Tata Steel has been awarded the Best Integrated Steel Plant in India for the year 2001-2002. Dr. T. Mukherjee, DMD (Steel), Tata Steel and Mr. Raghunath Pandey, President, TWU received the award from the Hon’ble Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh at the Prime Minister’s Trophy award function at the RINL plant at Vishakhapatnam today. Asia's first and India's largest integrated steel plant in the private sector, Tata Steel has been conferred this award for the fifth time and four times in succession since the institution of the award.

The award conferred annually by the Prime Minister of India, includes a trophy and a cash award. Speaking on the occasion Dr. T Mukherjee commented that the award was for the employees of Tata Steel and the amount would also be used for their benefit.

The trophy instituted in 1992-93 on the suggestion of the then Hon'ble Prime Minister, Mr. P. V. Narasimha Rao, recognizes the outstanding performance of the integrated steel plants. The award is intended to spur the steel plants to achieve international standards of efficiency, quality and economy in their operations. The primary objective of the scheme is to generate a sense of competition among the steel plants so that they continuously benchmark themselves with the best and improve their performance.

The evaluation for the award is done by a panel of judges comprising technologists, economists, consumers of steel and workers' representative on a set of criteria covering operational, financial, market, export, quality, customer satisfaction, environment and HR related parameters. Assessment of approaches is carried out based on the CII Exim Model by the assessors appointed by the CII. For the year, 2001-02 the panel of judges was headed by Shri J S Gill, Secretary Ministry of Steel and Dr. S. R. Jain Former Chairman, SAIL.

All the steel plants applying for the award undergo a rigorous evaluation process comprising site visit by the panel of judges, an evaluation of the excellence of approaches in leadership, strategy formulation and deployment, partnership and resource management, people management & process management and an independent survey of customer satisfaction.

During the period under review, Tata Steel posted the most emphatic results by bettering its financial performance and making significant improvements in all areas of operations, such as production of hot metal and crude steel, quality assurance and customer satisfaction. Tata Steel is among the lowest cost producers of steel and one of the few steel companies in the world that is EVA +. The Prime Minister's Trophy for the Best Integrated Steel Plant was earlier conferred on Tata Steel for the years 1994-95, 1998-99, 1999-2000 and 2000-01.