Micro, small and medium-scale enterprises (MSMEs), which as part of the supply chain for several larger industries, need to focus on innovation, according to the speakers at Global Manufacturing Cluster Vision 2020.
The conference was organised here on Saturday by Texas Ventures and CODISSIA as part of INTEC 2014.
Viji Santhanam, chairman of Sundaram Finance and Managing Director of Brakes India, said for any system that manufacturing units will adopt to improve production, human resource is an important factor. Innovation comes from the workers and employees and they need to be multi-skilled.
FactorsFor the last two consecutive years, Indian economy has grown at less than five per cent and the share of manufacturing sector in the GDP came down.
In China, share of the manufacturing sector in its GDP is over 35 per cent. There are several factors that had affected the Indian manufacturing units – high inflation, slump in demand, infrastructure problems, drop in coal output, etc.
ChallengesThe challenge now is to reap the demographic dividend. In 2012, the country had 43 million MSMEs and 40 per cent of the country’s exports were by these units. MSMEs are an important link in the automotive supply chain.
Customers of the MSMEs expect from them competitive price, superior quality, deliver on time, and faster new product development. Apart from these, there are market and macro challenges such as frequent introduction of new models of vehicles, shorter product life cycle, increasing volatility in demand and commodity price, etc.
In such a scenario, companies need to focus on training and skill development, he said.
P. N. Balasubramanian, chairman of INTEC 2014, highlighted the importance of innovation in the manufacturing sector.
