The global business as well as domestic business are prone to several changes in the market but there are organizations who counter-back their challenges and turn it into an inspiring story. Mr. Rohit Pathak, Chief Executive Officer, Aditya Birla Insulators & Aditya Birla Power Composites Ltd shares with Pro MFGmedia their turnaround story.
Q: Can you share with us the ABI turnaround story in the last 4 years from creating a vision & strategy, how did you rekindle the organization & lead people to the current level of success?
Mr. Pathak: I joined the business in 2016, just as the industry in India was entering an unfavorable phase with strong headwinds. Not only was India, which was our largest market, completing its large infrastructure build-out over the last 5 years but it was also going through a paradigm shift in technology, switching from our core portfolio of porcelain to a new material, i.e. composites. Although I was a stranger to the industry and the business, I came equipped with two skills - the ability to work with people and strategic thinking. Both these helped me get a quick sense of what we were up against and to earn the trust & confidence of my team. I devoted the initial few months to understand the complexities and the overall functioning of the plant, as well as spent a lot of time with the customers to understand the trends they were facing. I also focused on altering the traditional top-down leadership style in manufacturing to an inclusive and engaging one. With this, along with my team, we developed a four pronged roadmap to take on the downturn head-on and come out stronger in line with the group philosophy of “From the Last Person Standing to the First Person Forward”:
⮚ Goal Zero: Achieve zero lost-time injuries, LTI (given insulators is a very high manual process, LTIs were considered normal in the industry)
⮚ Single Digit Rejection: Achieve single-digit rejection in line with best-in-class globally, even with lower automation in the plants
⮚ Going Global: Scale-up international sales to 50% by actively qualifying in and penetrating the large & high value global markets
⮚ Diversify our Product Portfolio: Develop a full range of products across technology (composites and porcelain) and applications (from sub-stations to transmission lines to railway electrification)
Q: The recent KPI performances achieved by your team have been impressive. The steady progress towards Zero incidents, exports expansion, efficiency as well as steady improvement in the Productivity Index. What strategies worked and how do you plan to move ahead in each of these areas in the journey ahead?
Mr. Pathak: Through my experience, I have realized that one cannot expect overnight changes in such a large-scale organization. You need patience! Although in the one past year the organization has achieved tremendous progress in each of the four pillars, this is an outcome of the sustained and consistent efforts taken over 2-3 years. We stuck to our strategic roadmap and the Groups’ leadership, right from the Chairman downwards, supported us. Secondly, our continuous engagement with the frontline team has yielded rich dividends. For example, to enhance productivity and workplace safety, the Company launched a unique initiative at its Halol plant called the 'Insulators Champion League'. The whole plant was divided into 22 zones, and each zone had a team of shopfloor workers led by frontline engineers. The management team would audit progress every quarter across safety, housekeeping, productivity and yield, and award the best teams. We also identified and trained safety commandos with a view to have 1 commando in each area in every shift. The commandos are authorized to stop any process if they observe unsafe condition or action. In the past four years, the team also leveraged the Long Term Settlements with the unions to align them the strategic roadmap for the business and made them partners in the same. We also created several cross-functional teams to engage with key customers at least four times a year.
Concerning my role specifically - well after building the initial momentum and setting in place the key structural enablers, my focus was on two types of interventions –
i) help & guide the teams to succeed in their areas (encourage, de-bottleneck, facilitate and train/develop),
ii) stand by them if things didn’t go as planned in the short term as long as we tried our best, and shield them so that they can remain focused on our roadmap.
Q: How does Aditya Birla Power Composite Limited" (ABPCL) fit in the ABI portfolio, what’s your strategy to make ABPCL a Global leader?
Mr. Pathak: Over the past decade, the industry has witnessed a steady shift of the market from porcelain to composites. The composite hollow insulator has been the fastest-growing sub-segment of the industry, and these insulators are used by the OEMs to make their circuit breakers, transformers, and equipment. Thus, we decided to diversify our porcelain focused portfolio and moved towards composites. We partnered with Germany-based Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen (which is the technological leader globally for this product) for manufacturing and marketing of these composite hollow core insulators (CHCI). The joint venture will serve the insulator requirements of both the domestic and global OEMs in the power equipment industry. As this JV starts off, we will be the only large scale insulator player globally that can offer the full range of insulators across segments and technologies.
Q: How would you describe your leadership style at ABPCL & ABI, and how do you believe it has helped?
Mr. Pathak: Well I could not have asked for a better initiation into the Group when I got an opportunity to work closely with our Chairman, Mr. Birla, as his Principal EA. It gave me a very good grounding of the values core to the Aditya Birla Group and so well embodied by him. Also I experienced the empathy and patience that Mr Birla is known for. As I took on the role at ABI, I was able to build on these core values to drive the transformation in the organization. I focused on four key principles to drive the change. First and foremost, it was essential to create a culture of equality. I imbibed the belief that “at work all are equal, and that hierarchies exist only for decision making”. This approach has been the anchor for our transformational results with almost no ER disturbances in these past five years. Secondly, we focused on enabling the teams to succeed in their assigned tasks. The management invested extensively in identifying the right talent for the particular roles, made several changes within the organization and trained & coached key leaders to deliver to their potential (and many times beyond what they thought was their potential!). Thirdly, I always believe that being a leader, you have to focus on making yourself redundant in your role – develop your team, enable them to step-up and begin to spend time on areas beyond your role. Finally, I believe that one must always look at the upside in challenging situations. There is significant upside in any adversity, and if you can leverage it well, you could use it to catapult the business to the next level of performance.
As we move ahead and climb the corporate ladder, I think it is also necessary that we share our experience and learning with the younger generation. They often find it difficult to get the “right” counsel that can steer them in their early phase of their careers. I have taken this responsibility on myself to take out sufficient time to counsel the young talent within ABG as well as at several management and engineering campuses in a structured manner. And I find this very energizing and rewarding to do so, as it helps me stay connected with the aspirations and challenges of the next generation!
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