The Hindu Business Line : The zeal to excel

FROST & Sullivan India Manufacturing Excellence Awards (IMEA) recognises and applauds efforts of companies towards achieving excellent-to-world class manufacturing status. It also recognises excellence in manufacturing practices that lead to high levels of customer satisfaction and ROTA.

There are three basic categories of the awards for IMEA 2004: Large Enterprises that comprises companies with over Rs 100 crore annual turnover, Emerging Businesses that covers companies with less than Rs 100 crore turnover and the automatic (sector specific) industry.

The sub-categories (within each of the three basic categories) include Corporate Award (displaying excellence across most of its plants), the Golden Award (overall facility winner), Cost Leadership (scoring most on efforts to control costs/eliminate NVA), Quality Leadership (scoring most on its focus on quality), First to-Market (scoring most on flexibility of operations) and Customer Focus (scoring most on customer focus).

Awards assessment process

Applications with completed self-assessment dockets (submitted by the respective companies) were reviewed by members of the Awards Committee. The committee members evaluated each application for milestone achievements, besides qualification of their composite score for further consideration. Applicants meeting the committee's expectations were short-listed for a site visit.

Site visits (for the specified facility) were conducted, typically extending over 2-3 days between July 16 and October 31. Preliminary scores were communicated at the end of the site visit.

The awards model judges on 11 factors associated with manufacturing excellence and is scored on maximum of 1100 points. The criteria for assessment include:

1. Layout & MHS (100 points)

2. Focus on Customers (100 points)

3. Orderliness, Safety & Environment (100 points)

4. Internal Competence (100 points)

5. Visual Management (100 points)

6. Quality Systems (100 points)

7. Scheduling Systems (100 points)

8. Supply Chain (100 points)

9. Inventory Levels (100 points)

10. Equipment up-time (100 points)

11. Operational Flexibility (100 points)

Indian Manufacturing Excellence Award (IMEA)-2004 is an effort by Frost & Sullivan to applaud the best amongst Indian Manufacturing.

IMEA 2004 serves as a platform through which Indian Industry can be showcased and presented to the world. IMEA 2004 elicited 127 applications that resulted in 34 sites being short-listed for facility visits. This included a mix of applications across various sub sectors such as automotive, electronics etc.

The important parameters being `extent and balance' in growth of these manufacturing facilities. The green circle indicates a truly world class facility against which the red circle indicates the score obtained by the assessed facility. (Each of the facility assessed has been given a feedback along these lines and recommendations on the gaps that need to be addressed within their systems)

Analysis of the data across facilities followed the site visits. A compilation and findings of the same has been outlined below. Also specific compilations have been made available industry wise to benchmark best practices in Automotive, Process, Auto-ancilliary and Electronic Sectors.

The average score of IMEA 2004 is 707 out of a maximum of 1100 points which corresponds to having made a significant progress towards becoming lean.

The score and pattern of radar indicate that good Indian companies are clearly on their way to being world class. Today, one sees a significant gap in the relative excellences between themselves and world-class facilities. The "balance" in growth along all the desirable parameters indicates that Good Indian facilities have their ear on the ground and have clearly understood what it takes to be world class. Seeing suhc a concentric blue circle brings immense pleasure and pride to us!

Companies to cover the gap have triggered many initiatives. Focus areas such as TPM, 5S, e-Procurement and Six Sigma initiatives are helping companies in effecting quantum improvements in their operational excellence.

The above graph that details the gap between the top 3 companies and the worst 3 companies indicate that the main factors that distinguish good companies from the not-so-good companies are Focus on Customers, Orderliness, Safety & Environment, Layout & Space Use, Material Handling Systems, Operational Flexibility and deployment of Quality Systems. Of course, other factors matter too, but to a lesser extent.

Benchmark Practices:

During the course of the awards, it appears that Industries demonstrating an urgency and zeal to excel are the ones that have the imperative need to export or the compulsion to deal with highly quality/cost/delivery conscious multinationals.

One also needs to look more closely at the possibility of cheaper imports driving the need to resort to cost cutting but that need not always result in manufacturing excellence.

Certain benchmark practices have been observed in the assessed companies and IMEA would like to place them on record.

While an automobile giant displayed a benchmark deployment of Balanced Scorecard , there were other instances of excellence in areas such as New Product Development, Productivity improvement through automation, Technology Forecasting, Depl0yment of ERP in manufacturing, Deployment of e-manufacturing, Six Sigma, Bar codes, Kanban, kaizen, poka yoke, etc and all these practices are being compiled and documented in the IMEA's India Manufacturing Trends Report, to be released soon December 9).

Of course, what stands out is that the automotive industries and auto ancillaries are way ahead of the others. The query that comes naturally to one is will the others catch up in IMEA 2005?

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