STRATEGIC PLANNING

Strategy Development
PTE steering committee decided to find a better way to develop strategies and align the organization goals. In 2001, senior leaders had undergone a 2 days workshop on Strategic planning process and brought back an understanding of how strategic planning is used in the service and manufacturing sectors. By late 2001,a new position was formed to develop business performance strategies .The organization used the total quality system to accelerate progress in achieving the vision. A systematic and fact based strategic planning process was introduced as shown in table.

Today all business functions have totally integrated their quality and business plans ie; all key quality indicators impacting external customers and internal operations are included in the business plan. The strategy Quality Planning Process model was developed in 2001 to ensure this integration.

Strategic Quality Planning Process includes:
• Alignment with PTE's Vision, Mission, Policies and Values; Business operating plans; Strategic Business intent.
• Input from all employees, functions, suppliers, customers and society.
• Focus on our partners.
• Implementation Deployment to work units.

Our business plan address customer needs; competitive environment; financial, market and social risks; process and service capabilities; supplier capabilities. Today, the environmental scan has been expanded and includes additional inputs such as market place needs, demographics, risk assessment information, regulatory requirements, human resource assessment, supplier and partner needs.

The information and data for the environmental scan are accumulated from internal and external groups as per resources shown below:
Customer and marketplace needs: Customer surveys both local and export market.
Requirements: Specifications reviews, customer visits, technical team visits and employees visit.
Risk assessment:: Customer retention analysis, New govt. regulations /laws, Competitor Scan, Environment/Occupational Health and Safety publications, Currency/Interest Rate Risk bulletins from banks, Commodity Pricing risk from bulletins, trend analysis and expert opinions, societal concerns.

Key Partners and Suppliers Capability: Supplier partnership, Joint specification development, material specifications review, Quality management system review ISO 9001:2001, certification audits.
Our Capability: Technology up-gradation, supplier technology developments, technical /engineering reports, process capability.
Competitive Environment: Customer/supplier feedback, process capability, quality of product and service, bench marking studies, and trade assessment.
HR Resource: Inputs for policy and strategy are collected from annual employees satisfaction survey, group HR strategy & activities, latest HR philosophy & Practices. The needs and expectations of the employees are also captured through team meetings, communication meetings, departmental meetings ,local managers meetings and union management meetings.
Future Business Factors: The factors such as Customer survey, Vision & Mission are considered during revisiting the Business plan annually.

SWOT Analysis
PTE has considered the various types of information available internally and external environmental conditions before identifying the key strategies. During steering committee meeting, information is presented by various cross functional teams providing insight into the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the business, its products and services; customer, industry and market factors; associate, operational and supplier capabilities; new regulations; best practices; emerging technologies; and competitive factors. It helps the steering committee to identify the bottlenecks in achieving the Vision and to define the Key strategies to achieve the same. To meet the key strategies, 3-year strategic goals are set for each key strategy.

Since 2001, further improvements have been made to strategic planning process. Steering committee seeks to learn best practices from outside organizations and continually reviews the process to identify opportunities for improvement.

Key Strategies & Strategic Goals
Key strategic goals are prioritized and scheduled based on the company's Vision for market leadership through high quality products in order to exceed customers' expectations. This will get customer delight. By prioritizing the strategic goals, revenues and earning have increased through operational excellence. This has also helped us to maintain a good image of corporate citizenship.
Long term goals: Strategic goals with time frame of 3 years were decided.
Short term goal: Strategic goals with time frame of 1 year were framed.

Strategy Deployment Process
3.2.a .PTE uses important factors such as customer requirements, assessment of internal capabilities, competitive intelligence to define key quality indicators and company performance requirements.
Key quality indicators are based on customers' and society perceptions obtained from customer and society meet and verified through internal & external customer satisfaction and social satisfaction surveys. These factors may vary depends on environmental conditions. Our main common factors related to our business include commitment to the customer requirements, on- time delivery, product quality and new product development.

The important quality indicators are derived from the needs of our defined partners and through the planning process. Major items are profit, cost and revenue, safety , society perception, employee satisfaction etc.

Each key strategy has converted into Annual goals. To meet the annual goals, each executive up to officer level has developed strategic deployment matrix and translated them into actions through continual quality improvement projects to meet the organization goals.
Action Plans are Developed with Time Schedule.

Steering committee communicates the critical tasks across the organization to all employees. Presentations are made during communication meetings at each functional level. After presentation, a cascading approach is used.
• Short term (1Year) measurable goals are mutually agreed upon between steering committee and functional heads.
• Annual goals are converted into department goals and performance goals and then to sub process where the plan is translated into actions.
• The strategic planning process finally culminates with associates developing individual performance plans aligned to the goals of their individual areas.
• Resources are committed to achieve the desired results outlined in the critical tasks and are based on scope and priority.
• Steering committee “close the loop” by modifying the plan, as required, based on employee and supplier inputs.

Review Process
TQM quality indicators are reviewed monthly under the chairmanship of President Director with all other senior managers participating, to review and taking stock of the progress of Continual Quality Improvement (CQI) Projects. Leaders of respective project teams give their presentations regarding the status of the project which is analyzed and discussed in detail. Actions are taken to de-bottleneck hurdles if any. The leaders communicate with his team members during team meetings accordingly. Similarly, New Product Development (NPD) initiatives are discussed in another monthly meeting involving senior management staff from various departments such as production, quality assurance, marketing and finance to meet the customer requirements. Necessary action plans are made to meet the organization objectives to remain as market leader as a man made fiber spun yarn producer.

Best Practice
In PTE, the objectives of each and every executive is planned in the begining of the year in the form of a X-Matrix. The whole thing transpires from the vision (or guidelines) of the organization. The CEO decides his objectives having linkages with company’s vision. Objectives of the Senior executives reporting to CEO, are writen in tandem with those of the CEO showing relationship (strong, somewhat or low) between each of them. Action plans are prepared, which can also be in the form of projects, by the executive with relationship so as to achieve his objectives. The action plan/projects are also linked with the guidelines/company’s vision. All of the objectives and action plans have distinct targets. A specimen X-Matrix of an executive is shown above.