The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCC&I) partnered National Productivity Council (NPC) in celebrating the National Productivity Day with the theme “Lean Management for Productivity Enhancement” on 12th February 2014 at the Williamson Magor Hall in the Chamber premises.

The National Productivity Day Celebrations were held as part of the National Productivity Week, which this year, was observed between 12th and18th February 2014.

The objective of the programme was to celebrate the National Productivity Day with the theme “Lean Management for Productivity Enhancement” wherein, BCC&I and NPC would deliberate in detail about Lean Manufacturing and Lean Management System (applicable in all sectors) for a clear understanding of our stakeholders (comprising of MSMEs and large scale corporates) for improvement in productivity as well as profitability in an organization.

Mr. P Roy, Director General, BCC&I welcomed the participants, while Mr. P Chakraborti, Regional Director, NPC delivered the opening address.

As part of the inaugural session, we had organized a Panel Discussion, which was chaired by Mr. Aloke Mookherjea, Chairman, Solyvent Flakt (India) Private Limited and Past President, BCC&I. The panel comprised of eminent speakers from industry, who were Mr. B. Madhav Reddy, Managing Director & CEO, The Calcutta Stock Exchange Limited, Mr. Indrajit Sen, Managing Director, International Combustion (India) Ltd., Mr. Santanu Sengupta, Managing Director, Westinghouse Saxby Farmer Ltd. (under Govt. of West Bengal), Mr. Pinaki Niyogy, Associate Vice President - Manufacturing, TIL Limited and Mr. Suman Lahiri, Regional Manager, European Business and Technology Centre (EBTC).

Apart from the above, there were other Guests of Honour and key speakers who spoke about the important technical aspects of lean manufacturing and lean management system. They speakers were Mr. Biswadip Gupta, Joint Managing Director & CEO, JSW Bengal Steel Ltd & Past President, BCC&I, who was our Guest of Honour; Prof P L Narasimhan, TVS Motor Chair Professor, Department of Industrial and System Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur & Prof (Dr.) Jitesh J. Thakkar, Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial and System Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; Mr. S. Mallik, Sr. Deputy Director, NPC, Kolkata and Mr. Debkumar Basu, Member, MSME Development and Manufacturing Committee, BCC&I & Director, ZETADEL Technologies P. Ltd.

There was also a special screening of a presentation movie titled “Lean leads to better life”. Around 110 delegates, mostly from MSMEs and some from large corporates, were present. The programme was a relevant platform for participants to have a clear understanding about the policies, practices/principles and other aspects of Lean Manufacturing and Lean Management Systems, which in turn would encourage them to adopt lean manufacturing and lean management systems in their respective organizations for furthering growth and development of the overall organizational setup. Furthermore, the programme helped organizations (which already had lean manufacturing and lean management system in place) to redefine or re-brush the entire process of lean manufacturing and lean management system by identifying innovative tools and techniques and thereby incorporating them in their system and making it more in sync with the current trends.