Titan Industries, which is India’s number one and world’s fifth largest integrated watch manufacturer, entered into jewellery manufacturing and retailing in 1995. However, the jewellery division, which started with Tanishq jewellery brands for urban market, was consistently making losses, leading almost to the closure of its manufacturing plant in 2003. But the decision was deferred after a group of determined senior managers and employees persuaded the top management to grant a two year grace period to turn around the manufacturing plant.
With the pricing of its products 100% higher than similar products available in the market, Titan knew that it had to innovate to bring down the production cost, and ultimately, the price of its products.
“We explained to employees and opinion makers within the team that innovation is the only way for the business to break even and innovation can come only through people,” recollects Mr Lalgudi Ramanathan Natrajan, CEO , New Business Division, Titan Industries, in an interview to India CoCreates.
With concerted efforts to win the trust of employees and enlist their participation in the company’s innovation efforts since 2004, Titan produced remarkable productivity gains. It improved production quantity in stone setting per shift per person from 100 stones to 1800 stones and wax setting production from 350 stones to 2100 stones. It also reduced the lead time of plain gold jewellery manufacturing from 30 days to 6 days, and that of studded jewellery manufacturing from 56 days to 9 days. Today, Titan’s jewellery division has two patents and five patent pending manufacturing innovation in jewellery manufacturing to its credit.
The Future Group
As Titan kept introducing new innovative themes and started engaging not only its own employees but also vendors, and even external organizations, it realized that it needed a dedicated group that would source and pursue ideas, and work with ideators to translate ideas into actions.
“Prompt and effective feedback mechanism encourage employees come with more ideas. Otherwise people will lose interest. We have to take ideas to next step immediately. Even if we fail, we have to fail fast,” Mr Natrajan says and adds, ”We formed the Future Group in 2006 with two employees to create specific structure for scrutinising ideas.”
As Titan tried new ideation platforms - right from the traditional whiteboards, town hall meetings, to web 2.0 portal (named Tata Innoverse that connects all employees of all Tata companies), it also ramped up the Future Group. Today, it is a 20 member team with a divisional manager and 15 executives who work with ideators within and outside the company full time.
Training Makes the Difference
Thus, when employees come with more and more ideas, the Future Group promptly evaluates them, works with ideators, and facilitates for the funding too. “We evaluate ideas on a 2x2 matrix concerning the investment requirement and the likely impact it would have on the company’s growth. We zero down on ideas that fall under low-investment-and-high-impact quadrant and actively pursue them to their eventual realization. We also provide prompt feedback to ideators whose ideas we will not be taking forward immediately. We tell them the pluses of their ideas and suggest the ways they could be improved. Ultimately, we are not focused on results, but on the process of innovation,” says Mr Natrajan.
At Titan, budget is not a constraint for great ideas. As a cash-rich company, it spends about Rs 15 crore every year for development of ideas into actions. “It is important to pursue ideas immediately and do something about it. Even if we fail, we have to fail fast,” believes Mr Natrajan. Titan’s Future Group continues to focus on innovation currently with a portfolio of 41 path breaking projects.