In the workshop, Valmet collaborated with esteemed suppliers to bring more competitive solutions to its customers.
Valmet, with an aim to transform innovative ideas into value, organised Supplier Innovation Workshop on December 9, 2021, at Leela Ambience, Gurgaon. Through this event, Valmet collected ideas from its key supplier base in India to feed internal innovation processes. The main aim of the program was to strengthen supplier collaboration and involvement in providing competitive solutions to its customers.
One of the leading global developers and suppliers of process technologies, automation, and services for the pulp and paper industry, Valmet has over 220 years of industrial history. The company intended to capitalise on the innovative capability of its valued suppliers and invite their ideas combined with their skills, knowledge, expertise, and technology to create value-added and cost-competitive solutions
Supply Chain, Valmet
The key theme for the workshop was “Transforming Innovative ideas into Value through knowledge, expertise and technology”. The workshop kickstarted with a welcome speech by Mr. Manish Sharma, Director Asia Pacific Supply Chain, Valmet, and was conducted in a hybrid mode with around 50 participants joining face-to-face (including 24 supplier participants) and around 20 Jury members participating online through Teams. The session began with the Valmet teams in India and Finland welcoming all the participants. While the team from Finland had to attend the event virtually due to the ongoing pandemic, their high level of enthusiasm and words of encouragement boosted the morale of all the participants.
“Ideas do not necessarily need to be big. They can be small but implementable”, said Mr. Jani Suomalainen, Vice President, Procurement at Valmet.
In the opening remarks, Mr. Manish Sharma said, “As we embark towards a new year – the year 2022, we would like to have grace and great optimism and full of futuristic opportunities for mutual collaboration and cooperation. Today is indeed a special day when we pave the way for new innovations and creative ideas shared by our key stakeholders and suppliers.” With these words, he set the stage for the participants.
This event was designed for Valmet’s key and main suppliers from Engineering, Manufacturing and Logistics and Consultancy Services thus covering the complete supply chain. Around 12 suppliers participated in the workshop. Every participant was allotted 10 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for answering the queries of the jury and audience.
The ideas were evaluated by the jury members and the result was compiled and announced. A total of 25 ideas were put up by these 12 suppliers. The top 3 ideas were selected by the jury and awarded with the token of appreciation. These top ideas would be taken for implementation and showcased when ready.
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The event ended with Mr. Varun Jain, Director, India Region, Valmet, thanking all the participants for attending the event. He further said it is due to the cooperation of its suppliers that despite the pandemic, Valmet has done extremely well. “There were about 15-20 mega/large-scale projects in the country and in almost each of the projects, the customers were really happy with our deliveries, and the quality of our services from India. Time has been really tough and challenging, however, we’ve been together through this and we are still going strong and that’s the most important thing”.
Talking about the workshop, he said, “I would like to express my elation to see the presentations, which were very insightful presented by specialists, expressing very simple ideas that are implementable, which basically sums up the idea behind what innovation is all about. I am of the view that all of the ideas were worth considering.”
He further added, “In the past year, we’ve seen quite good growth in almost all of Valmet’s global sales that has also brought up the need for developing other countries’ supply chains apart from China and Europe as a supply hub. I am pleased to see that India is one of those top considerations. Thus, I would like to say that these kinds of workshops give a sense of assurance that the supplier base here is not only together with us, but is also thinking about improving the quality in the right way without affecting the brand image or compromising the performance of the products.”
Amidst the COVID-19 challenges, Valmet has been able to put up this show very successfully which has been the first-of-its-kind by any of the technology suppliers in India.
