Sunnovation
Sunnovation is a Group level platform that was formed with the objective of promoting a culture of innovation and enterprise in the SUN Group. The team consists of representatives from each Group company who have been nominated by Company Business Heads.
The Sunnovation team developed and successfully executed Sunnovation 2016, a Group-wide competition, in which ideas were crowd-sourced from the group companies.
In the first phase, ideas were invited from all employees. This stage saw wide response with over 300 ideas received from 180+ employees from across group companies. The Business Heads and the Sunnovation Company managers played a key role in ensuring wide participation in this stage.
In the second stage, all contributors were invited to Interaction Sessions with Leadership team where each contributor/team got few minutes to share their ideas. This event was held at HealthGuard Training Centre.
Once again, over 110 employees participated in these sessions held over 2 days on 7th and 9th of November, 2016. The main areas of contribution were New Businesses, New Products, Operations, Marketing with others being HR intiatives, Employee Welfare and Digital.
Further, in the last stage a final list of 12 ideas were shortlisted for the Presentation round, where the participants expanded on their idea which was evaluated by the Group Ex-com on 29th November 2016.
| Name | Company | Idea |
|---|---|---|
| Hiran Samarasinghe | HGL | Geomapping / Visualisation of Data |
| Gayan Rasika Wijemanna | SST | Cocoa Powder Production |
| Madhukar Subramanian | WPL | Branded Hand-Made Beauty Soaps as Private Label Business for Healthguard |
| Lasantha Perera | WTCL | Cross-Functional Specialised Problem Solving Teams |
| Nalith Fernando | SST | BPO for Shared Functions |
| Sisira Bandara | SST | Tea-Flavoured Yoghurt Production |
| Prasad Jayamuni | WPL | Oil Palm Adapted Stalk Cutter |
| Thanushka K. H | WPL | Recycling of Vegetable Oil for Renewable Power Generation |
| W M N Weerasinghe | WPL | KWA Controller Unit |
| Mevan De Silva | WTCL | Waltrim Tea (Limited Edition Tea) |
| Pradeep Puwaneshwaraj | SHL | Accelerated Leasing Facility for Employees |
| Dianatious Sathgunalingam | SST | Recycling Under Leaf Dust for Tea Concentrates to Maintain Blend Standards |
Out of this list, following were the winners :-
First place: W M N Weerasinghe from Watawala Plantations
Second place: Thanushka K H from Watawala Plantations
Third place: Jointly won by Prasad Jayamuni from Watawala Plantations and Pradeep Puwaneshwarai
Further, the pool of ideas will be maintained and handed over to each company for future reference and use.
The Sunnovation team thanks all the participants and believes that the wide participation is indicative of vitality and enterprise of the employees in the Group and that the innovation culture will only grow stronger from here.