In conversation with Dr T Mukherjee, Deputy Managing Director, Steel

TN.    What achievement of the Company in the last year has given you the greatest satisfaction?

TM.    There are many of equal, may be more or less equal, importance. I really, truthfully, cannot say that one achievement was better than any other! However, if you do not consider physical achievement, it is the self-confidence that we have developed, and the justified pride that we take in our achievements, which had been an eye opener for me and has been very satisfying.

TN.    What would you like to see Tata Steel achieve in the next five years?

TM.    We are a nearly a 100 year old Company, yet we will be a 7 million tonne, single location plant by end of 2005. I would like to see Tata Steel amongst the top five steel manufacturers in the coming years. Our position in the steel makers’ league will not be based on volume alone. But we need to achieve a critical mass in terms of production capacity. Simultaneously, we must maintain our low cost advantage over other steel manufacturers. Most of all, I would like to see a very vibrant company, with employees full of enthusiasm and motivation, aware of their social responsibility and confident that we can reach the top.

TN.    Do you believe that the market will sustain the 15 million tonne expansion Tata steel is planning on? Does the Company plan on any expansion and modernisation of the facilities at NatSteel, Asia?

TM.    I believe that India will grow and steel is necessary for the growth of a nation. The volume that we will produce will not be enough to sustain India’s growth. Other existing steel plants will contribute by investing in steel production and many new companies will come up. It is possible that today we are more ambitious than others. With regard to NatSteel, our effort now is to develop the synergy between our operations in India, and NatSteel’s operations in seven countries, since NatSteel cannot be considered in isolation any more.

TN.    What sets us apart in terms of technology from other steel plants in South Asia?

TM.    While technology is important, particularly for integrated steel plant like ours, I feel it is our improvement orientation that sets us apart. Our process of goal setting, commitment to achieve, a large number of innovations, the power of small group activities, the industrial relations that we have maintained, or in one word - it is our culture that sets us apart. We also have the humility to learn from others, in any area where we find there are great opportunities to improve.

TN.    Among the focus areas for the Company in raw material is to bring down the ash content in coal. What have been the significant initiatives and how crucial is this for Tata Steel as a world class producer of steel?

TM.    Our Raw Materials Divisions, be it coal or iron ore, are great strengths of Tata Steel, as a result of which hot metal is our competitive advantage. The improvement in the quality of our raw material is a major contributor to the improved productivity of our blast furnaces. Till 2003, we used to believe that most economic level of ash in our washed coal is 17%. Then they pleasantly surprised all of us by bringing the ash level to 16% in 2003-04. West Bokaro Collieries went a few steps by washing coal to 15% in 2004-05 and 14% ash this year. They set their targets and they innovate to reach levels that could not be foreseen. I only marvel at these performances.

TN.    What would you consider as an ideal situation in terms of Safety standards in the Company?

TM.    An ideal situation will be a point when we start believing that we can run this plant with no accidents to any of our employees in the Works or outside the Works. Accidents are man-made and we must not let any accident happen. It is certainly possible.

TN.    How has Knowledge Management impacted production in the Company?

TM.    Knowledge Management at Tata Steel aims at achieving the highest level of business performance through a structured approach to organisational and personal learning. Combined knowledge of the entire work force has given us the confidence to go for sharing of knowledge : conversion of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge; transfer of best practices. The informal structure of the knowledge community has added strength to our formal organisational structure and the latest initiative of knowledge ‘manthan’, involving workers and supervisors is working as a catalyst to take our work-force to new heights of capability and knowledge.

TN.    Since the launch of the ASPIRE programme, what are the significant changes within the Company?

TM.    ASPIRE has brought in a more systematic and fact-based improvement culture. I can enumerate the significant changes in the organisation due to ASPIRE as being -

I.    Institutionalisation of the process of identifying improvement: opportunities. The ASPIRE drill down process aligns important improvement activities to the business objectives of each unit/department. Thus, for financial year 2005-06, all the profit centres / cost centres while formulating their Annual Business Plans (ABP) have identified improvement projects / activities, which will act as enablers for meeting and exceeding the FY ’06 targets.

II.    A process of systematic review has been put in place for priority improvement projects in the form of CAT reviews by Champions (departmental Chief/Head) which in many departments include TPM reviews. Each Sponsor (Dy MD or VP) also carries out such reviews.

III.    The TPM program has brought in visible improvements on the shop floor.

IV.    The analytical capability of our employees has improved and decisions are more fact-based now.

TN.    What has been the greatest challenge for Tata Steel in the implementation of CVM and RVM?

TM.    End Consumer focus was the leading theme of the RVM and CVM initiative. In case of Tata TISCON and Tata Pipes, often the end consumer is a house builder who intends to use the steel product for the house. Tata Shaktee GC and Tata Pipes are meant for rural markets. Apart from these retail end users, there are big enterprise customers from industries such as automotive, appliances, construction, electrode, boiler and automotive ancillaries.

The retail end consumers are spread across the country and the Company does not come in direct touch with these consumers. The distribution model of Tata Steel has an exclusive distributor network and a set of retailers (shops) who sell our products. The two big challenges in implementing RVM across the country in the last three years was to bring about a change in mindset and work ethics of our channel partners (distributors & retailers) as well as our Marketing and Sales team. Our endeavor has been to educate, train and drive home this self belief that steel products can be sold on an FMCG / Consumer durable retail format. For this, they had to break away from the traditional way of working and selling steel (which they have followed for the last 80-90 years). The challenge was to make them believe that the steel company’s plans were in favour of serving its end consumers well.

The biggest challenge in initiating CVM was creating an environment of trust and long-term thinking with customers. Institutional customers in the steel industry have traditionally been obsessed with a belief that "lowest price" is the sole way to extract value from its suppliers. Our endeavour has been to evolve a mature thinking that questions losses in the value chain between the customer and us. We had to generate the confidence that we were interested in plugging value chain leaks and were not after proprietary / confidential data. The breaking of the "wall", erected over so many years, was painstaking and needed a lot of persuasion.

TN.    The environment at the Steel Works and Jamshedpur has been completely transformed with greenery in the last 10-15 years. What environment guidelines is the project teams expected to follow during the implementation of the new projects?

TM.    All our employees deserve a clean, green and pleasing environment, at their workplace. I want them to take pride in the steel plant, so much so that they should like to show off their work place to their families and friends. No company can be number one in productivity or efficiency if their position is not near number one in all other areas. The Works environment is certainly one such important fact.
We have been proactive in our approach towards environment protection. Implementation of ISO-14001 in our Steel Works and Town has changed the mindset of our workforce towards environment. We do believe that investments in environment protection are not a drain on our profit. Instead it has helped to improve our business performance through recycling of plant wastes, resources and energy conservation, good workplace environment and implementation of EMS.

In the new project we intend to not only follow what we had been doing but also go beyond. In order to maintain the present quality of environment inside the Steel Works and township, we are making emission and discharge norms for new projects more stringent than what we practice now. Along with this, we are also streamlining logistics to make our roads safer.

TN.    What aspect of steel making do you enjoy the most?

TM.    Honestly I look at all the parameters, but I assign lot of importance to specific consumption i.e. consumption of any resource per tonne of steel.

TN.    What draws you to the shop-floor every morning?

TM.    To see the faces of our employees, to be a part of their continuous improvement processes, to contribute, as much as I can, to make the workplace safe, and the ambience good for employees to work happily. Happy employees are motivated and are willing, perhaps keen to take up challenges.

TN.    Despite a most-demanding schedule and stressful work style you enjoy good health. What advice would you give to aspiring professionals to cope with work stress which seems to be order of the day?

TM.    I have been very fortunate that I inherited a reasonable health, for which I must thank my parents. However,I find that it is important to be objective in the decisions you take. For that purpose decisions should be based on critical analysis of relevant data. We have a very vast source of knowledge in the Company. In most areas, you will find someone more knowledgeable than yourself. You must take advantage of this bank of knowledge, although it is dispersed.

I do have some hobbies and I spend quality time in the pursuit of my hobbies. Since you ask me about stress or tension, I must say that tension in the positive sense can be good for you. It is the fountainhead of creativity and innovative ideas. Whenever I get a chance to talk to young people, I tell them :

‘Challenge the boundaries that limit you; or be limited by them’.