Guest Column

Key to going global
There are many facets to being competitive. Manufacturing is one such facet.In fact, it is the bed-rock on which competitiveness rests. Barring the service industry, no other industry moves without it. Indian companies, in my opinion, must look beyond India for growth. And the first step towards that is to have a grip over manufacturing. At Sundaram Fasteners Limited, we undertook the Total Productive Maintenance or TPM programme in 1995. And since then, the company has received the TPM Excellence Award in 1998 and recently the Best of Best Suppliers award from General Motors North America. Our company supplies radiator caps to GM. SFL was the first company to receive ISO 9002 way back in 1990.

In order to become a global player, a company has to address three key issues quality, consumer satisfaction and lowest possible cost of production. While TPM assures you of the lowest cost of production, quality in our case was ensured through the ISO 9002 certification and consumersatisfaction was looked at through re-engineering. There are global standards to measure world-class performance. For instance, to be a first-class player, the quality rejects should be less than 500 parts per million, less than 1,000 parts per million to be a second-class player and 2,000 to be a third-class player. Similarly, the utilised capacity for a first-class company has to be 90 per cent or above, 75 per cent for the second-class and 55 per cent for a third-class company. TPM also means total profit management, that can be achieved through total perfect manufacturing, which in turn can be achieved through total productive management or total people management. Companies must strive to achieve zero breakdown levels, zero quality defects and zero accidents. Interestingly, zero is the only number that is not negotiable.

One of the pillars of the TPM process is autonomous maintenance of equipment. In the case of SFL, operators maintain the equipment themselves and become proficient in equipmentoperation and maintenance. Planned maintenance, on the other hand, is aimed at reducing breakdowns to zero and to maintain that level. Another aspect of TPM is skill development of the operators so that they can identify defects, prevent breakdowns and eliminate operating mistakes. By looking into safety, health and environmental issues, companies can achieve zero accident levels in their plants and attain zero health hazard levels. Companies must establish inspection standards, make machines clean and easy to inspect. Over the last four years, SFL has identified 40,000 abnormalities in all its plants. Every company must address the nitty-gritties, because without it, there can be no global competitiveness.

Prior to 1995, SFL had 200 breakdowns per month. Since April 1997, there have been no breakdowns in any machine in any factory. SFL has also introduced the concept of challenging the lunch-hour. While the workers go for lunch, the machines keep running and the workers come back and collect the product.This concept can be extended to nighttime too, it8217;s not impossible. Through TPM, SFL has lowered manufacturing cost by 13 per cent, achieved zero per cent consumer complaint level and inventories are now down to 40 per cent.All companies must encourage suggestions from employees. These are mostly valuable and enthuse the employees. This is another important aspect of being globally competitive. And finally, the secret to being competitive lies in knowing what the customer wants even before the customer says what he wants.

The author is Chairman and Managing Director, Sundaram Fasteners Limited. Excerpts from his speech made at a CII seminar