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Ever-increasing customer expectations for high-quality products strengthen the drive towards manufacturing excellence, discover participants at the IMEA awards
New manufacturing standards were set on January 27, 2010, at the latest edition of The Economic Times India Manufacturing Excellence Awards (IMEA), held in partnership with Frost & Sullivan. The awards acknowledged and applauded the efforts of Indian manufacturing companies who achieved excellence in manufacturing, set standards which have led to higher levels of customer satisfaction and given a healthy return on total assets. In all, 137 companies participated in the process. Out of these, 63 companies were shortlisted based on an audit of 31 pre-graded checklist queries and 55 key operational and business matrices. The shortlisted companies’ plants were then physically assessed on 14 factors and scored on a maximum of 1,200 points. Twelve of the factors were assigned a 100 points each, and two other factors—process complexity and leadership commitment—were considered qualitatively for choosing the final winners. WABCO-TVS, won the India Manufacturing Excellence Award with the ‘Super Platinum’ distinction. Bajaj Auto Ltd, Chakan Plant was the first runner up, followed by Tetra Pak India Pvt Ltd, Pune.  Being the only event of its kind in India, IMEA has over the years attained a reputation for being an unbiased and credible evaluator of the supply-chain efficiencies of companies, especially with respect to their leanness and flexibility. IMEA has a robust, highly-acclaimed and updated assessment process derived from the best manufacturing practices globally. This process was conceptualised and incepted by Frost & Sullivan in 2004. Says Anand Rangachary, Managing Director, South Asia and Middle East, Frost & Sullivan, “For business policy deployment to be effective, it has to be ensured that three aspects are covered. First, it must be ensured that there is thorough micro deployment of macro business objectives in the supply chain, especially in the manufacturing entities where the desired value-add takes place. The second aspect is the adoption of benchmark practices, and the third is the ability to culturally align all concerned along the desired management philosophy.”The IMEA programme is aimed at precisely this. The objective quantification of levels of excellence helps improve supply chains and thus, gives immense benefit of participating in this highly credible and rigorous assessment procedure. |
