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Friday, August 04, 2006

MANUFACTURING - NEW RULES OF THE GAME

Can India replicate the magic which China performed in the manufacturing industry?
Gone are those days when “Manufacturing” was limited to a factory or shop floor where machines were manufactured. Modern day manufacturing is now more linked with international trade and national ecosystem. Retailing, shipping, food processing and packaging industry and several service sectors are now looking towards the theories of manufacturing and operations for efficient performance and value addition.
Thus, if India has to catch up with China in the manufacturing, it has to undergo a complete transformation in the bureaucratic structure of organizations. Getting used to the complexity of the global competitiveness and maintaining sustained competitive advantage are important. Getting habituated to concepts like “IT-enabled modernization of customs and port operations”, and “optimal supply chain solutions for infrastructure development”, calls for a complete transformation of work culture in the Indian context especially in the public sector. Better concepts of resource management have to be applied in the industrial context. Innovation can no longer be neglected. Concepts like lean manufacturing which are limited to international auto subsidiaries should be extended to other sectors also. The magic of effective supply chain management should be appreciated and applied in the real context. Though all these don’t look so easy at the moment, yet experts are quite upbeat on the prospects of India picking up in manufacturing.
A high level international summit on manufacturing (Summit on Indian Manufacturing Competitiveness) is currently underway in ISB, with global manufacturing heavyweights and industry leaders delivering their experience. The presentations of the host of CXOs and the top professors provided a unique opportunity to get an idea of the strategies adopted by the top manufacturing organizations. It is a great experience to learn the strategies which companies like Crompton Greaves, Deloitte, Jindal Steels, Saint Gobain Glasses and Sundaram Clayton followed which provided them with the competitive advantage. The following link provides further details of the seminar.
http://www.isb.edu/campussbuzz1/SummitonIndianManufacturing_Competitiveness.html

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