Titan Jewellery – Making Quantum Leaps in Operational EfficienciesOperational Innovation
The Integrated Supply Chain Management (IScM) is its nerve-center, focusing on end-to-end sourcing, manufacturing, front-end and reverse supply chain.
The Challenge
The first leap for IScM was bouncing back from a state of severe crisis. In the year 2002, an international consultant engaged by the company to rejig their strategy had recommended the closure of the jewellery manufacturing plant. Driven by this survival crisis and the desire to prove themselves, the division climbed back with a series of improvements and innovation initiatives. Over the next 10 years, the journey for IScM was one of steady progress & stability, contributing to the growth of business.
Mr. L. R. Natarajan, former Chief Manufacturing Officer of Titan IScM, realized that more and more continuous improvements were no longer enough – it was time for a quantum leap, an orbit-shift in operations. And to make this happen, Innovation could not be limited to just a select few individuals within the division – they had to create a climate of ‘innovation anywhere and everywhere’. It was with this need in mind that Titan approached Erehwon.
The Transformation
Transforming Operations with the Innovation School
The innovation school is a high intensity, high energy format in which employees work on critical operational innovation areas. They take on impossible challenges, conceive breakthrough solutions, prototype and execute them.
Every year, the IScM leaders identify the innovation opportunity areas. These opportunities emanated from areas where a breakthrough would create a quantum leap, areas where operations is sup-optimal or long unsolved problems.
Team members are identified for each challenge. The team members could be from the natural team working on the opportunity area day-to-day, having natural stakes or could be a cross functional team, depending on the nature of the challenge and the domain expertise needed to solve it. The Functional Heads act as mentors to the team during the course of the entire innovation journey.
Upon completion of the prototypes, the teams converge together in a high energy live-concourse where they showcase their solutions and prototypes to the larger stakeholders of the organization.
The Pursuit of Innovation Challenges through the Innovation Boot Camp™
To help Titan IScM unleash quantum leap in operations, Erehwon created a customised intervention – The Innovation Boot Camp™. It was christened Titan Innovation School of Management. In the 4 rounds of Innovation Boot Camp, led and facilitated by Erehwon, about 180 employees have taken on and solved about 70 Orbit-shifting challenges and created about 12 first to the world innovations – across both products and processes.
The Impact Created
The Innovation School of Management had been successful, and a visible shift in mindset was apparent amongst the manufacturing team. These shifts have fundamentally changed the way the operations team now go about their usual business – their thinking has shifted from an incremental to a quantum.
Over the course of the four Innovation Boot Camps, Titan had managed to realize benefits on a scale they hadn’t even conceived before.
- Several first to the world industry innovations were created.
- A 420X leap in the productivity of a globally benchmarked process – from 5 products a day to 8 products a minute.
- One of the teams has increased the capacity of the plant by three times without adding any manpower with a portfolio of solutions which would be able to increase it by ten times.
- Doubling the yield of the casting process, for the first time in the world.
- Eliminating the need of a quality process that was considered critical, while still setting a global reference point in quality, leading to a saving of ₹86 Cr.
- 60% of the workforce are now Innovators.
- 70+ innovation challenges successfully resolved.
- 20% of the divisions profits now come from manufacturing innovation
Engage With Erehwon
Have a challenge that you would want to be solved differently? Want to know more about Erehwon and its work? Or explore how you could take up Orbit-shifting in your Organization?, do get in touch with us and lets have a great conversation.