Achieving World Class Quality

07 November 1991 | Source: Economic Times
0 1 0.0/5

The new industrial policy has set the pace for industrial growth in India.  The licence permit raj which was a constraint on growth and competitiveness is slowly being dismantled.  The Finance Minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, has gone on record that waste and inefficiency will have to be eliminated from our society.

If our country has to emerge as a major exporter over the next decade it will have to address certain key issues pertaining to quality and costs.  By and large, Indian manufactured products - be they industrial capital goods or consumer durables - are of shoddy quality and expensive.  This has to change.  The political climate is now conducive to growth but what is lacking is a proper approach to achieve quality.

What Indian industry needs is an action plan to move from little q to Big Q.  Traditionally, quality was assumed to apply only to manufactured goods and manufacturing processes (little q).  The need is to extend the concept of quality to all products, internal and external, services and processes (Big Q).  The reason is that customers are dissatisfied not only by the receipt of defective goods, but are also irritated by receiving incorrect invoices or late deliveries or poor support services.  The business processes which produce invoices, deliveries etc., should also be subject to modern quality management.  Further, the services that support a product should be updated to incorporate quality.

The reactive and negative image of quality that is associated with failures and customers dissatisfaction urgently needs to be upgraded to one of reliability and customer satisfaction.  In fact, the results of a successful quality management strategy should be measured in terms of:

  • delight customers
  • empowered employees
  • higher revenues
  • lower costs.

Therefore, where does one begin.  The foundation is laid by defining a new role for upper managers.  This new role emphasizes the introduction of continuous quality improvement in the manufacturing and business processes of the company.  It should be followed by quality planning for competitive product features.  The processes of quality improvement and quality planning are in addition to that of quality control.  The only difference is that quality improvement and quality planning start at the top with the upper management.

In order to achieve Big Q, a company must follow a time bound action plan.  This time bound programme has to take into account the companywide cost of poor quality and expected performance of competition.  Hence it is essential that upper management reinforce the foundation with a quality database in two thrust areas - cost of poor quality and competitive benchmarking.  This database is the basis for setting strategic quality goals.  In terms of Big Q

the goals should be measured in terms of reduction in cost of poor quality; increased sales resulting from a best-in-class strategy; rationalization of the organizational hierarchy, as well as degree of self control at all levels, across all functions; and finally, more than 50 per cent of delighted customers that rate the products and services of the company as excellent.

But are Indian managers equipped to cope with competition, nationally or internationally?  Upto now, these managers have operated in a very protected environment that has given them access to large markets, with no questions asked.

Be that as it may, the cudgels for quality improvement would have to be taken up by upper management.  There is absolutely no substitute for upper management leadership.  Leadership demanding that managers be seen to be doing things differently to what they have been doing in the past.  In other words, instead of an indulgence in reactive fire fighting, managers should now focus on proactive fire prevention, by actively using the quality improvement and quality planning processes.

The Indian scenario is no different to that faced by multinational companies at some time or other.  Take the case of Xerox, USA, a company that was threatened with extinction in 1974 by Japanese competition.  Xerox altered its strategy through the skillful art of competitive benchmarking.  The focus was on customer driven quality: to survive and come out of the red (five years later).  This strategy, was the basis for Xerox winning the Malcolm Baldrige Award for excellence in quality.

Unlike other international quality awards the Malcolm Baldrige Award criteria give almost 50 per cent weightage to customer satisfaction and upper management leadership.  It is the American quality response to the Japanese economic invasion.  The strategy is bearing fruits.  As Dr J M Juran says....he now sees a burst in the clouds.  Other winners of the award include Motorola, IBM and DHL.

To achieve quality results, upper management must create an infrastructure with the determination of a war council.  This includes a comprehensive education and training curriculum on quality customized for all functions at multiple levels.  The objective should be to internalize education and training.  Hence appropriate talent should be scouted companywide.  The selected individuals should have wide acceptability in the company.  Quality education and training is perhaps the most expensive input for attaining quality leadership.  Companies in India that have paid heed to this demand include Tata Steel, Mukand, Punjab Tractors, Mahindra and Mahindra (Tractors Division), Modi Rubber and Advani Oerlikon.

The next infrastructural input is selection and maintenance of sensors for measurement.  Sensors should not only be precise but also accurate.  A considerable degree of quality problems have their origins in wrong measurement.  Matsushita have offered several inputs to Otis India on this subject.  Mazda to Swaraj Mazda.

Next every employee in the organization should be given quality related goals.  The performance appraisal system should measure, amongst other things, the quality achievements of an individual.  Hence, little q to Big Q is the thrust.  The concept of internal customers for internal products should become a way of life.

The fourth infrastructural input is the recognition of suppliers as partners in business.  Customer-supplier partnerships are the basis for shutting down the hatchery for a significant number of quality problems.  Customers must be proactive to suppliers’ information needs (and process capabilities).  Suppliers on the other hand, must be proactive to customers’ concepts of “fitness for use”.  No company has suffered by improving its customer-supplier relationships.  Indian companies wishing to export must look into this area urgently....information, process capabilities, and fitness for use.  Maruti could be an excellent choice to benchmark against for supplier upgradation practices.

Finally, the infrastructure demands an effective quality assurance system, such as ISO 9001.  The ISO 9001 serves as a passport to possible business in Europe.  Kirloskar Cummins have an ISO 9001 system in place.  However, it is a customer driven approach, encompassing continuous quality improvement and quality planning, that achieves higher revenues and lower costs and, not to forget delighted customers.

In a resource scarce country like India, there is no option but to use the existing resources more effectively.  The government has to induce quality at the national level.  The Japanese introduced the Deming Prize for quality which spurred companies to improve quality.  The American response was the Malcolm Baldrige Award for excellence in quality.  Both the awards have had an electrifying effect.  Companies have been jolted into becoming more competitive.  India needs a similar type of award for companies to achieve world class quality.

CREDITS: Suresh Lulla, Founder & Mentor, Qimpro Consultants Pvt. Ltd.
Rate this Article:

Comments

Post your comment