Manufacturing in India

Manufacturing in India

by Simon Dartford, Priyanka Giri, Pat Kiranantawat, Jessica Smith, Tina Syme, Lingzi Xue

After a long over-night 12 hour sleeper train journey with the locals, we arrived in Chennai (a highly recommended way to travel in India).

Industrial manufacturing is a major growth sector for the Indian economy with diverse companies including those engaged in manufacturing of machinery and equipment, electrical and metal products, cement, building and construction material, rubber and plastic products and automation technology products.

We visited two businesses that are part of the automotive business chain. The first one was at Mahindra World City, specifically the Mahindra Group’s R&D facility in Mahindra Research Valley on the edge of Chennai.

We were thoroughly impressed with the culture of Mahindra group's R&D team and their corporate social responsibility programmes.

While their site is already impressive, they are still undergoing improvements and to support the growing activities of the Mahindra Group that operates in 18 industries across seven business sectors – namely Automobiles, Defence, Farm Equipment, Real Estate, IT and Leisure & Hospitality.

We then visited IP Rings in the afternoon. They are a light/heavy engineering company that specialise in piston rings and diffs for cars.

They have a truly impressive customer portfolio ranging from major US/European brand, including Ford, to Asian brands such as Suzuki, Hyundai, and also all Indian car manufacturers including their major Indian customer, Mahindra and Mahindra.

Both Mahindra and IP Rings demonstrate two important strategies in the manufacturing industry in India. They are focused on innovation (Mahindra's R&D facility) and operating efficiency and effectiveness.

Mahindra demonstrated the importance of being innovative and the focus on the internal market has really paid off for them, while IP Rings clearly demonstrated systems thinking and great visual management processes in their manufacturing process.

If people are still thinking Indian companies are not innovative and inefficient, think again! I would highly encourage these people to come to India and get a feel for the reality.