Panel of Judges - 2017

Jitendra Agrawal is presently Sr. Vice President - Business & Service Excellence (BSE) at HDFC Life, India’s leading private Life Insurance Company. He has over 26 years of experience in driving leadership roles in Business Excellence function of various industries viz. Manufacturing, Retail, ITES, Telecom, Banking and Insurance.

Jitendra is recognized as 50 Most Talented Quality Professional in India and also awarded for Innovative Leadership in Quality. He is affiliated to various professional bodies viz., Associate Academician (membership # 63752723) of International Academy for Quality (IAQ), Life Member of Indian Society for Quality (ISQ) and Quality Council of India (QCI),in the Advisory Council of World Quality Congress & Awards (WQCA), Advisory Board of Economic Times Operational Excellence 2014, Examiner of CII – IOQ Excellence Awards 2015 and the first member of Lean Management Institute of India (LMII).

Jitendra has been involved in panel discussions and has presented his concepts & case studies in various forum of repute like;ASQ’16, WQC’15, ICQ’14, ANQ’13, QCI, QAI-NASSCOM, PMI - Mumbai & Kochi Chapter, Banking Frontiers, Qimpro Conclave, BestPrax Club-GBN, Voice & Data (BPOrbit), NITIE, NCQR and CG (TQ Con, VE Con). He has enabled many prestigious awards and certification for the organizations worked for.

He has driven originations with Innovative Quality practices including Larger Scale Interactive Process (LSIP) to create significant financial impact and a strong culture of continuous improvement. Embracing Robotics Process Automation, diagnosing process through Business Process Engineering, leading business critical complex Cross Functional Projects and building relevant Initiatives Framework for organization wide intervention are his core competencies. He is a certified Facilitator, Coach and Counselor for effective Change Management.

Jitendra is a Production Engineering graduate from Mumbai University, M.Tech in Reliability Engineering from IIT Mumbai and has an Executive MBA from Crompton Greaves & COSMODE. He is a Six Sigma Champion, TQM Facilitator, BPR & Lean Practitioner, Assessor for EFQM & Malcolm Baldrige (IMC RBNQA), CII Sustainability Assessor and Lead Assessor for ISO 9001 / ISO14000 / ISO 27001.

Work Experience

Over 15 Years of experience from various industries and companies such as Deutsche bank, Infosys BPO and Grasim Industries Limited (AV Birla Group) in leading organization change Journey - Quality, Transformation, Business Engineering, Operational Excellence, Client Delivery Management and Business development

Qualifications

Holds BE from REC, Bhopal along with MBA (HR). Some of the professional qualifications include:

· Certified Quality Leader

· Six Sigma Master Black belt

· Lean Trainer

· Certified SCRUM Master

· Certified ISO Internal quality Auditor

· eSCM and COPC professional

· Certified Assessor for AVB Chairman’s Award for manufacturing Excellence (2004 Model)

Have experience of establishing change function from inception in multiple organization. Worked in Manufacturing and Service industry specializing in Business and Strategic Planning, Performance benchmarking, Risk Management, Process re-engineering. Global programs under leadership have led to significant process improvements in the areas of Nostro break reduction, T0 submissions, STP rate improvement, Backlog reduction, Query reduction, Cycle time reduction, Error reduction, Functional Realignment, Line Balancing, Cross Business Capacity creation and Strategic Operating Model Changes.

Specialise in assessing business need and designing change intervention to drive achievement of strategic goals, drive performance culture, strengthen employee experience, knowledge sharing and strengthen change DNA for the organization. Some of the program include: Champion Workshop for Sr Leaders, Problem solving & Mistake Proofing workshop, Theme based workshops, Lean and Six Sigma Academy for focused groups, etc

Umesh Dhand is an Academician, Consultant & Entrepreneur. He has 20 years of experience in the corporate world across industries like Fashion, FMCG, e-commerce & retailing. His previous assignments include the Aditya Birla Group where he was the General Manager – Merchandising. He managed 350 super & hypermarkets & was later Head of Capability Building. Prior to that he was with Shoppers’ Stop where he managed several categories like luxury goods, formal wear, fashion wear & own label at a national level.

He has completed the Faculty Development Programme at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) to further develop his research & facilitating skills.

He has spoken in industry forums & facilitated leadership & managerial workshops at Retailer Association of India (RAI). He has been on the jury panel of Start Up events like Eureka eCell (IIT-B), Ideathon, TechHunt, and the National Competition of Best Practices on ‘Making Quality Happen’ organized by the Indian Merchant Chambers.

He has had engagements with several organisations like Vodafone, Nielsen, Siemens, Merck-Millipore, Landmark Group, Joyallukas, Amdocs, Sanofi Aventis and companies in international markets like Singapore, Bangkok, Jakarta, Dubai, Cairo etc and Family Managed Businesses, SMEs.

Besides working he loves cooking & trekking. He is an avid learner & practitioner of Yoga

Dr Narayan Hariharan has four decades of corporate experience in the field of Human Resources and Employee Relations. He is a visiting Professor and Faculty Mentor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He is currently involved with Research in the areas of Employment Matters.

A mechanical engineer by education, Rashmikant has 20 years of work experience, of which the past 9 years have been with Tata Power. He is Group Head – Continuous Improvement, where he is driving various Business Excellence initiatives.

Rashmikant is a trained LSS Black Belt, TPM Facilitator, ISO Auditor and a TBEM Assessor. He is currently driving Improvement Management and TEI through Six Sigma, SPS (QC Story), LASER (a combo of behavioural and shop floor improvement methodology) and 5S with more than 250 projects in past 5 years. Rashmikant has been responsible for creating Process Management structure through Enterprise Process Model (adaption of APQC PCF), managing more than 450 processes across Tata Power. He has also been responsible for developing the structure of Strategy Planning and Deployment Process (including SWOT, TWOS, Balanced Score Card and Strategy Deployment Matrix) in the organization.

Ms Manjula Mani holds a Master’s Degree in Human Resources from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. Professionally, she has been involved in the HR function for 33 years in organizations like Best & Crompton, Larsen & Toubro, Nuclear Power Corporation and Jet Airways.

She has extensive exposure in Policies, Processes and Practices in private and public sector categories in human resource strategies, manpower planning, talent acquisition, retention, employee relations and training & development. Her additional focus areas have been performance management and manpower optimization strategies in challenging scenarios.

Manjula’s other interests include amateur dramatics, classical music and dancing, numismatics and philately.

Arup Kumar Mukhopadhyay - Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt (MBB), MBA (Marketing) & B.Tech (Textile Technology)

- Overall experience of 25 years in Industry & Corporate segments – Manufacturing, Six Sigma & Business Process excellence.

- Currently working as Lead in Continuous Improvement (CI) and Performance Improvement Cycle (PIC) in Hydrocarbon Mfg. (Refinery & Petrochem.) facilities, under Governance & Integration (G&I) of Group

- Safety & Operation Risk (Group - S&OR) Business Function in Reliance Ind. Ltd. (RIL)

- Currently deploying Operation Management System (OMS) of M/S British Petroleum (BP) at RIL

- Developed Business Processes of DMAIC, DFSS, Innovation & CI in SAP (PPM_C-Project) Portal for all manufactruing & business function of RIL

- Leading Six Sigma deployment in Manufacturing, Businesses, procurement & other Service functions

- Executed & guided over 750 improvement projects across Hydrocarbon Mfg. & service functions

- Expertise in Manufacturing & Technical Service in Polyester & Acrylic processes

- Worked with various technologies like, DuPont, Zimmer, Neumag in Polymerization, Spinning & D/L

- Worked in Technology transfer of Japan Exlan (Acrylic) with M/S Consolidated Fibres & Chem. Ltd.

- Business Process Excellence Journey - EFQM Award (2008); Deming Award (2007); RBNQA (2002)

Dr. R.H.G. Rau is a Metallurgical Engineer from IIT Bombay (1963), Purdue University USA (1967), and NIT Warangal (1985). A Principal Consultant of Qimpro, Dr. Rau has 55 years of professional experience at Mukand Limited, INCO (UK) Ltd. RPG Enterprises and NMIMS University in the fields of quality, technology, research, manufacturing, marketing, teaching and Organizational Excellence.

His professional contributions have been many; including, Chairman of IIM, Mumbai Chapter, Visiting faculty at IIT Bombay, Member of T&Q Improvement Committee of IMC, Senior Member ASQ, President of NCQM.

He has to his credit the Distinguished Alumnus Award o IIT Bombay, Fellowship of IIM, National Award for Meritorious Invention, Qimpro Gold Standard 1992, and RPG Enterprises’ Outstanding Achiever Award, to name a few.

A healthcare quality professional, having medical degree, defense background, management credentials, corporate hospitals’ management experience and a distinct skill-set for hospital accreditations (NABH & JCI). Core competencies include healthcare quality management systems & accreditations, hospital management, medical/clinical administration, patient safety & risk management, healthcare quality training, management teaching & research.

Lakshmi Ramachandran is a well-known name in the diagnostics and healthcare industry. She has 23 years of wide experience in healthcare that includes manufacturing, QA, sales & marketing, customer experience enhancement and more.

Lakshmi’s expertise is in process excellence and lean/six sigma. She has managed several lean projects in India and other SAARC countries in the healthcare sector mainly hospitals, laboratories, and blood banks. Her creativity and enthusiasm is viral.

Lakshmi is now on an entrepreneurial path, working towards setting up her own businesses to support healthcare.