Need of the hour commitment towards operational excellence

Exploring strategies, processes and technologies to drive excellence initiatives and continuous improvements.

By Shivani Mody

It was a moment to cherish, as the industry was seen speaking about their best practices for operational excellence, while the solution providers were seen explaining they're tried and tested products for the industry. An intense discussion between the speakers and the audience was noteworthy during the OPEX Summit, organised on 22 and 23 December in Mumbai.

Moreover, to drive operational excellence in any organisation, benchmarking against the best practices is a must, was part of the discussion, during the conference, conceptualised by Invention Business Intelligence.

Also for any operational excellence initiative to be successful, it has to be an organisation-wide initiative not only limited to manufacturing and commitment has to be driven from the corporate level, were some of the ideas shared during the conference.

The conference focused on exploring strategies and continuous improvements, had a participation of a good mix of pharma and chemical companies. IT companies, as part of the speakers, gave their views on the importance of IIOT as part of operational excellence. Few of the speakers also touched upon the nuances of Industry 4.0 and automation technologies and their importance for the industry.

One of the key features for the conference was the roundtable discussion between the user industry and the solution providers.The one-on-one interaction gave an opportunity for the solution providers to understand the pain points and product requirements of the user industry.

Speaker Quotes

Our Operational Excellence Model is based on integrated management of business processes, consistent data across the organisation and skilled people are the keys to delivering quality products (On Time In Full) with highest reliability and productivity 

Harshal Joshi – Head Operational Excellence, South Asia, BASF. 

Cost of poor quality is a big concern and one can achieve transformational opportunities by integrating lean & six sigma 

R Aravindan, Senior Director, Head – OMS & OE, Dr Reddys Laboratories Ltd.

As we move towards Industry 4.0, which is based on the use of cyber-physical systems, the complexity of systems will also keep on increasing. Most important amongst this is a clear top-down approach, going for a change in the mindset 

S Vaidyanathan, Assistant Vice President – Corporate World Class Manufacturing, Aditya Birla Group.

While looking at the employee engagement, daily performance dialogue should be mandatory and even spot recognition could go a long way in encouraging workforce 

Renil Gogri, Whole Time Director, Aarti Industries Ltd. 

Some challenges that need to be addressed during industrial automation in the chemical industry can be improving awareness?; changing biased attitudes; considering return on investment?; ease of technology transfer; and industry-academia collaboration 

Rakesh Goyal, Vice President – Operations, National Peroxide Ltd. 

Having some form of automation & data availability should definitely be a part of the approach in adopting digital technologies in the chemicals sector 

Ankur Pancholi, Solutions Architect-IA, Rockwell Automation. 

Most important aspect of the solutions for the industry would be to maximise laboratory productivity by optimum utilisation of resources

Franklin Benedict, Laboratory Productivity Specialist, Agilent Technologies. 

Digital Transformation has become the top most priority for companies. And the focus is to apply the digital technologies to transition the business models into ‘Hyper-Connected & Technology driven’ solutions. Also, big data analytics solutions are now moving into consumerizing analytics for every role. 

Rajesh Ramachandran, Joint Managing Director and Global CTO, Rolta India Ltd.

 The chemicals industry has entered a new age (Chemical 4.0) in which digitisation is one of the driving forces. Some of the digital disruptions will be digital technology as revenue enhancer, for business model disruptions and next-gen productivity 

Manish Tiwari, Global Practice Head, Tech Mahindra Ltd.

For operational excellence, companies must practice the culture of continuous improvement. One of the ways to improve the process can be to delete obstructions and eliminate waste in the flow.

Jayanth Murthy, Founding Director, Kaizen Institute - India and Africa (Networking Partner for the conference).

Read More: Need of the hour commitment towards operational excellence