Competition is often seen as a negative force on a business. In reality, it is an extremely critical force in the market which helps businesses attain their best potential and constantly upgrade themselves to retain their competitive edge. Competition also brings substantial benefits to the consumer by offering a wide range of choices at competitive prices, innovation, opportunity to explore new offerings, avoid the ill-effects of market monopoly, and superior negotiating power.
In the long-run it works as an auto-corrective force in the market that weeds out the inefficient players and helps the performers thrive. Competition is not always a threat – sometimes it is also an opportunity to learn from other’s mistakes and even join hands to collaborate and co-create. In the end, the outlook of a business towards its competition is what matters.
Can Make-in-India Make Our SME Manufacturing Sector Globally Competitive?
SMEs in India constitute a whopping 90% of the total industrial units, manufacturing over 8,000 products that serve both domestic and international markets. Manufacturing, in fact, is the mainstay of Indian SMEs, with 67% in manufacturing, 17% in services and 16% in repairs and maintenance. The key areas in manufacturing that SMEs focus on: automotive, electronics, engineering and chemicals.
Barriers of Indian Manufacturing Sector in Attaining Global Competitiveness
While a few Indian companies have set an example by outshining multinational giants in the global competitive domain, India is yet to become a world class manufacturing force to reckon with. A large part of the sector is unorganized in the form of SMEs, who take up contract manufacturing both from MNCs and Indian market leaders. Some of the barriers that India faces in attaining global competitiveness in the manufacturing domain are –
Productivity Challenges: Manufacturers are often constrained by low productivity of labour, largely attributable to negligible advances in automation as compared to the rest of the world, coupled with obsolete manufacturing processes, non-scientific design and development of manufacturing units and layouts, and work design inefficiencies.
Poor Supply Chain: Indian manufacturing is characterised by buildup of inventory and high transaction costs leading to significant operating capital being locked up at multiple nodes in the supply chain. This stems from poor infrastructure support, archaic policies and taxation laws, as well as inadequate supply chain management acumen of the manufacturers.
Inadequate Quality Control: Manufacturing is an extremely quality-sensitive sector, that requires competent engineers to set up efficient quality control systems, measurements, and defectives management systems. The fact that this is not given its due importance in the unorganized and semi-organized sectors makes Indian products unacceptable in many export markets.
Make-in-India: Bringing World Class Manufacturing to India
Make-in-India was launched by the Government of India in September, 2014 to promote indigenous manufacturing by encouraging multi-national, as well as national companies to manufacture their products in India. This in turn has been a boost towards transforming Indian manufacturing sector and making it globally competitive in the following ways:
Investments in Asset Productivity: After the initiation of Make-in-India, the country emerged as the top destination globally for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in 2015, edging past the US and China. Investment in productivity enhancement systems such as efficient line balancing, just-in-time (JIT) inventory management, lean plant layout, and process de-bottlenecking will be instrumental in catapulting innovative process automation to the next level in Indian manufacturing arena.
Infusion of Global Manufacturing Practices: As more and more MNCs set up their manufacturing base in India, their best practices are bound to make inroads into our processes, systems, quality controls, analytics and workforce performance. The erstwhile ‘closed’ manufacturing sector will now explore and experiment with globally tested approaches and contextualize it to Indian conditions, so as to maximize its export potential.
Supply Chain Boost: With the enthusiastic response that the Government has received, it will be imperative on part of the Government to keep its commitment in stepping up the infrastructure and overall supply chain in order to enable success for Make-in-India. Government is also alleviating supply chain challenges indirectly by supporting innovative startups who bring creative, market-driven, technology solutions to manufacturers.
Automatic Checks and Balances: India as a global destination for manufacturing will automatically bring in quality standards and control measures that will initiate a corrective mechanism in the otherwise unorganized and fragmented sector. With unification of quality specifications, cost control and process efficiencies, India will soon stride towards manufacturing excellence.
India’s manufacturing sector has received the much-needed boost from initiatives like Make-in-India, and all businesses including SMEs are benefiting from it. At IndiaBizForSale.com, we help thousands of business including those in manufacturing sector to grow their ventures to new heights.
References:
https://www.ibef.org/download/SMEs-Role-in-Indian-Manufacturing.pdf
Business Verification – A Competitive Advantage
It is a business’s nature to want a competitive advantage over others in its industry/sector/location and prove to be a better option.
To provide a similar competitive advantage to the businesses listed on the platform we provide them with free business verification service which works on a very simple principle, provide us your business documents to verify the information mentioned in the business listing. If the information checks out we give your business listing a verified tag indicating that the information provided is accurate based on the documents submitted. This in turn builds a greater trust for buyers / investors towards the business opportunity and hence the business receives more enquiries which in turn results into the business deal getting closed faster.
Did we tell you that the documents submitted are kept absolutely confidential? Hence, as a business you get a competitive advantage without giving up any business confidentiality and as a buyer/investor you have a clear picture of the business that you are interested in.
Team Member Message (Sana)
Competition is a part and parcel of life and it helps us grow. It proves as a tool to motivate and encourage us in achieving our set goals. We have achieved many milestones because of our competitive spirit. As an individual, it has helped me to set difficult targets and work towards achieving them. For my team it has aided in both personal and professional growth, which is achieved not just by competing with each other but with ourselves as well.