Take advantage of lean mfg scheme to enhance efficiency: NPC

All micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) should take advantage of government's Lean Manufacturing Competitiveness Scheme to enhance their efficiency in global markets, a senior official today said.
Director General of national Productivity Council (NPC) Kalpana Awasthi said efforts are on to increase awareness about the scheme among the MSME sector.
Under the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Programme, the government works on enhancing the entire value chain of the MSME sector through components including the Lean Manufacturing Competitiveness Scheme (LMCS).
Lean manufacturing techniques help enhance productivity and competitiveness of MSMEs by reduction of wastages in manufacturing processes, inventory management, space management and energy consumption.

"We are telling MSMEs to take advantage of this. We are doing outreach programmes to convince them to take advantage of this technique. This needs to be internalised so that India becomes part of the global supply chain," Awasthi said.
In the pilot phase of the scheme, which was launched in July 2009, 900 SMEs participated which helped them in saving Rs 60 crore annually.
She said the scheme will be continued and the NPC will get additional 250 clusters to implement this. NPC, which is under the commerce and industry ministry, is an apex body for enhancing productivity of units.