OREANDA-NEWS. November 22, 2012. The IIM Awards function was held today as part of the on-going National Metallurgists' Day (NMD) celebrations and the Annual Technical Meeting (ATM), amidst the gathering of the top metallurgists and technologists of the country. This is the 50th edition of the NMD- the annual high body of the country's thought leaders of metallurgy.

Mr H M Nerurkar, President, Indian Institute of Metals (IIM) and Managing Director, Tata Steel, presided over the proceedings in the presence of other guests and participants at the Tata Auditorium, XLRI Campus. Also present were Prof. Kamanio Chattopadhyay, R N Patra, D De Sarkar, J C Marwah and T Venugopalan.

Mr Anand Sen, VP (TQM & KPO) received the IIM Tata Gold Medal Award.

Also in other categories, Mr Debashish, Chief, LD#1, Tata Steel received the IIM O P Jindal Gold Medal Award. Mr Sujit kumar Haldar, Chief, Coke Plant & In-charge, Coke Project Battery 10, 11 & BPP, Tata Steel Ltd received the IIM TSL Black Diamond Award.

In his address, Mr H M Nerurkar said, "It gives me immense pleasure to be here to give away the awards and I congratulate all the winners. The process of selecting the award winners is very rigorous and I also thank the esteemed jury. It is great to see the tremendous effort put in by the educational institutes and the industry. It is also encouraging to see young students taking keen interest in the proceedings and research work. IIM as an institute is like a grooming platform for all the practicing and upcoming metallurgists and I wish the Institute a very bright future."

Established in 1907 as Asia's first integrated private sector steel company, Tata Steel Group is among the top-ten global steel companies with an annual crude steel capacity of over 26.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa). It is now the world's second-most geographically-diversified steel producer, with operations in 26 countries and a commercial presence in over 50 countries. The Tata Steel Group, with a turnover of USD 26.13 billion in FY 12, has over 80,000 employees across five continents and is a Fortune 500 company. The Group's vision is to be the world's steel industry benchmark in "Value Creation" and "Corporate Citizenship" through the excellence of its people, its innovative approach and overall conduct. Underpinning this vision is a performance culture committed to aspiration targets, safety and social responsibility, continuous improvement, openness and transparency. In 2008, Tata Steel India became the first integrated steel plant in the world, outside Japan, to be awarded the Deming Application Prize 2008 for excellence in Total Quality Management. In 2012, Tata Steel became the first integrated steel company in the world to win the Deming Grand Prize 2012 instituted by the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers.