The steel industry must innovate further and look to other sectors for solutions, Tata Steel chief executive TV Narendran said during Fastmarkets' Steel Success Strategies 2020 virtual conference on Wednesday October 28.
Traditionally, the industry has been more focused on continuous improvement than on innovation, Narendran said, having pushed for efficiency improvements and incremental performance enhancement year-on-year.
He cited production-led innovation drives in Europe in response to "very demanding customers there who are pushing us to innovate more and more."
"Innovation is possible in the process, in the product, in the way we approach customers, in the way we generate orders, and in the way we fulfil orders," he said. "I don't think we've even scratched the surface on innovation as an industry."
Part of this industry innovation would be to look at how capital can be used in a more efficient way "than building everything," and also tackling overcapacity.
"There's lots for us to learn from other industries and how they have become more capital-efficient," he said, citing the airline industry and its "fantastic job" of sharing infrastructure.