N Sathyanarayanan, ProCitius Research
From a background of process development for APIs, Sathyanarayanan has quickly adapted to the needs of custom synthesis and completed all projects allotted to him, winning praise from key customers. The lengthy and difficult Quinazoline project for a US based small pharma company was completed with improved purity. Another difficult project, Pentobarbital reference standard for United States Pharmacopeia, enabled us to supply material to a forum where the quality expectation is the highest. Sathyanarayanan played a crucial role as a senior scientist in an FTE based project with a biotech company in the US West Coast.
S Ramasubramanian, ProCitius Research
Ramasubramanian has completed all projects within set timelines. A difficult project for Pfizer delivered in good quality and in a timely fashion received praise from the customer. A proactive member of the ProCitius team, Ram played an active role in establishing Lab 3, whose design was different from Labs 1 & 2 and enabled the maintenance team to tackle the initial teething problems. He played a crucial role as a senior scientist in an FTE based project with a biotech company in the US West Coast.
V S Ramesh, Corporate Accounts
With his clear understanding of the group’s accounting principles and policies, V S Ramesh ensures that they are implemented in letter and spirit. A member of the Core Team for SAP implementation, he has been able to make full use of the SAP functionalities in all accounting areas. He had the audited accounts of Chemplast for the year ended 13 31st March 2004 ready by 7th April. They were immediately presented to the Board for its approval. As a member of the Business Executive Committee of Chemplast, Ramesh has been contributing continuously in various business discussions. His analytical approach and care for details have helped him to carry out his tasks to the satisfaction of everyone.
V Ramasamy, Sanmar Speciality Chemicals
The Phytochemicals business witnessed rapid growth under V Ramasamy’s stewardship of the production and the plant has won accolades from visiting dignitaries. The many systems instituted by VR at the production site speak for themselves as you walk through the facility. Last year, VR assumed the additional responsibility of organic chemicals production with ease. He displayed his leadership skills across both the manufacturing plants at Berigai and the business performance scaled impressive heights. His participation helped the plant commission the solid block. His inputs ranged from a GMP- compliant layout design to identification and installation of all the key equipment. Very high efficiency levels led to record-breaking production in the first half of 2003-2004. He has deftly designed and implemented expansions commensurate with market demand for the products.
B Shivakumar, Sanmar Speciality Chemicals
B Shivakumar has a proud scholastic record, obtaining the third rank in Chemical Engineering from Karnataka University. He is the key person involved in the scale-up of newly developed processes. He forms the vital link between laboratory and plant and plays his crucial role with dexterity. Shivakumar has brought about improvements in the not-so- easy process for a promising product, Tyramine. His contribution resulted in reduction in the raw material consumption leading to product cost reduction by over Rs 500 a kg, longer equipment life and the customer’s stringent quality requirement being met. Shivakumar’s perseverance has yielded similar benefits in other emerging products as well.
J Sivakumar, Sanmar Speciality Chemicals
Sivakumar is a Chemical Engineer from Sri Venkateshwara Engineering College, Sriperumbudur. Affable by disposition, Sivakumar very quickly picked up the nuances of shift management. Assuming the mantle of shift coordinator in a very short time, he quickly gained the confidence of his colleagues and subordinates. Last year, he achieved an 8.1 % reduction in the raw material cost for a key product MPBM and played an active role in the commissioning of the MPBM production block and scale up of the product that now gets sold in container lots to a key customer in the US. Sivakumar played an important role in the team that achieved a reduction of 5.8% of the budgeted quantity of solvents, a focus area for cost reduction and environment protection.
P T Anoop Ramachandran, Fisher Sanmar
Anoop joined Fisher Sanmar in August 2001 as a Sr. Application Engineer. OEMs demand a very high degree of technical support and fast and effective response to their requirement. Hence it was a big challenge to Anoop when he was put in charge of building relationships with the OEMs. In the last 3 years he has shown strong commitment in meeting their expectations.
Thanks to his unstinting efforts, Fisher is the first choice with all leading OEMs like Thermax, Daniel Measurements, IJT, Enpro, Krupp etc. In fact in 2003-04, the OEM order booking has grown by over 50% and this is a significant achievement to Anoop’s credit.
K S Suraj, Fisher Sanmar
Suraj joined Fisher Sanmar in 2002 and in this short span has developed into an excellent Application Engineer with a high degree of commercial acumen. He has won kudos from his customers for his knowledge of various techniques and application aspects, particularly with regard to the Refineries, Petrochemicals and Oil & Gas sectors. Coordinating some large jobs, he has not only understood the technical requirement for many LSTK contractors like EIL, Samsung, Hyundai and L&T, but also provided effective solutions for their process improvement. This has led to several key project orders being placed on Fisher and the bookings from the HCI sector growing by over 20% in 03-04. Suraj is an excellent team player.
S Ramasubramanian, Fisher Sanmar
Over the years, K Manikantan has become an ace Application Engineer with a high degree of technical expertise and knowledge. He has been instrumental in forging the Power Division in Fisher India and Fisher is now becoming a force in the power sector. We have also been able to get the approval from BHEL. During the year 2003-04, Mani took over the leadership of the Application Engineering team at HO. The performance of his team is there for all to see from the order booking and the fact that two of his team members are also receiving this award. Last year, Mani was also called upon to negotiate some large project orders, which he handled very well. Apart from his technical strengths, Mani shows an excellent temperament, good judgment and a positive attitude in all aspects of work.
A Ravikumar, Fisher Sanmar
Ravi’s commitment to work and his knowledge and skills in problem solving have been widely appreciated by Fisher units worldwide. His excellent work was also recognised last year when he won the “Employee of the Year” award. The citation last year said, “Ravi has now been given the operations responsibility for the Valves Division. The challenge before him is to take Fisher Sanmar operations to world-class standards and help it become the largest supplier to Fisher worldwide”. Ravikumar has risen to this challenge and done an exceptional job in providing the right leadership to the Fisher India operations team and gaining the confidence of Fisher plants in Asia to source valves from India for large, prestigious projects.
R Ramesh Babu, Xomox Sanmar
Ramesh Babu has several significant achievements to his credit. He was responsible for changing the Xomox plant from a process layout to a product focused value stream cellular manufacturing set-up. Deputed for LBB – Six Sigma training to our JV Partner, Crane, USA, he is today a certified “Lean Black Belt”.
Ramesh Babu has not only helped transform the Xomox plant by implementing 5S but also helped Tyco launch their 5S project. He initiated various other projects for improving performance against customer metrics and operational effectiveness, including one to set up Kanban with all key vendors. Ramesh Babu has been instrumental in creating an atmosphere of total employee involvement through training and communication at all levels of the organization.
Deepesh Nanda, Flowserve Sanmar
Deepesh joined SEC as a Graduate Engineer Trainee in July 1995. In October 2002, he became the Group Leader of Flowserve’s Chennai branch. He was earlier recognised as Employee of the Year for 2002. His achievements include selling the Seal Tester for the first time in the domestic market at an excellent price, and setting the benchmark for pricing with other customers, picking up orders from GAIL at a good contribution, developing the Flowserve Pump Division as an excellent customer through good processes in both the Pump Division and at our end. As Product Manager for GTS seals, Deepesh promoted it actively throughout India. As a result, we are now receiving orders from Reliance Jamnagar. This should set the basis for such orders from other refineries in India.
Supriyo Bhowmik, Flowserve Sanmar
A 1992 Chemical Engineer, Supriyo Bhowmik joined Flowserve in August 1996 at our Kolkata branch, moved to Surat in April 2003. Rated Employee of the Year in 2002, Supriyo’s strength is his excellent technical knowledge of applications and a strong relationship with all his customers. His achievements have been: Increasing Flowserve’s share at RIL Hazira with a higher contribution than previous years and getting Reliance Hazira to specify Flowserve seals and obtaining a copy of the specification. This is the first time Reliance has given a specification of seals in writing; surfacing issues to raise service and performance levels;reviving many dormant Flowserve customers by continuous interaction with them.
Supriyo has been promoted and moved to Kolkata branch as a Group Leader.
Anupama Rao, SEC - Corporate
Anupama Rao is effectively the quality assurance head for all management information reports originating from SEC. She takes this responsibility very seriously, as most SEC accountants have found out, sometimes the hard way! A single person department for well over 18 months now, she has not let that come in the way of meeting deadlines or ensuring accuracy. She played a critical role in 2003-04 in the crunching, of monthly accounts submission by over ten days. Be it the quarterly reviews, the monthly MIS reports or the annual budgets, Anu can be depended upon to deliver the results expected of her. She sets high standards for herself, and is as harsh on herself as she is on others when expectations are not met.
Sumeet Bansal, Asco (India)
In recognition of his performance in Flowserve, Sumeet was elevated as Asco Group Leader at Delhi in May ’03. At the time of moving into Asco, Sumeet faced many challenges including managing the show alone for some time and lack of exposure to instrumentation products. Sumeet took up the challenge as a true professional and is now considered a product expert and an application expert in the Asco team. He has also built an excellent team at the Delhi Branch of Asco. Sumeet established many new applications and won jobs against stiff competition from international players. The breakthrough orders were made possible by his perseverance, product knowledge and application knowledge, which enabled successful development of custom built products to compete with these global players. Development of these products has thrown open opportunities in both domestic business and the Asia Pacific regions.
B Sriram, Asco (India)
Joining Asco in August ’99, Sriram has ever been willing to take on challenging assignments. Readily accepting the offer of handling Asco export sales in April ’03, Sriram stabilized the export business in ’03 – ’04 with a growth of 25% and laid the foundation for future growth. He was given the additional assignment of coordinating improvement of On Time Delivery (OTD). In this role, he brought about an improvement in OTD from 17% in April ’03 to 90% by March ’04. This he achieved by the introduction of processes and systems and team working.
V Shankar Ganesh, Asco (India)
A Chemical Engineer from UDCT, Mumbai, who joined Sanmar as a Graduate Trainee in August 2000, Shankar Ganesh has always exhibited a high level of enthusiasm. Establishing himself early as a result-oriented field engineer, Shankar Ganesh played a key role in obtaining a breakthrough order from BHEL Ranipet against global competition. We expect repeat business for this system from BHEL. He was involved right from the conceptual stage to freezing the basic design, approval and concluding the contract with the support of the engineering and marketing teams. Asco India was not even in the original approved list of vendors; Shankar Ganesh was instrumental in changing this. He also played the primary role of a change agent in convincing BHEL Trichy, with the support of Engineering, by successfully promoting the Low Power/ Intrinsic Safety concept, a strategic move to counter low cost products offered by competitors. This exercise has started yielding results by way of a project order from BHEL for the IOC Panipat refinery.
K M Prasath Babu, Sensortronics Sanmar
Joining Sensortronics in August 2003. Prasath started managing the engineering function independently after a stint in the Assembly Line. Playing a lead role in SAP implementation in SSL, he has piloted a number of cost reduction initiatives. He redesigned a number of load cell products to meet international specifications, earning very good appreciation from our JV partners. Prasath was also responsible for the smooth and effective implementation of Wrench Engineering Office Management Software and designed a product at less than 25% of the cost of similar imported machines.
M Raja, Sanmar Foundries
Starting as Senior Engineer – Sales in Sanmar PTI Filters Limited, M Raja moved over to the Foundry Division in January 2001. Raja and his team are responsible for ensuring all important customer service factors such as quick turn-around of new development, adherence to committed delivery dates and responsive corrective action for reported non-conformance etc. In 2003-04, Raja and his team have achieved commendable progress in various customer services factors, and currently, the average lead time is around 4 weeks. There is a need to achieve a lot more in these initiatives but the foundry is confident that the goal will be reached, with the tireless efforts being put in by Raja in his capacity as Team Leader.