Published on December 08, 2020
Tata Steel Thailand’s operational excellence framework is one year old; however, it was focused primarily on current scenarios and issues. Since continuous improvement is an integral part of the company’s culture, it wanted to adopt a forward-looking approach on operational excellence. Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG) supported the organisation by facilitating knowledge sharing of best practices with Titan on November 3, 2020.
Titan’s learnings
Panneer Selvam C, Head - Operational Excellence, Titan, and Aanusha Padmini, Assistant Manager, Titan, provided details about the company’s journey of operational excellence.
The duo started with why Titan had felt the need for formal processes around excellence. Around four years ago, Titan’s growth and operating performance had become stagnant. That was when the leadership decided to implement initiatives to foster operational excellence in people.
Accordingly, Titan’s organisational structure was transformed into a functional structure with all areas covered under the purview of operational excellence. The culture of operational excellence was built around two effective and simple inspirations.
Inspiration 1:
Daily Work Management and Policy Deployment are two main pillars for Titan. The practices of Daily Work Management were given emphasis. These included daily routines, self-development, team development and daily improvement.
Inspiration 2:
A culture of improvement was established, and it was mandated that every senior employee should dedicate half of their time towards improvement initiatives.
These inspirations helped and the operational excellence framework has since permeated the entire organisation, with the focus on excellence becoming a way of life in Titan. The three pillars of Titan’s operational excellence framework are:
Policy Deployment:
- Objective cascade of KPIs across hierarchy
- PRIDEM model to align KPIs and initiatives along with resource plan
- Establishing structured connect across levels
Daily Work Management
- Integrated approach to business plan cascading and review process
- Establishing clarity among frontline and divisional goals
- CMO’s review of the War room
Improvement Agenda
- Top-down breakthrough innovation projects
- Bottom-up ground-level improvements
- Visibility to improvements and timely reward and recognition
In addition, excellence is driven through interventions such as capability enhancement (examples are the manufacturing excellence champions programme and the sourcing excellence programme), lean principles, implementation of the 5S culture throughout the organisation and TMP implementation.
Next steps
The delegation from Tata Steel Thailand showed a keen interest in establishing a structure for the capability development of key managers as a part of its operational excellence initiative. It was also interested in implementing stretched targets for driving excellence.
Participant speak
The session provided critical insights into how Titan has ventured to improve operational excellence. The ups and downs of Titan’s operational excellence journey were an eye-opener. Through such engagements, Group companies desirous of accelerating on their operational excellence journey can benefit from the experiences of companies which have tasted success. I acknowledge and appreciate TBExG’s role in facilitating the interaction.
Amit Khanna, Vice President – Business Excellence and Shared Services, Tata Steel Thailand