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How will Indian manufacturing industry promote sustainable practices?
Articles- Aug 29,24
Modern day factories are much larger in size, automated, and far more efficient, writes R Jayaraman. But, are they all tuned up to operate in a sustainable way?
India is on the path of becoming the ‘manufacturing hub of the world’, or the ‘global manufacturing hub’. Easier said than done, but so was going to the moon. That India achieved going to that part of the moon not visited by others, that too, after a heart breaking ‘failure’, speaks volumes for the resilience of the scientific temper in the country. While the DRDO cannot be considered a part of the manufacturing industry, it does need this industry to supply various parts to the rockets and other space vehicles which it periodically test fires and sends on for regular production. Missiles, rockets, space vehicles, and more are productionised after rigorous testing and checks.
Similarly, an electric vehicle (EV) is also a developing product, although many models have now become available. Fuel powered cars, electric battery driven cars, hybrid cars and so on are now coming out the of the automobile industry’s R&D labs and testing grounds. Other innovations, like iPhones, ear phones, racing cars, heavy tonnage trucks, large cold rolled coils for sophisticated applications are all flooding out of the manufacturing industry’s factories. And modern day factories are much larger in size, much more automated, much leaner in staffing and far more efficient in getting their output out the finished goods store. Yet, the concern is, are they all tuned up to operate in a sustainable way?
Going lean, reducing waste
Some years back, the ISO organisation put out certain standards to make manufacturing more environment-friendly. ISO 9000, 14000, 18000, and other similar ones like SAE 8000, were all thrust upon an initially reluctant industry which was used to its own ways of working. While the western countries and Japanese/Korean companies adopted automation as the way forward, thereby reducing waste by increasing manufacturing, Indian companies were caught in a dilemma. India is a highly populated country, coupled with a high poverty level. Hence, automation solutions may not be welcomed as much as in the other countries. Nevertheless, they realized that the need of the hour was to eliminate waste, the underlying principle of Lean Management (LM).
Typically, LM promoted the concept of ‘waste not, want not’ through its emphasis on avoiding/ eliminating/ minimising eight types of wastes – defects (defective products, intermediate outputs, practices), excessive processing (for example, intermediate storage of products to distributors, retailers, and then customers), overproduction (for example, large population), waiting (for example, waiting for a bus in Mumbai), inventory (for example, fruits stored for more than two days will start rotting), transportation, motion (for example, movement of products from shop to shop during production) and, finally, non-utilised talent (which was added as an afterthought!). The last one is perhaps the most important in addressing the other seven wastes and controlling them; especially in light of the developments in Industry 4.0, and AI.
An interesting question is: which industry generates the maximum waste – agriculture, manufacturing or services. According to a study reported by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research in 2020, Indian agriculture generates a ‘waste’ of 350 million tonnes. The ICAR report also provides solutions on how to handle much of this waste. India also generated some 62 million tonnes per annum of solid municipal waste (2022/2023) of which some 42 million tonnes are processed. This waste is expected to go up to 162 million tonnes by 2030. Table 1 shows the tonnages of some of the key industrial wastes generated in India:
Table 1: Major industrial wastes produced in India
|
Name of the Industrial Waste |
Annual Production (million tonnes) |
|
Flyash |
184.14 |
|
Blast Furnace Slags |
10 |
|
Steel Slag |
12 |
|
Red Mud |
4.71 |
|
Lime Sludges |
4.5 |
|
Lead-Zinc Slag |
0.5 |
|
Phosphorus Furnace Slag |
0.5 |
|
Phoshphogypsum |
11 |
|
Jerosite |
0.6 |
|
Kimberlite |
0.6 |
|
Mine Rejects |
750 |
Source: Jijo James and P K Pandian, Soil Stabilization as an Avenue for Reuse of Solid
Wastes: A Review
Some of the figures (in Table 1) are clearly underestimates, for example, blast furnace slag. According to the Blast Furnace Tracker data for 2024, India has 64 blast furnaces with a total capacity to produce 226 million tonnes per annum of pig iron. About 300 kgs of slag is produced per 1000 kgs of pig iron produced. Hence, the current generation of blast furnace slag should be around 66 million tonnes, as against the figure of 10 million tonnes shown in the Table 1. One reason could be that the Table 1 is dated.
Adopting sustainable approach
Clearly, there is a case for reducing waste generation in agriculture and manufacturing industry. Such efforts will lead to sustainability of the industry. There has been a continuous effort, beginning in the early nineties, to reuse the blast furnace slag in pozzolona cement, to produce blast furnace slag cement, which can be used in construction. Granulation facilities are now standard equipment in blast furnace’s in India, which will pulverise the blast furnace slag for use in cement manufacture. Such efforts should be adopted in many other manufacturing industries.
This effort can be, and, has to be done in two ways, one, to prevent waste generation, and, the other, to handle the wastes generated. Preventive measures include improved processes, technology developments, automation, use of Industry 4.0 practices and AI. Waste management includes collection, processing, using appropriate technologies, recycling and circular economy practices. Management education can, and has, played a key role in improving manufacturing efficiencies. To cite an example, the integrated iron and steel industry, which is considered by some as a ‘pollution’ source, has achieved signal improvements over the years.
Owing to use of technologies like pelletisation of iron ore, much of the wastes generated due to handling iron ores have been substantially reduced. JSW steel and Tata Steel are leading practitioners of this technology. JSW Steel has reduced water consumption to 2.41 kl per tonne of crude steel in 20/21, down from 2.61 in 19/20, and 2.45 in 23/24. Whereas the same for Tata Steel was 2.25 in 2021/22. The auto industry has continuously reduced emissions, and is now in BI 6.0 stage in India. The hotel industry and office buildings have reduced carbon footprint by resorting to improving adherence to LEEDS standard. More and more big groups of companies are looking at circular economy processes to reduce waste by promoting reuse/ avoiding new use. Manufacturing companies are introducing changes in their operations strategies to make the total activity of manufacturing, including their supply chains, more sustainable.
About the author:
R Jayaraman is the Head, Capstone Projects, at Bhavan's S P Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR). He has worked in several capacities, including Tata Steel, for over 30 years. He has authored over 60 papers in academic and techno economic journals in India and abroad. Jayaraman is a qualified and trained Malcolm Baldrige and EFQM Business Model Lead Assessor.
Indian manufacturing industry
sustainable practices
R Jayaraman
S P Jain Institute of Management & Research
SPJIMR
pelletisation of iron ore
DRDO
electric vehicle
automobile industry
Lean Management
sustainability
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