‘Indian manufacturing should emulate German, Japanese practices’

The Indian manufacturing sector should emulate the manufacturing practices in Germany and Japan to emerge globally competitive, says Surjit Banerjee, Professor (Operations Management), University of Warwick and Executive Director, WMG Education.

Sharing his insights about India, Banerjee, who had worked in various capacities in India before leaving the country in 2002 to join academia, said “manufacturing has been moving to India and China in the last 10 years and India has started to prove itself in this space.”

This correspondent caught up with Banerjee at the EKKI Pump manufacturing facility at Ganapathy in Coimbatore.

“India has several advantages such as labour cost arbitration, manpower availability, a huge domestic market, and the fact that the Government is making attempts towards doing business at ease in India. The outlook is positive.

“But you can't be laid back. The manufacturing sector here has to rise to global standards both in quality and pricing,” Banerjee said adding “WMG, which is part of Warwick University, is binding partnerships with a number of companies in India by mentoring and offering education programmes here.”

WMG has partnered with two IITs — Kharagpur and Bhubaneshwar.

WMG Manufacturing Group, he said, plans to start a joint doctoral programme with IIT-Kharagpur. The programme has been agreed upon and processes are being worked out for the necessary approvals, he said.

Answering a query, he said “historically, people from India have underplayed themselves. They need to approach overseas partners for such alliances work better towards bridging cultural differences.”