SME sector in India today contributes to eight percent of country's GDP, 45% of the manufacturing output and provides employment to around 60 million people through 25 million enterprises. Thus, small and medium sized businesses are very critical and important for the national growth of the country.
CII - Cluster for Competitiveness programme aims at strengthening Indian small and medium enterprises and component suppliers to meet the requirements of global competitiveness with the fast changing environment. The approach is simple wherein group of dozen SMEs develop together with a "learning through sharing" attitude. The clusters are often sectoral, locational and quite often driven by a tier 1 customer for their vendors. The cluster approach aims at improving competitiveness in an associated group rather than in discreet companies. One obvious factor driving this process is the cost, as that too gets shared.
"By working together you can lift each other to world class levels" - Yoshikazu Tsuda, Quality management advisor
From a humble beginning of the first CII Cluster, which started with 20 suppliers of Maruti in 1998, the cluster movement gained momentum between 1998-2004 as Indian SMEs adopted these methods through an integrated approach for becoming more efficient. Indicators such as productivity, quality, cost, delivery performance, safety and employee involvement were tracked and benchmarked against the best in class.
In all industries, defects cost money, waste time and frustrate managers - and in some cases cost lives. CII aims to create a culture of prevention, which causes people to prevent defects and non conformities, thus improving the performance of its clients. The key is to achieve measurable results as soon as possible. Methods used by CII include initial assessment, common training programmes and individual visits. Each month, cluster participants have a meeting in the premises of one of the companies, followed by visit to the company. Improvements and experiences are documented and shared together. Finally, a recognition ceremony is held for the companies. From companies the participation requires total commitment of the CEO, as well as will to improve.
Nowadays, the programme not only covers manufacturing sector, but also tea gardens, for example. In total, CII and its strategic partners have formed 170 clusters all over the country impacting 1889 SMEs, taking them on a journey to the path of competitiveness.
Harinder Jeet Singh
Head, CII-LM Thapar Centre for Competitiveness for SMEs
harinder.singh(at)cii.in
12 April 2010
