy for organizations to grow. He shared the group's commitment to innovation when Tata Group Innovation Forum (TGIF), chaired by one of the directors of Tata Sons, started around 2007 to create an environment for fostering innovation and improve innovation capability of group companies. He outlined the challenges faced and initiatives taken by Tata to empower the line managers and bringing innovation across the hierarchy. He summarized what Mr Tata thought was the secret to innovation, 'Take up a seemingly impossible task and make a public announcement about it'. Mr Sinha concluded emphasizing the manufacturing industry to take more risks and celebrate failures.

The chief guest of the event, Mr Ajay Shankar, Member Secretary, National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council, Government of India echoed the fact that the wage arbitrage advantage is going to be short-lived urging the need to focus on the long term. He observes that while many successful global MNCs have their R&D centres in India, the products they develop are not for the Indian market. He points that this shows that India has the ecosystem and the infrastructure available, but this needs to be tapped and parallel systems need to be created. He echoed Mr Nirmalya Banerjee's thoughts on focusing on growth and not on cost cutting and urged the industry to look at innovation as the central theme. He signed off by saying that it is not only large enterprises like Tata that can have an infrastructure for innovation but all organizations must innovate for survival first and then for growth.

Mr Ramesh C Jain, Past Chairman, CII Haryana State Council & Former Group Vice Chairman, Eicher Group summarized the inaugural session and provided the concluding remarks, paving the way for the second session chaired by Mr K N Rattan, Former Executive Director, Shriram Pistons & Rings Ltd.

Speaking on the topic Intellectual Property (IP) and the way of fuelling innovation & growth, Mr Andy Sherman, Executive Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary, Dolby Laboratories, Inc (USA) shared how Dolby is changing the customer experience. He explained that the tone for innovation was set by the founder who began to think of ways in which the unwanted noise can be eliminated in a recording. He opined that in order to reinvest in the next cycle of innovation, one would look at protection of the intellectual property and monetizing the patent assets. Mr Sherman signed off by sharing the important questions that lead them to innovation which would be applicable to every business like 'What are the incentives to choose us to operate on a partnership and to view as an economic benefit to pay for the use of technology?', 'What are the types of relationships that we need with the partners?' to name a few.

The next speaker Mr Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO and co-founder of DataWind (Ltd), highlighted that innovation is not about creating breakthrough product, but about understanding the opportunity. He compared the growth of internet adoption and cell phone adoption in the world and pointed at the gap between the two that started to increase a few years ago and stands today at 3 billion people. Mr Tuli believes this is the largest opportunity that one can imagine and this gap is primarily because of affordability. He added that innovation requires understanding the point of pain and the customer difficulty that needs to be resolved. He went on to identify that an improvement in the product performance alone is not sufficient and innovation is only successful when the user consumes the product or service.

Mr Gautam Datta, Director, Marketing, Siemens Industry Software India, spoke largely about the initiatives most manufacturing organizations have taken in today's economy and how digital manufacturing can help in achieving manufacturing innovation. He spoke about leveraging digital technology available to shorten the design, simulation and piloting cycle so much that it would offer high flexibility in the process. How can innovation help organizations facing stiff growth challenges? Mr Vikram S Kasbekar, Senior Vice President & Head - Operations & Supply Chain, Hero Motor Corp Ltd., addressed this through his talk. Given the little difference between technologies in 2 wheelers or 4 wheelers, the challenge is creating value from various ideas that we have and do it really quick. Until and unless India looks at development on its own and not depend on others, we will not get far, he concluded.

Mr Nirmalya Banerjee flagged of the panel discussion on the topic 'Making India factory of the world - can innovation make that happen?' by putting across the following questions: 'We have the intellectual potential. Can we become hub of future manufacturing?' 'And are we going to beat China and emulate Germany in the east?' 'How and whether to make India as a manufacturing hub?'

The panel was resoundingly aligned in their thoughts that India doesn't have a choice but to become a hub because of the social dynamics prevalent. Mr. Tuli suggested taking advantage of the 1.2 billion population of India. He cited the example of India in 1983 when the economy was double the size of China and in 30 years since then, Chinese economy is 8 times the size of India by focusing on manufacturing. He reinforced saying that unless we start manufacturing locally, we won't be able to innovate and won't discover the hurdles and Innovation will reside somewhere else. Mr. Rattan suggested that the first thing that needs to be changed is the leadership at all levels since everyone talks about innovation but no one is ready to 'walk the talk'.

Nirmalya steered the discussion by pointing out that the west is known for their structured way of innovation. He went on to further pose the question of how can Indians who are known for their creativity channelize this to go to the next level. Also, as Jugaad innovation is usually triggered by crisis, what can be done to make it a habit? Further, is there a difference between the larger organizations and SMEs in the way they look at innovation? Mr. Vidyarthi responded by pointing out that Indians actually hate processes which compel them to use 'Jugaad' and unless we learn to adhere to best-in-class processes, it is difficult to become a manufacturing hub. Mr. Tuli stated the importance to learn to fail and willingness to take risks. He gave the examples of the introduction of the first version of Microsoft Windows as well as the Apple tablet that was decades back compared to their actual market release. He concluded by saying that the way to make innovation a natural thing and not a crisis-driven process is by stopping to penalize failures.

The concluding session focused on innovation beyond the product and the session chairman Mr Vishnupriya Sharma, Senior Consultant, BMGI set the context and introduced the speakers. The first speaker Mr Jai Chandra Jha, Vice President Manufacturing, National Engineering Industries, shared his views on business model innovation by stating that it articulates the logic in the business and looks at creating, capturing and delivering value to customers. Recounting the achievements of NEI, he shared eight segments of the canvas through which business model was looked at viz., key suppliers, key resources, key activities, cost structure, customer relationships, customer segments, distribution channels and revenue streams. He went on to describe specific actions taken by NEI under each of these segments and concluded by emphasizing that business model is perhaps more important than focusing on product and process innovation alone.

The next speaker Mr Manish Saxena, Country Manager Global Services - India, Tata Technologies Limited, articulated how technology can be leveraged to innovate. He identified two things which is a need in manufacturing facilities - for planning the operations and managing the operations. He signed off by saying that innovation plays the front end role and ensures that the technology is integrated for congruence and synergy in business and product strategy.

Mr Ashok Vardhan, Territory Manager - Asia Pacific, BD Group, Indo-US MIM Tec, showed what a process innovation would mean. He explained the Metal Injection moulding process that radically changes the metal forming process, the advantages of which is a high reduction in forming time, reduced number of process steps amongst others.

The last speaker of the event, Mr Pranava Tripathi, DGM - Strategy Management, Robert Bosch spoke about creating innovative organizations. He defined innovation as channelizing creativity towards the organizational mission and this channel needs to be protected and supported well through market intelligence, understanding the consumers of the product / services, understanding what technology is available. He opined that a strong innovative culture does not have the concept of a failure and cited the examples of Viagra and Post-it that were born out of failures. In order for the right environment for innovation, it should start from the top with leadership defining how much of the business should be a result of the innovation. He signed off by saying that innovative organizations would be flat where the ideas would directly reach the senior leadership.

About BMGI

BMGI is a global consulting firm that specializes in providing management consulting solutions in strategy, innovation, problem solving and business transformation. Headquartered in Longmont, USA, BMGI has offices in 13 countries around the globe. In India, BMGI is located in Mumbai.

BMGI's business strategy consultants work with organizations to build and execute successful strategy implementation and drive growth. BMGI leads in building a culture of innovation across the enterprise that transcends from top management to the lowermost execution level. BMGI partners with organizations in leveraging and promoting innovation. BMGI helps organizations solve problems harnessing the power of cutting-edge techniques. BMGI's problem solving capabilities have made it known world over as the best operations excellence consulting firm [http://www.bmgindia.com ].

BMGI with its deep understanding of changing trends in nature of markets, preferences of customers and expectations from stakeholders offer the business advisory services to its clients to help them align with the right designing and execution of strategy for successful businesses transformations.

A few major clients BMGI has worked with in India include Volkswagen, John Deere, Fiat, Daimler, Bajaj Auto, Reliance Industries, ITC, Vodafone, Asian Paints, L&T, Accenture, and Oracle.

Primary Media Contact: Vishnupriya Sharma, press@bmgindia.com, 91-22-40020045

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