turnover of over $500 million in FY10 â can be traced to 1958 .... and now we are able to do this at all our units. ..
BUSINESS
Wiring the world Tata Steel Global Wires Business is girding up to meet the challenges posed by other international steel wire majors, with its sights set on an ambitious target of becoming one of the top three global players by 2014 ere’s a quick quiz. What is the common ‘thread’ running through these iconic structures that straddle the globe: the Bandra-Worli Sealink, Mumbai; the Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok; the Changi Airport Terminal 3, Singapore; the Delhi Metro; the Dubai Ski Dome; the Melbourne Cricket Ground; the Cross Ring Expressway, Macau and the Shenzhen Bay Great Bridge in China? The answer: pre-stressed concrete (PC) strands manufactured by the world’s number one producer of PC strands and the sixth-largest producer of steel wire products, Tata Steel Global Wires Business (TSGWB). For TSGWB, these are exciting times. Sunil Bhaskaran, Mumbai-based executive-in-charge (EIC), global operations, says the company is enthusiastically gearing up to move up from the sixth position in the global rankings to the top three in the steel wires business by 2014. Mr Bhaskaran, a Tata Steel veteran with a stint at Tata International, is confident of success. “We want to become a technology leader and a dominant player in India, with significant presence in Asia,” he says. TSGWB is already the market leader in India, Thailand and Sri Lanka, but with growing competition and the entry of global majors, Mr Bhaskaran says his biggest challenge is to continue to maintain market leadership. “Our response to this challenge is to focus on
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innovation,” he explains. “We aim to maintain our leadership position through innovative product and service offerings, in both the retail and institutional segments.” The other challenge is keeping abreast with the rapidly changing customer demands and expectations. “To tackle this,” Mr Bhaskaran points out, “we are maintaining agility through customerfocused service teams as well as numerous retail initiatives.”
Wired together TSGWB has a unique organisational structure in which different corporate entities spread across different geographies and operating as separate companies, band together under one umbrella: the global wires business. The unified business structure ensures synergistic working across functions. The origins of TSGWB — with an annual turnover of over $500 million in FY10 — can be traced to 1958, when Special Steel (SSL) was established as a private limited company, manufacturing umbrella rib wires at Borivli, a northwest Mumbai suburb in Maharashtra, India. In 1984, Tata Steel acquired SSL and made it a wholly-owned subsidiary. Twenty years later, Tata Steel acquired its first international company, Lanka Special Steels. A year later, it acquired NatSteel, and along with it, two of its
PC strands of Tata Steel Global Wires Business are used in the Singapore Changi Airport, Terminal 3
“We aim to maintain our leadership position through innovative product and service offerings, in both the retail and institutional segments.” Sunil Bhaskaran
In 2008, the Global Wires Business was formally set up and all wire manufacturing units of Tata Steel, the units in Sri Lanka, China, Thailand and India including the wire manufacturing unit of Indian Steel & Wire Products in Jamshedpur were brought under the TSGWB umbrella. The Global Wires Business today has around 2,000 employees and more than half of them are Thai, Sri Lankan, Malaysian and Singaporean nationals.
Value-added impact wire manufacturing units, Wuxi Jinyang Metal Products (WJMP) in China and Siam Industrial Wire (SIW) in Thailand. Around this period Tata Steel acquired three more wire manufacturing units in India: the Indore Wire Company, Indian Steel & Wire Products and the manufacturing facilities of National Standard Duncan.
In 2010, global management consulting firm Hay Group did a study for Tata Steel, looking at ways in which the workings of international firms acquired by it in different geographies could be synergised efficiently. In its report, Achieving High Performance through
Culture of excellence, safety and innovation Tata Steel Global Wires Business (TSGWB) focuses on business excellence, safety and innovation and this is evident in the numerous awards that it has won over the years. One of the recent achievements was the performance of all its units in the Tata Business Excellence Model (TBEM), the quality movement framework within the Tata group, which has been adapted from the renowned Malcolm Baldrige model. TSGWB won the ‘Highest Delta 500+ award’ at the JRD QV Award function held last July, bringing it within striking distance of the JRD QV Award, the annual business excellence award presented to Tata companies. In the same year, Siam Industrial Wire (SIW), Thailand won the ‘Serious Adoption’ 450+ Award in its first-ever assessment. Wuxi Jinyang Metal Products (WJMP), China was not lagging far behind with 436 points, a creditable debut performance. TBEM is also the glue for driving integration across all units. The central total quality management team is led by C Srivatsan and actively supported by Richard Shin Huah Lung and Jumpon Kawewong, the local chief quality head of the China and Thai units respectively. The units took up a number of initiatives and improvement strategies to accelerate its journey up the TBEM ladder. These included business process improvements and projects by officers and small group activities and daily management by shopfloor employees. They also worked on improving internal communication, risk assessment, strategy
alignment, review architecture, employee engagement and climate change initiatives, coupled with creating a culture of safety and innovation. The journey to create a culture of safety has been a long and arduous one with guidance from Tata Steel’s central safety unit and consultation from DuPont executives. A visit to the units at Tarapur (India), Rayong (Thailand) and Wuxi (China) reveals the high standards of safety that are practised on the shop floor. Visitors check in at a safety centre at the entrance, where a quick briefing is conducted. They are then handed over hard hats, protective eyewear and footwear, before being taken to the plant. Areas are earmarked for employees and visitors to walk on; there are ‘traffic’ crossings, where forklifts move around, and ‘pedestrians’ are warned in advance about the traffic movement. The state-of-the-art plants feature steel wires and rods passing through huge tanks containing acids, but there are no harmful or irritating emissions. The units have not lost any man-hours to accidents for over a year. “We still have our fingers crossed as we need to drive safety behaviour into the DNA and sustain these safety results for five years to be able to claim that we are a sustainably safe organisation,” cautions Mr Bhaskaran. The units are not lagging behind on their innovation initiatives and for two years consecutively SIW has won an award in the Bangkok edition of Tata Innovista (the Tata group innovation awards). WJMP too has won the first-ever Far East edition of Tata Innovista held at China this year.
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“...While visiting the Chinese unit, we were astounded to find the process could be done in just 25 minutes [against 55 minutes in India].” Rajiv Kumar
Integration, the Hay Group noted: “Integration has had a value-creating impact across almost all the elements of Global Wires Business’s value chain.” It commended the virtual organisation structure and various platforms for sharing and improving organisational capability and the goal-setting exercise as being a role model. The integration of the different wire business units led to many hidden benefits. For instance, before the integration, each of the three units in India, China and Thailand were competing for the same customers. Integration of the global wires business allowed the units to exploit synergies and ensure that units leveraged their unique strengths to serve different customers and
markets. Sharing also came about through understanding cultural differences and ensuring that the best behaviours could be copied for the overall benefit to the organisation. Implementing SAP as a common IT platform at all units has also helped. “There is a lot to learn from each other,” notes Rajiv Kumar, Chief of Global Wires, India. “In PC strand manufacturing, for instance, there is a process in which seven wires are put together into a strand. The process took us 55 minutes to execute in India, and we thought we were the best. However, while visiting the Chinese unit, we were astounded to find the process could be done in just 25 minutes. We made a video film of the process and shared it with others, and now we are able to do this at all our units. Productivity has improved because of this sharing of knowledge.” Another kind of global sharing that is yielding rich dividends is the fortnightly teleconference between the various sales executives from offices in Chicago, London, Dubai, Mumbai, Shanghai and Colombo. “These short discussions give us a four- to five-week lead time to react to price and inventory trends in the global steel markets and provide us with
Glasses for masses At Tata Steel Global Wires Business’s (TSGWB) sprawling campus at Tarapur, in Maharashtra in western India, a new gadget has recently been making waves. Tata Steel Women Inspired to Serve and Help (Tish-Wish), an organisation set up by wives of TSGWB employees and women executives, has launched a project, ‘Glasses for the masses’, which uses a simple kit consisting of a wooden block, an ordinary file, a handsaw and pliers. The kit, invented by Eugene Koning, a retired American optometrist, enables poor women and the handicapped to make affordable eyewear from steel wires and earn some income. Mr Koning, now in his late ’80s, has returned to the US, but his `40-kit continues to help hundreds of impoverished women across the country. Says Asha Sunder, who heads Tish-Wish: “This is an initiative that we have taken up to ensure sustainable income for the underprivileged.” A group of 40 women from the villages surrounding the TSGWB plant were provided training in making these affordable spectacles. About 15 of them were selected and they are now the proud owners of the toolkit that
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enables them to produce spectacles. TSGWB provides the steel wires needed for the frames, while the lenses are provided by a Hyderabad-based NGO, which also buys back the product. The women are paid `10 for every spectacle that they make. On an average, each worker can produce about six spectacles daily, which means an income of `60, explains Ms Sunder. Besides acquiring a skill, the women become selfsufficient and are gainfully employed; while simultaneously providing affordable reading glasses for the underprivileged.
a platform to figure out early signals,” points out Yeoh Choon Kwee, Managing Director, SIW.
Focus on the future The global wires business serves both institutional and retail customers. Around 2004, TSGWB created the ‘Wiron’ brand to increase its retail capabilities. These products are used in vineyards (almost 95 per cent of wires used in Indian vineyards are Wiron), vegetable farms, poultries and even as barbed wires and fences. In the B2B segment, TSGWB has a dominating presence in India, with a 45 per cent share in the tyres segment, as well as in the shock absorber springs segment for the motorcycle business. The automobiles and infrastructure sectors account for 60 per cent of its revenues, while the retail market contributes about 35 per cent.
The India operations faced a tough restructuring in 2010 as it took on an ambitious project of relocating its mother plant’s manufacturing capacity out of Borivli, Mumbai, to Tarapur and Jamshedpur. Pramod Raste, chief of industrial relations, attributes the continuous engagement and open communication with employees, a responsible union leadership, and extensive support from HM Nerurkar, managing director, Tata Steel, for making the human aspect of the entire relocation harmonious. While India continues to be a major market for TSGWB, Mr Bhaskaran says South East Asia is the largest focus area for the group. With billions of dollars worth of infrastructure projects on the anvil in India and the rest of the neighbourhood, this live-wire entity is well-set to achieve its ambitious growth trajectory. n
Nithin Rao
The overseas trio The three overseas units of Tata Steel Global Wires Business — located in China, Thailand and Sri Lanka — cater to both domestic and international markets. Yeoh Choon Kwee, managing director, Siam Industrial Wire
Siam Industrial Wire (SIW), Thailand, headed by Yeoh Choon Kwee, its managing director, is one of the largest manufacturers of pre-stressed concrete (PC) steel products in the Asean region. It has an annual production capacity of 200,000 metric tonnes and manufactures PC strands, PE un-bonded strands, PC wires, cold-drawn wire, hard-drawn wire and welded-wire meshes. Its products are sold across Europe, Oceania, the Middle East, the US, Africa and Asia. SIW’s showcase projects include the Route 8 Express Way in Hong Kong; the Changi Airport Terminal 3 in Singapore; the Troia Casino Hotel, Setubal, Portugal; the North-South Railway Project, Saudi Arabia; the Dubai Ski Dome; the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia; and Thailand’s Suvarnabhumi International
Airport, Bangkok. The company is a domestic market leader for PC products in Thailand, with a market share of 42 per cent. And reflecting the high safety standards, its LTIF (loss time due to injuries frequency) in fiscal 2011 was zero. SIW has won several, ethics-related awards including: 4 The Thai Chamber of Commerce Business Ethics Standard Test Award 2009 - TCC BEST Award 2009 from the Privy Councillor. 4 The Outstanding Ethic Standard Pin TCC Best Club Award in 2009 and 2010 from Chairman of Thai Chamber of Commerce. 4 The Good Corporate Governance Award in 2009 and 2010 from the National AntiCorruption Commission Committee.
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Tay Tuang Heong, general manager, Wuxi Jinyang Metal Products
Wuxi Jinyang Metal Products (WJMP), operates out of its 84,000 square metre manufacturing facility in Jiangsu province in China. It is the only company in the country to have multiple international quality accreditations including those from Japan, the UK, Israel, the UAE, Australia and Malaysia, notes Tay Tuang Heong, who heads the unit. No wonder it is the largest exporter of PC Wires from China. It has also implemented the Tata Safety Excellence System and achieved a zero LTIF. The company has had zero LTIF since 2009. WJMP is one of the most efficient and highquality manufacturers of steel wire products in China. Its major products include pre-stressed
concrete wire, pre-stressed concrete strand and pre-stressed high carbon bar. These products are widely used in bridges, electrical poles, nuclear and thermal power plants, LNG tanks, railways, concrete pipes and concrete piling applications. Some of the well-known international projects executed by WJMP include the ANZ Arena in Australia, North Bridge in Qatar, Batam Bridge in Indonesia, Kallang Park in Singapore, Turnberry Tower in the US, My Tuan Bridge in Vietnam, the LRT Train in Dubai, the Eden Park Stadium in New Zealand and the Shenzheng Bay Bridge in Hong Kong. Krishnendu Sanyal, Chief Executive Officer, Lanka Special Steels
Lanka Special Steels (Lanka SSL), Tata Steel’s first acquisition outside India, though the smallest entity in the global wires portfolio, it happens to be one of the most profitable (in return on invested capital terms) subsidiaries. Lanka SSL manufactures galvanised steel wires that are used for making barbed wires and chain link and welded meshes that go for various fencing applications as also for Gabion meshes for rock and soil protection from erosion. It also manufactures wires for the making of nails and hooks for the construction industry. The company has emerged as a reliable and costeffective supplier of galvanised wires for the Sri
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Lankan market and has also enriched its product mix with heavy-coated zinc wires that are an import substitute for making Gabion meshes. “We plan to create further value for our end customers by offering downstream wire products,” points out Krishnendu Sanyal, CEO, Lanka SSL. It also aims to enter the branded reinforcement bars business and launch ‘Tata Tiscon’ rebars in Sri Lanka through a conversion arrangement with a local company. Lanka SSL has transformed itself into a process-oriented company that is constantly driven to achieve healthier top- and bottom-line growth. n
