“I have always been very confident and very upbeat about the future potential of India. I think it is a great country with great potential.” R.N. Tata.
Recently I was in a group planning to host a quality conference in India. The group felt that it was time that we invited quality practitioners from industry and academia to once again discuss and deliberate the quality practices in the Indian industry. What is the status? How will it deliver the goods in the quest to Industry 4.0? How will companies improve their workings to meet the vision of the PM of the country – to become a 5 trillion economy and then to become a 30 trillion by 2050? Will the current quality practices suffice, or some serious reflection and rethinking will have to be done to ramp up? All these, and more, thoughts were occupying the thoughts of the group members. After several rounds of discussions, we finally sent out a brochure to potential participants in Industry and academia. And we were amazed at the response. We received more than 25 papers in a matter of two weeks or less. That was indeed promising and, to an extent, reflective of the giant strides that Indian industry has taken in the last 50 years.
While most of the Indian industry, or at least large parts of it, has imbibed many practices of the TQM (Total Quality Management) toolkit, like Lean Management, Quality Circles, 5S, TPM, ISO 9000, ISO 14000, ISO 27000 and so on, it appears that many have also benefited from the Performance Excellence Models like the Malcolm Baldrige Model from the US and the one from Europe, named EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management). These two models, along with a host of others, all designed and administered under awards programs at the country level, and practised in almost all countries in the world, have given a fillip to work methods in companies to confidently face up to the Industry 4.0 challenge.
TQM and its toolkit brought about enormous efficiencies in the management of companies. For example, many countries took up lean management as a way to serve customer customers and delight them and derived many benefits in terms of efficiency, productivity, production volumes, space utilisation and so on. So much so that, using the same resources, these companies could double or even triple their production, halve their cost of production, and double or triple their productivities, in short, time periods, using minimal capital costs. One such example, of Kirin Mattress company of Japan, is given in the table below:
In other cases, the lean management practice has resulted in quantum jumps:
Results are similar for other initiatives also. The change over from a seller’s to a buyer’s market in the late 1950s made TQM and world-class quality a top priority.
The pioneer of the TQM movement in India was Dr V Krishnamurthy, formerly the Founder and Chairman of Maruti Udyog and past Chairman of BHEL, SAIL and GAIL. When he visited Japan, under the aegis of CII – JUSE (Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers), he observed closely the huge improvements made by companies using TQM. Upon his return to India, he encouraged BHEL to start the practice of Quality Circles, the performances of which he saw in Japan. Under the leadership of Mr SR Udupa, the QC movement was started in BHEL, Ramachandrapuram Unit in Hyderabad, which ultimately led to the formation of the Quality Circle Forum of India in 1982. Even today, the QCFI continues to administer Quality Circles as well as other quality-related activities in India. It sponsors Indian teams to compete in competitions abroad and in India.
TVS, L&T, Tata, Aditya Birla, BHEL, NTPC, and many other companies in India have been in the quality movement since those days. Many Indian CEOs have visited Japan to see for themselves the benefits of quality work. Techniques like lean management, six sigma, poke yoke, 5S, and TPM have been adopted, and many Indian companies have won prestigious awards in quality instituted by the JUSE. For example, Rane Madras is a fine case of winning the Deming award and the Japan Gold Medal. So has Mahindra Tractors. Tata Steel has won the Deming award, as have many TVS companies, SRF, Ashok Leyland and others. These are some of the highest awards in the TQM area, and the Indian industry has been active in competing and also adopting world-class quality practices.
In the late 1980s, the TQM was followed by its successor, the Performance Excellence model. The first such model appeared in Canada; however, it did not find much favour in other parts of the world. The Malcolm Baldrige Model of the USA was a pioneer in describing a set of practices which will make companies perform in an ‘excellent’ manner. It was built on the foundation of TQM but with significant changes and many new concepts. Following this lead, the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) and many others came up. Indian companies started using these models very soon. The Tata Group was a pioneer in that Mr RN Tata recommended all Tata companies to adopt the Baldrige model under the new brand name ‘Tata Business Excellence Model’ (TBEM). This became an instant success within the group, and many group companies, over a period of time, beginning in 1992, won the prestigious JRD Tata Award for Performance Excellence. The CII introduced a similar award under the style of the CII EXIM Bank Award for Business Excellence. This system has also been in existence for more than twenty-five years and has produced many quality champions in the Indian industry. Companies like Aditya Birla Group, Tata Group, BHEL, NTPC, Ashok Leyland and many others have competed for the award and won it also.
Presently, many large Indian corporations, banks, MSMEs, and educational institutions have all started these practices, and this is one reason why India has succeeded in exporting goods and services worth more than USD 400 Billion in the last year. With the advent of Industry 4.0, Quality 4.0 is also under development, which will serve the needs of companies which want to transform to the Industry 4.0 way of working. With all these changes, the Indian industry is well placed to address future requirements.