REGIONAL ACTIVITY

Northern Region

SEMINAR ON QUALITY & PRODUCTIVITY : LUDHIANA 20TH AUGUST 1999

Zonal co-ordinator Punjab Region, Mr Gursaran Singh, welcomed the delegates on behalf of Mr Deep Kapuria, Chairman ACMA (NR) who, unfortunately, was unable to attend. Mr Singh thanked ACMA (NR) and Mr J S Ryait, Executive Director, G S Auto International Ltd, for taking the initiative and coordinating the seminar.

In pursuit of excellence, Northern Region organised the programme with the objective of sharing Quality & Productivity experiences of member companies. To this effect, each of the four presentations by Mr. K. Satyanarayana. Head of Quality Shriram Pistons & Rings Ltd, dwelt on the singular theme of "Cost Reduction without sacrificing Quality"

Three more presentations were made by Mr. Pramod Chaddha, Manager Purolator India on "Inventory Management"; Mr. Sanjay Gupta, Manager (Quality Assurance) Jay Bharat Maruti Ltd on "Root Cause Analysis and Corrective Preventive Action" and Mr B B Gupta, Coordinator - Northern Region Quality Registration Services, UL India Pvt Ltd, focused on "QS 9000 & Its Benefits"

Excellent participation was seen at this programme, with more than 40 persons from 25 member companies, present. ACMA (NR) was, once again, requested to organise more similar programmes, benefiting the membership.

The Northern Region Office of ACMA wishes to thank Mr J S Ryait, Managing Director, G S Auto International Ltd, for successfully organising the seminar and very generously, agreeing to host the lunch.

Western Region

SEMINAR ON BUILDING EFFICIENT SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT :
12TH AUGUST, 1999

ACMA (WR) Chairperson, Mrs Pilloo Aga, welcoming Delegates to the Seminar, held in Mumbai on 12 August 1999, spoke of an era of globalisation and competition that the industry was passing through and of organisations finding it difficult to manage external and internal pressures of change. Quality, Productivity, Competitiveness, had become primary drivers of business successes as 'Buyers' were demanding more and more from 'Sellers'. Manufacturers, were opting to Benchmark their processes in search of Best Practices which would bring drastic improvements. This programme, therefore, was structured to, systematically, cover the changing industrial and competitive pattern of events in the auto component sector.

Conducting the programme, was Mr S S Patwardhan of PAT Consulting, Mumbai, who has had 27 years in this industry in various capacities, at home and abroad. Explaining that Supply Chain Management was an integrated business process involving Suppliers, Producers and Customers - understanding of which would enable entrepreneurs to enhance value addition and compete effectively Mr Patwardhan said that despite several programmes and lectures on the theory of change, few had attempted to focus on the practical side of 'change'. His programme emphasised, essentially, the practical aspect and was directed towards achieving expanded perspective to seek new ways of competing, in the Indian context. Case studies showed that different management concepts integrated by companies and applied to key business processes, successfully managed 'change'. The programme explained that Products Supply Chains created value and elaborated on how to leverage the chain for competing in the marketplace; learn to identify and eliminate wastes in organisations and simplify processes to enable improvement.

This Seminar was held in the ACMA (WR) Office conference room and the 36 participants present, gave an excellent feed-back.