India is aligning itself with the global semiconductor market by creating high-value work in VLSI and Board Design and Embedded software. It is companies with the domain expertise driving the business in terms of volumes. Is India called a VLSI design superstore? Approximately 125 companies are doing semiconductor design. Multinational corporations and domestic companies are going from design services to innovation and product design.

India is already a brand player in software application development in the global market. An ever-increasing demand for strong education infrastructure, with Universal programs, results in the supply of the talent pool required for this stream.

Cracking the code of change

Creating a super-factory requires the application of innovative and simple concepts and practices to achieve manufacturing excellence. This can be best adopted by the Quick Response Manufacturing (QRM) model of an enterprise. Many industrial corporations are now turning to just-in-time (JIT) and lean manufacturing strategies. While these strategies have proven effective, we should consider they were first developed and perfected by Toyota more than 30 years ago. How can we expect to stay ahead of the competition by adopting 30-year-old strategies? According to him, JIT/lean strategies may not be applicable to all companies across-the-board. Therefore, companies need to shift to QRM strategy to compete globally.

Company-wide strategy

QRM is a company-wide strategy that pursues the reduction of lead-time in all aspects of a company’s operations. We can define QRM in two contexts:

Externally, as perceived by customers: QRM means responding to those customers’ needs by rapidly designing and manufacturing products customized to those requirements

Internally, in terms of a company’s own operations, QRM focuses on reducing the lead times for all tasks in a company, resulting in improved quality and lower cost. QRM is a practical strategy that embodies the mindset of pursuing lead time reduction, along with detailed management principles, manufacturing methods, analysis techniques and tools, and a step-by-step methodology to achieve the desired reduction in lead times.

If implemented in the right spirit, QRM could result in:

  • Reduction in lead times of 80-95 percent
  • Reduction in product cost of 15-30 percent
  • On-time delivery performance improving from 60-99 percent
  • Reduction in scrap and rework by 80 percent or more