Nirmalya Banerjee, Business Head, BMGI, speaking at the Manufacturing Innovation Conclave

Some key takeaways from the panel discussion:

• Innovation is definitely the approach to provide cost effective solutions and capex/opex business models.
• There are abundant opportunities and it's important to tap the same by understanding latent needs of the customer.
• Building robust product development processes.
• Imbibing cultural change of thinking process, right from schools with industry- university collaboration.
• Innovation continually happens in a company.

Ashok Wadhawan, President- Manufacturing Business, Punj Lloyd Group welcomed the guests to the next session to speak about how they perceived the impact of creative ideas in business growth.

Rajiv Bajaj, General Manager, India, Stratasys AP Ltd, shared his insights on how additive manufacturing is helping companies push the limits of innovation while reducing costs, streamlining operations and accelerating time to market in his talk on 'Push the limits' of innovation with 3D Printing through videos and examples. He left the audience pondering with his video on how 3D printing converted dreams to reality.

Could we imagine not using stainless steel today? Yatinder Suri, Managing Director & Country Head, Outokumpu India, in his talk on innovation and growth of the organisation, spoke about the success story of stainless steel. He expressed how corrosion of iron led to the existence of the stainless steel industry. It's a myth that innovation is expensive. He narrated how Outokumpu emerged as one of the largest producers of stainless steel and the products application as of today has no boundaries.

Innovation doesn't just happen. Innovation happens and many often the idea is not even converted into reality. Ibadat Singh, Vice President - Operations, DataWind, in his talk on Leveraging Creativity into Product Reality, explained how Data Wind captured the 2G-network unavailability in most parts of the country. He explained how low price was not a strategy and revolutionising the same was the key.

Vinod K Pandita, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, PMC India in his talk on innovation to reduce product life cycle development time, shared that reducing the PLM has been a key challenge for most manufacturing companies, especially the OEMs and SMEs, which have to thrive despite the challenging economic conditions.

Shailendra Singh, General Manager, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, in his speech on innovative methods in material handling innovations, shared examples of innovation from his experience that emerged from the bottom of the pyramid that included deploying energy-free mechanisms, gravity feed mechanisms, and simplicity in stock visibility.

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