Today's manufacturing plants are all about centralisation of functional areas such as IT, procurement, warehousing, and even HR and accounting. In this scenario, how is the role of the ‘plant head' evolving? Ghosh says that centralisation of functional areas like IT, HR, and accounting helps in relieving the plant head of some of these activities.

"Most important part of this is to define the process well and help the centralised systems take over. Input data related to these functions must be provided by the plant team and the importance of the same should be communicated well. Identification and focus on key indices, which are controlled by the plant team, but measured and reported by the central head office team, is crucial."

Ghosh is happy that today, many of these activities are being completely outsourced by organisations. "This is welcome from cost control and operational hassle point of view. However, proper definition of processes and control points is very important to ensure success," he says.

With increasingly intense competition, quality plays a key role in differentiating manufacturers and their products in the market. While metrics like productivity and efficiency are important within a manufacturing organisation, what the customer values most is quality. But many times quality is sacrificed to cut costs or to ensure productivity.

In this light, what are Ghosh and his facility doing to build quality management within the manufacturing system? "Disa equipment is considered to be premium quality and expected to offer premium performance. This puts lot of responsibility on the shoulders of the entire team. A plant is the final gatekeeper of the product going out to customers and must play crucial role in ensuring ‘nothing passes our gate that is not worth carrying our name."

With growing competition, quality of everything a plant does has become more important and Ghosh believes that it starts with the mindset of people. "At Disa we always encourage complete ownership of any activities, be it manufacturing of equipment or preparing a drawing or making a purchase order." The person responsible for an activity is identified, given complete authority and freedom to make decisions, and held fully responsible for the outcome.