Industry Samurai Awards &Conference 2021: A Report
The event, held virtually and spanning a week, provided insights on subjects ranging from aerospace to digital metaverse, and had speakers and dignitaries from various illustrious backgrounds participate from across India and the world. Aradhita Srivastava reports.
Dynamic Manufacturing India magazine organized the Industry Samurai Awards & conference 2021 from the 10th to the 17th of December. The conference’s participants included eminent personalities like Dr. Amar Patnaik, MP; Ambassador Akhilesh Mishra and the Consul-General of Japan Ms. Akiko Sugita.
Day 1 of the conference had Mr. Aanand Pandey, Editor, DMI talking to Ms. Bhavana Bindra, Managing Director of REHAU, South Asia, Mr. Amitabha Bandyopadhyay, Professor at IIT Kanpur, and Mr. Shailendra Goswami, Chairman, and Managing Director, Pushkaraj Group on “What Will It Take Indian Manufacturing to Build a Global Consumer Goods Brand”. The discussion started with the question what all does it take to create a global brand in manufacturing, to which Ms. Bindra said, “There is a ton of expenditure the big brands do in understanding and not just as a one-off but as a regular, almost like a habit, the kind of data and research they do in understanding their customer’s habits, their customer’s problems to be solved, their buying behaviors depending on what industry we are talking about. Most of the big brands have a feeling or they know the pulse of their customers and hence are able to continuously work on that.” Mr. Amitabha Bandyopadhyay added to this by saying, “My view is that you cannot become a cheaper China. To grab the marketplace what we need to aspire for is to become a more reasonably priced German or Swiss product and I think that we will be heading towards that.” Mr. Shailendra Goswami said, “We need a very solid and strongly designed and developed product if you really look at any of these global brands what did they have they had very strong patented product designs and products.”
Day 2 of the Industry Samurai Awards & conference 2021 had Mr. Gautam Dutta, Director of Marketing at Siemens Digital Industries Software, Mr. Yogesh Dadke, IT Leader at Adient, and Mr. Sameer Jindal, Director Engineering at MG Motors India on the panel for “Carmakers bid for a greener future”. Mr. Gautam Dutta made an insightful statement on the discussion: “If we have to continue to improve our contribution from automotive to our manufacturing GDP and to the global value chain we have to escalate and elevate our offerings to become smarter.”
The keynote on day 3 was delivered by Dr. Amar Patnaik, MP Rajya Sabha who made a profound statement on our industry leaders: “I think ultimately the industry leaders of ours who have sustained our economy for so long they have been there through the independence movement to the various revolutions we have had in agriculture revolution, the industrial revolution in the services revolution the contribution I think they have to now take charge they have to become bolder and conquer the world:”
On day 4 of the Industry Samurai Awards & conference 2021, the panel comprised Mr. Arjun Bajaj, Director at Videotex International, Mr. Devendra Gupta, Business Head at Indo Auto Tech, and Mr. Vipul Agarwal, Technical Specialist, Fusion 360 who talked on “Software Solutions for Competitive Edge in Manufacturing”. Mr. Arjun Bajaj said, “If any company is still using spreadsheets or registers, it is time for them to really upgrade themselves or in the coming years I don’t think they will be able to survive against other companies who are growing themselves, who are becoming aware and are willing to implement such software in the company. Whether it is an added cost I think it’s a must and I think it’s an investment that can help you get a much greater return in the coming years.” Mr. Vipul Agarwal added, “Autodesk was one of the first companies to introduce a subscription package. So, instead of paying for software that you own, it’s more of a subscription where you go ahead and pay for it every year. So, this is actually reducing the entry cost for manufacturers and designers.”
On the 14th of December, the panel comprising of Mr. Uma Maheshwar, Chief Consulting Engineer, GE Aviation, Mr.Seenivasan Balasubramanian, Chief Executive Officer at International Aerospace Manufacturing, and Mr. Surendra Vaidya, Vice president, and Business Head-PCS at Godrej discussed on the panel“The Role of Aerospace in India Growth Story”. Mr. Seenivasan Balasubramanian said “Sustainability is the need of the future; it is shifting technologies to new levels starting from hydrogen fuel. There are a lot of new engineering requirements that are going to evolve in the coming years. This is an opportunity where we can be a part of the value add.” Mr. Uma Maheshwar added to this, “There is a golden standard well-established success mantra all across the globe which is really about the pillars of supply chain success which involves private companies, public enterprises, government, and academia. These four parties have to come together and create the supply chain ecosystem.”
On the 15th of December, Ambassador Akhilesh Mishra, Ambassador of India to Ireland said in his Keynote Speech that Ireland was a great destination for Indian talent and had great similarities to India. He said, “I wish to urge my friends in India to look at Ireland as the only English-speaking country of the European Union after Brexit.”He further commented on the Covid crisis’ impact on the manufacturing sector, “It is critical for a country of India’s size to ensure shorter supply chains and more resilient supply chains. That will require us to make maximum use of local resources. I think this is a historic time for us. Coronavirus has given us a jolt and a wakeup call to completely retransform, reorient and restructure our thinking.”
On Day 6, the panel on “Chip Famine Causes and Learning’s for India’s Manufacturing and Supply Chain Industry” met comprising Mr. Yogesh Dadke, IT leader at Adient, and Mr. Magesh Srinivasan, the Founder of datamentor.co.in. Mr. Magesh, an industry leader commented on India’s potential: “We must remember that the design powerhouse of the world is India, so do we have the intellectual gray matter content in India to make this happen? Yes. Then what is required? Money is a function of business plan and when it comes to investment into futuristic national strategic projects it has to be an investment of the government in partnership with the public and private enterprises so it has to be a public-private partnership framework with which India is working.” Mr. Yogesh Dadke added, “It’s in a seesaw that every car manufacturer will have to play that in a role of thought process and that’s where the leadership roles strategies are going to play a very wider role.”
Day 7 had a panel on “Digitalization in the Machine Tool Industry: Advantages and Challenges” meet comprising Mr.Ramnath D N, Chief Manager, Makino Software Development Center (MSDC), Makino India Pvt. Ltd; Mr.Sreekanta Aradhya, Chief Expert in Industry 4.0, Robert Bosch Engineering services and Business solutions and Mr. Neeraj Singh, Principal, DuPont sustainable solutions. Mr. Sreekanta Aradhya started the discussion by saying, “The whole concept of industry 4.0, if you see the thought people which was published 10 years back was to bring jobs back to manufacturing in Germany, so that means developed countries are looking at getting the jobs back, getting manufacturing back. It means every company globally, small scale, medium scale is going to the digitization and that is a threat to you. So how do you avoid this threat? You digitize, you bring in this solution. Mr. Singh added, “You know you have to start deciphering the different layers of industry 4.0 like starting from the bottom to the topmost layer in terms of applications of various disruptive and emerging technologies. You also need to figure out that if you have the right skill then who’s the one who’s going to be your champion. If you don’t should you partner with somebody to build that ecosystem? And then you have that overall roadmap of a digital project, a roadmap which you would drive for better efficiency or a better ROI.”
On Day 8, there was a discussion on“The Pandemic’s Impact on India’s Healthcare Supply chain” with Dr. Ravi Prakash Mathur, Vice President and Global Head of Logistics and Supply Chain Excellence at Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, Hyderabad. It was an extremely insightful discussion on how vaccines, medicines and other medical equipment’s supply chain had been impacted because of the COVID crisis.
On the same day, Mr. Puneet Badrinath, Founder of Fabrik shared a presentation, “Digital revenues in the meta-verse.” He shared many actionable insights on how the metaverse and humanity are co-evolving. “We’re fundamentally rethinking how content is consumed. For thousands of years, we’ve looked at our evolution where people, early humanity, they started writing on walls, tablets and then they moved to you know papyrus and paper and we’ve read all of that in our history books to where we are today which is computer screens, tablets, and smartphones. The form factor is still 2D, right, so it’s always been to you. You consume everything it is in 2D and 3D was only the theaters with these special glasses that you would wear on very rare occasions right but that’s changed now which means humanity will naturally progress into the realm of 3D. It is 3Dwhich would be the default way of consuming information so that was a realization that dawned on us honestly fairly early in our journey and hence you know we are in this position where we can impact the way people can consume 3D information.”
The last day of the conference concluded with the Industry Samurai Awards which had two categories: the supply chain and manufacturing. The Jury panel for the awards comprised eminent thought leaders from industry and academia. In addition to DMI editor Aanand Pandey, jury members included Ms. Bhairavi Jani, Chairperson & Founder, IEF Entrepreneurship Foundation & Executive Director, SCA Group; Dr. Rakesh Sinha. Founder & CEO, Reflexive Supply Chain Solutions; Dr. Nikhil Agarwal, CEO, IIT Kanpur (FIRST & C3i Hub); Dr. Ranjit S. Patil, Head – Dept of ME, Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani, Goa Campus, and Prof. Debmallya Chatterjee, Professor and Head – Operations and Supply Chain Area at S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research.
Dr. Rakesh Sinha, presenting the Digital Samurai Award in Supply Chain said that he particularly liked the winner, Ace Manufacturing Systems Ltd.’s entry on the vendor portal which is in the spirit of true partnership with vendors. Ms. Shilpa Bhirangi of Pragati Engineering Belgaum Pvt. Ltd, the winner of the Performance Samurai Award in Manufacturing, said that during the pandemic, communicating with suppliers was extremely difficult but the team managed it which led them to receive this award. Dr. Nikhil Agawal, who presented the Digital Samurai for Manufacturing, said that there is a great need for celebrating innovative companies in the sector, and events like this one go a long way in serving that aim.
(‘The Winners of Industry Samurai Awards 2021’ for a complete list of awards and their winners.)
WINNERS OF INDUSTRY SAMURAI AWARDS 2021
MANUFACTURING
Performance Samurai in Manufacturing
Pragati Engineering Belgaum Pvt. Ltd – (In the SME/MSME Category)
Indo Autotech Limited (In the Large Enterprise Category)
Service Samurai in Manufacturing
Makino India Pvt Ltd
Sustainability Samurai in Manufacturing
PGE Industries Pvt Ltd
Digital Samurai in Manufacturing
m2nxt Solutions Private Limited (In the SME category)
Jindal Stainless Limited (In the Large Enterprise category)
Innovation Samurai in Manufacturing
m2nxt Solutions Private Limited (In the SME category)
Huntsman International (India) – In the LE category
Shogun Samurai in Manufacturing
Mr Yogesh Dadke , Asia Pacific Information Technology leader at Adient.
SUPPLY CHAIN
Performance Samurai in Supply Chain
Ace Manufacturing Systems Ltd.
Sustainability Samurai in Supply Chain
Kama Ayurveda
Digital Samurai in Supply Chain
Ace Manufacturing Systems Ltd.
Shogun Samurai in Supply Chain
Mr. Saurabh Sehgal, Head Supply Chain, Kama Ayurveda
Do Visit – www.Industrysamurai.com
