An electrifying evolution

No matter how strong a business is, no matter the past successes, the way the Managing Director of Eaton’s electrical sector in India sees it, a company should never stop improving.

“A culture of continuous improvement should be fostered across all areas, whether it’s the front end or the back end operations, suppliers or employees,” Syed Sajjadh Ali tells The CEO Magazine.

“And only when we have that continuous improvement culture will we be able to keep up to speed, be able to bring out more differentiators and be able to stand out in the crowd.”

The source of success

Boasting a rich heritage dating back to Joseph Eaton in 1911, the larger Eaton group has expanded over the years into an intelligent power management company dedicated to providing solutions across a vast range of markets, including India, from 1999 onwards.

With over 45 years of industrial experience working with major multinational corporations such as English Electric and Cooper (which was later acquired by Eaton), as well as the past 12 years leading the helm at Eaton’s electrical business in India, Ali has both a wealth of knowledge and firsthand, cross-functional experience through a range of positions in operations, sales and leadership.

“I have been lucky to meet customers from multiple segments, vendors from different domains and people with different aspirations and capabilities and put all those things together,” he says with a smile.

“Today, we have a wonderful team, which differentiates us in the marketplace. And that automatically becomes the recipe for success.”

Having acted as Managing Director of Eaton’s Electrical Sector in India since 2013, Ali has been actively involved in the company’s transformation from a low-cost manufacturing hub to a growth engine, expanding its manufacturing footprint and product portfolio to serve the local market.

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“During the course of this journey, we have been able to establish that India itself is a place where growth happens every day, every minute,” Ali says.

“Our growth has been exponential. Eaton has a huge product basket, but not all of them are made in India and importing products from anywhere else and selling them in India is not feasible.”

“We didn’t want to put our hands all around – we were very careful in choosing our adjacencies because entering into an established market and gaining market share is a big challenge,” he says.

“Without the right value proposition, you may not be able to make a difference to the customer. So that way, we have been able to successfully bring in product lines one by one, identify segments in which we want to focus, deploy all the front and back end teams and have all the volumes wrapped up.”

Sustainable growth

Sustainability remains a priority for Eaton in many respects, with the Puducherry plant even operating as a zero discharge, zero waste plant.

“To get to this status, there is a lot of effort behind it,” Ali explains. “It’s about ensuring that your material, your process and your technology supports the environment. Even when designing a product, we look at the selection of raw materials, what we use there and their disposability – all of those things matter a lot to us.

“We are an intelligent power management company, which gives a lot of importance to sustainability and efficiency.”

A conscious shift toward digitalization across the company has already improved processes in myriad ways, enabling live data collection and speeding up reporting processes.

“Only when you have data are you able to make interventions,” Ali says. “And looking at the outside world, digitalization is certainly enhancing the customer experience too, in terms of having queries answered immediately, getting order acknowledgements or being able to know about maintenance cycles or things like that. All of these things really mean a lot to the customer.”

A strong backbone

Suppliers are truly supportive of Eaton, according to Ali, given that there are multiple processes and multiple products within the company’s portfolio. This is precisely why keeping partners happy is essential to the company’s long-term success.

In terms of delivering the right quality and the right cost and understanding the application of the product, suppliers remain key elements within the entire Eaton value chain.

“We get them on board quite early and take them into confidence, tell them where we are going – which product lines we are going to enter, which components are going to be in use,” Ali explains.

“We value collaboration with our suppliers because every improvement at their end ultimately benefits us as well. By working together, exchanging best practices and fostering innovation, we help boost their performance and reduce costs creating success for all.”

Ultimately, Ali enthuses, by creating an environment where all parties benefit from the interactions, the entire community becomes stronger.

“Everybody wants to grow,” he says. “And our growth plans help them to also grow, which gives them the kind of heads-up as to where they have to invest, which components are likely to grow and which processes or technology to invest in.

“When I say ‘We make what matters work,’ it expresses the spirit of what we do. And more importantly, we know why we do it.”