The panel members release Ashwamedh journal at the business school seminar

Xavier Institute of Management (XIMB) Bhubaneswar hosted Ashwamedh ’09 on August 29, 2009. The theme for the event, organized by XOPS-the Operations committee of XIMB, was ‘Combating Recession through Operational Excellence’. Among those who addressed the seminar were Sujit Sanyal, Senior VP-Business Operations, Ricoh, Simanta Mohanty, GM-HR, IBM, Rajarshi Chatterjee, Director-CRM, Cognizant, Satish Dhawan, DGM-Central Planning, TATA Motors and Sanjay Gupta, COO, JK Agrigenetics.

“The recession had its impact across diverse sectors like finance, IT, manufacturing etc. What is common is one of the first signs of an economic recession – employee layoffs. What comes next is a series of steps for cost cutting, restructuring and a deep focus on sustainable change and innovation. That’s the reason why the speakers from diverse sectors of the economy were invited to share their views on the theme,” XIMB said.

At the seminar, the panel members released the Ashwamedh journal for the year. Sujit Sanyal kicked off the event by presenting the various strategies which should be implemented in the times of recession through the perspective of sales and marketing. He also explicitly mentioned strategies and said, “Focus on retaining existing customers and increase communication with customers, which Ricoh put in practice to reduce the effects of recession.”

While asking if operational excellence enough to combat recession, Simanta Mohanty, being the GM-HR, IBM, highlighted how the HR function becomes all more important during recession. He reached out to the students of XIMB and said, “Explore the unsighted domains, map operations in these domains and maintain the operational excellence template.”

Describing outsourcing as a domain of IT industry, which works on the operational excellence, Rajarshi Chatterjee reminded the audience of simple fundamentals and basics. “Every aspect of operational excellence begins with discipline in everything we do and then doing it in a better way,” he explained.

Representing the manufacturing sector, Satish Dhawan gave an insight into the combating strategies from the manufacturing perspective. While speaking at the business school event, he talked about the 3-phased strategy of cost reduction, domestic growth and international growth and also discussed ongoing initiatives in TATA motors like Kaizen, TPM and 5S where the focus is on interacting to improve continuously.

Sanjay Gupta, who hails from the agriculture sector, shared seven mantras with the XIMB students and said, “Issues like cost improvement, choosing the right business model, strategic investments and management of change forms the essence of operational excellence.” A paper writing contest was also organized by the business school situated in Bhubaneshwar which got over 100 entries from the top business schools in India. The team from FMS bagged the first position followed by the team from IIM Ahmedabad.

MBAUniverse.com was the official management portal for the event.