RSB Transmissions Ltd has recently bagged the coveted Deming Prize for total quality management in Japan. SK Behera, vice chairman & MD, RSB Group, recounts the journey
By Niranjan Mudholkar
It is the dedicated quest for the best of quality that is catapulting Indian manufacturing in the global league today. And it is not just the large brands who are undertaking this fantastic journey of excellence. One such remarkable example is the Pune headquartered RSB Group. The automotive division of RSB Transmissions (I) Ltd, the flagship company of the Group, recently bagged the Deming Prize, one of the highest global awards in TQM (Total Quality Management). RK Behera, chairman, RSB Group, received the coveted prize from Masahiro Sakane, vice chairman, Deming Prize Committee, JUSE (Union of Japanese Scientists & Engineers), at a function in Tokyo Japan. M Sankaranarayanan, president – auto vertical and G Krishnasami, VP (TQM) were also present at the ceremony. Accepting the award, the RSB chairman said that TQM implementation has resulted in significant improvements in all performance indicators. He further added that TQM is thoroughly institutionalised at RSB and embedded into the
gene of every employee..
SK Behera, vice chairman & MD, who was involved in every stage of RSB’s Deming TQM journey, spoke to Manufacturing Today about it. “At RSB quality has no finish line. We will always continue to enhance our quality, technology and management practices to delight our stakeholders.”
So what has been the motivation behind this quest? SK Behera says: “Over the years, we have experimented with different management practices to achieve all-round improvement in our organization, but were not comfortable as it was not producing the desired results across all functions. Hence, the need, for approach with a difference, was felt which would be austere and yet link all the functions. We found the TQM (Total Quality Management) to be the best methodology to translate the vision and business objectives into reality through continual measurement, at periodic intervals, of excellence parameters to achieve desired results.”
The actual Deming journey at RSB was flagged off in the year 2006 after the company re-grouped its business portfolio into three business groups; auto vertical, CMI vertical and overseas operations with a simple tool called EVD. EVD stands for Exactness between Plan & Actuals, Visualisation and Daily Management. For the actual implementation of the TQM plan, three plants of the auto vertical based at Jamshedpur, Pant Nagar and Pune were involved.