Overhaul labour laws, land norms and boost infra to revive manufacturing: SKF India

To reinvigorate India’s manufacturing industry, there is an urgent need to overhaul labour laws, ease archaic rules governing land acquisition and rapidly improve the country’s infrastructure, Sushil Joshipura, Managing Director, SKF India.

This sector has set itself some tough targets in the National Manufacturing Policy—25% of GDP by 2022 and the creation of some 70 million jobs—and these reforms are a must to achieve these goals, he added. To try to revive a struggling industry (growth rate has gone from 10% to 1% in the last few years), the manufacturing sector needs to position itself differently from the likes of China, which have a dominant position in the industry.

“We need to move from a mindset of made in India to created in India for the manufacturing industry,” he said. He was speaking as the chief guest at India Manufacturing Excellence Awards, presented by The Economic Times in Association with Frost & Sullivan.

The manufacturing sector will have another difficult headwind to negotiate to navigate as it seeks to make this transformation. In a panel discussion on manufacturing – the next orbit, held at the awards, Aroop Zutshi, Global President and Managing Director, Frost & Sullivan reckoned that the sector would need to manage in a perhaps permanently global economy.

“Volatility is here to stay, we have seen unprecedented disruption and collapse,” he said. “Companies are struggling to adapt to these changes.” He reckoned that as long as companies stuck to the old way of doing things— and assumed it was business as usual— they would struggle in this market.

Instead, Dilip Sawhney, Managing Director, Rockwell Automation, argued that companies need to be nimbler and enhance their productivity to stay competitive. “Companies need to learn to do more with less,” he added.

“You need to be completely focused on your customer and drive programs around capabilities that help differentiate yourself.” What makes this economy even trickier is that the effect of a slowdown isn’t even; instead it is lumpy and some industries can expect to be hot more than others.

Gauging where you stand and changing your business model accordingly will help you survive and thrive. Even as the industry debates measures to reignite growth, many people are thinking ahead about how to make this growth sustainable.

For example, Hindustan Unilever, the consumer goods behemoth, closely monitors and measures its sustainability initiatives, according to Pradeep Banerjee, Executive Director, Supply Chain, for the firm. In the long term, a vibrant manufacturing sector is critical for the vitality of an economy, said Shrijeet Mishra, COO, Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd.

“For India to progress, manufacturing has to lead the way,” he added. The longterm success of manufacturing, he contended, will be determined by those companies, which can devise new and innovative business models.

Awards were presented in three categories – Gold, Platinum and Super Platinum. HUL, Amli Silvassa factory and its Silvassa detergent factory and Fiat India won the Super Platinum awards.