The Productivity Championship Awards 2010 is open to individuals or teams who have excelled in achieving superior performance through sustained productivity improvements.

"Auto and auto component companies tend to send maximum entries, as they are in the forefront of manufacturing productivity. PSUs have also participated and won prizes. Our expectation is that 50% will be auto based, 20-25% will be PSUs/other large non-auto industries in the private sector,  and the rest 25% will be SMEs," he said.

Ranking the focus on productivity among the various industry sectors in India he said that the Auto/auto-component rank first, other non auto engg cos in private sector come next, followed by SMEs and PSUs. PSUs generally operate in the large-equipment discrete manufacturing space. They are improving productivity by tackling non-productive time and better processes, tools and practices.

Case studies may be entered for the competition describing productivity improvement projects implemented in 'Manufacturing system redesign', 'Better asset utilization' , 'Productivity through quality improvement' , 'Optimizing metalworking process'.

SMEs can compete under SME stream or any of the other four streams by submitting case study entries describing productivity Improvement projects Implemented in any area of their operations.

The last date for the receipt of abstracts is 20th April 2010.

"Due to sheer volume and competition, the auto industry will have the best presentations, and these will be more or less equally distributed in the four streams of the competition. The accent will be on squeezing productivity from every rupee invested!" he added.