People have various definitions for the term Quality. It may refer to a characteristic, a mark, a peculiarity, a feature or an attribute, the list seems to be endless. When it comes to defining and explaining world-class quality, Suresh Lulla seems to have done it well.
Defining the meaning of World Class Quality, Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and MD, Reliance Industries says being world class is a journey rather than a destination, but with a clear road map and the right directions for achieving and maintaining a pre-eminent position in the changing world order.
Suresh Lulla, MD, Qimpro Consultants Pvt Ltd in his book ‘The World Class Quality’ gives one a detailed explanation as to the growing importance of quality in shift from the traditional management towards modern management. The books stresses on the various aspects of education, focus, and environmental inputs for world-class quality.
The introduction begins with quality work in one’s own nation - a brief flash back to the presence of quality in fields of art, science, sculptures, or in any artistic walk of life. A special reference to the perfection present in the work of the ancient people, be it the Ashoka’s famous pillared hall or the untarnished iron pillar erected in Delhi by Vikramaditya. The questions still go unanswered as to how these people maintained such perfection, such standard in their work. All this seems to be a mystery to modern science.
In this competitive business world where each one in search of ways to move ahead of one another, every possible way is thought of to pull the other down and move ahead, but the real mantra of quality improvement, the success of any business is not thought of. The book highlights the various disaster, and failure stories of top companies due to the ignorant attitude towards maintaining quality standards. It has been long since the importance of quality is begin ignored in our country leading to various disasters {eg, Bhopal Gas tragedy}. However, ‘Quality’ still seems to be an ignored issue.
The Juran Trilogy: quality planning, quality control and quality improvement and its effective implementation have been the success mantra of many companies including the author’s established Qimpro Consultants. Quality is rightly equalized to profit, the formula of Quality = Profit, is explained with reference to the increasing costs of poor quality in companies due to the 'chalta hai' attitude the top management. Various training programs are to be undertaken by the companies to improve themselves the various quality models including, The Seven habits Programme, The Juran Trilogy have to be actually put into practice, the industry has a lot more role to play in raising the countries standards in the world market.
In the second section, various leaders share their success and failure stories and their changing decisions on the road of Quality Journey. Dr Jamshed J Irani speaks about their transformation of traditional management to world-class management. Chandra Mohan, Vice Chairman, Punjab tractors speaks about his company’s Quality journey, Pakistan’s Director General & CEO, Aga Khan University Hospital speaks about poor quality, losses and how to remove them, CEO, Jet airways, Steve Forte (he is no longer CEO) speaks on the service quality experience of Jet airways, Deepak Parekh Chairman stresses on building and sustaining customer focused organization as the success story of HDFC Bank, and Deepak Mittal, Aditya Birla Group, Bangkok, about his managing quality standards in Thailand.
With the growing importance of quality implementation for every organization, its right knowledge and implementation at proper time with proper planning is given due reference in the third section: Education for World-class quality. In this section, various leaders give their views on the importance of the professional Certifications and the relevance as by Bill L Wortman, Founder, Quality Council of Indiana, USA, Prof. Arvind Kuchadekar, IIT, Bombay, has shares his views on bridging the quality gap between industry and Academia, and finally the growing importance of IT in Quality education is given due importance by Ganesh Natarajan, Zensar Technologies, Pune.
In the fourth section the author stresses on the weaknesses prevailing in the various organizations and the vital remedies to address the various problems. The authors for the six chapters in this section Dr, Hannan Ezekiel, David Hutchins, Walter Vieira, R V Ramachandran, Navin Dedhia, Hans Bajaria, speak on the future scenario, especially on the need for the revolution in the way of thinking, on step by step improvement by root analysis of the problem, and a thorough analysis on the feedback- customer satisfaction.
Ethics tell us what is good and what is bad. In the implementation of quality standards one must thoroughly know the prevailing business ethics, which guides as the code of conduct for the implementation. This section greatly deals with the Environmental inputs for World Class quality, Ashok Balwani and A Venkataram, Det Norske Veritas have given views on Integrating quality and Environmental and safety standards. Bittu Sahgal, Editor, Sanctuary Magazine, Mumbai, has pointed out the ignorance of companies regards environmental issues. He points out that no single entity can be termed as green; as regards the depleting nature the organizations have to undertake their social obligation of first protecting Mother Nature, and, undertaking activities not harming her children.
The final section of the book deals with the key approaches in the road to World-class quality where the author presents a quality leadership compass, and explains the five terrains to be navigated using the compass in order to achieve world-class stature. Various model created for the success of quality practices including the integration of goals people, key business opportunities and reviews and audit to attain world-class quality.
About the Author: Suresh Lulla established Qimpro Consultants in 1987, as focused quality management consultancy based on The Juran Trilogy: quality planning, quality control and quality improvement. Mr. Lulla is a Btech Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay an Ms in Industrial Engineering from Wayne State University, Detroit.
Retail Price: Rs 475
Year of Publication: 2003
Publisher: Tata McGraw-Hill
Language: English
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CREDITS: indiainfoline.com