The buzzword in India, today, is quality. Corporate advertisements are full of it and the emphasis, be it in industry or services, is definitely on quality. But why this sudden interest in quality, especially when it was, until recently, way down on the list of priorities, coming after price and timely delivery?
Perhaps, this is the outcome of the liberalization process started in the early 1980s. Liberalization has loosened the strong bonds of government regulation on the Indian economy and this, in turn, has led to increased competition. Many established companies with significant market shares have felt threatened and are taking measures to counter the threat by adopting different strategies. Quality is being given the seriousness it deserves and it is now a key strategy for survival.
There is an awareness about quality that cuts across both the public and the private sectors. The implementation, though, has largely been in the private sector.
The long-term viability of a company depends upon its ability to export. Since exports depend on quality, successful companies have to be more customer driven and, therefore, must go well beyond industry standards. It is in this context that the gurus who led the quality revolution in Japan and the USA gain in significance.
These gurus first made their mark and became popular in Japan in the 1950s. And it was only after the Japanese companies began to flex their industrial muscles in the international trade arena that the American corporations began to take the quality gurus seriously.
The quality gurus are possessed by an almost messianic sense of mission to improve quality in industry. They are also the most sought-after consultants in industry, commanding fees upto US $15,000 (Rs 4.5 lakhs) per day and filling up their appointment schedules at least a year in advance.
The three best-known and respected of the quality gurus are Dr Joseph M Juran, Professor W Edwards Deming and Professor Genichi Taguchi. There are a few more exponents who are taken seriously but their methods are essentially a mishmash of the three mentioned above.
The three gurus seem to agree on certain basic points. For instance, they believe that until top management gets permanently involved in quality, nothing will work. Automation and gadgetry play only a minor role in quality improvement. And they have little use for quality circles except improvement. They keep the workers on the shopfloor. But beyond these basics the gurus seem to follow different approaches.
This difference of approach leads to some confusion on the part of management as to which guru to follow. Most companies tend to follow one or the other depending on their personal views and their own experience. Some, however, recruit more than one.
Nevertheless, there are two gurus who are looked upon as masters. They are the 86 year-old Dr Joseph M Juran and the 90 year-old Professor W Edwards Deming. They both worked at the Hawthorne Western Electric plant in Chicago in the 1920s, although they did not know each other then. They both went to Japan in the early 1950s and did fantastic work in getting top management involved in quality.
Juran emphasizes the project-by-project approach to improvement. Clients begin by picking specific annual goals and setting up teams to work on them. The projects are dealt with in a proper structured manner and have to go through the diagnostic and remedial journeys.
In order to institutionalize his methodology, Juran set up the Juran Institute in 1979 at Wilton, Connecticut. Despite his age, he still puts in long hours in developing methods for quality improvement.
Deming on the other hand is a one-man show. At the beginning of his long and chequered career he was ignored, but like Juran, he too tasted success in Japan. Deming in his early years, propounded essentially, statistical methods of quality control. His methods showed manufacturers how to measure the variations in a productive process in order to pinpoint the causes of poor quality and then how to gradually reduce those variations.
Today he has gone far beyond statistical methods, and these days a speech by Deming may barely touch on statistical process control. Instead, he concentrates on his management philosophy which is somewhat more controversial and less lucid than his statistical theories. He likes to preach ‘14’ points of management which include his unique ‘drive out fear’ philosophy. Deming is very popular in Japan and the USA. In fact, the Japanese have created an award for companies that conform to certain standards of excellence in quality and have called it the Deming Prize.
Though they profess to have a healthy respect for each others methods, they often have differences. Juran is of the opinion that Deming is basically a statistician who is a little out of his depth when he talks about management. For instance, Juran feels that fear brings out the best in people, while Deming demands a ‘drive out fear’ to bring out quality products.
Both Deming and Juran are American. They, however, were first recognized in Japan and have now received recognition all over the industrial world.
Another man who ranks high among the quality gurus is a Japanese with a unique approach to quality management.
Professor Genichi Taguchi, 67, is Japan’s prophet on quality, but also practices in the US. His methods have been so unique and different that when Bell Laboratories first consulted him they could not make head or tail of his statistical methods. They attributed this to his English, but on speaking to other Japanese quality consultants, they found that these consultants, too, had similar problems. Nevertheless, they brought Taguchi in and asked him to work on a difficult problem involving the design of a manufacturing process for a new integrated circuit. Within six weeks Taguchi had helped Bell cut the defect rate on the circuits in half. Bell could not understand how he did it, but definitely liked the end result.
Taguchi’s approach focuses on a statistical method that zeroes in rapidly on the variations in a product that distinguish the bad parts from the good. Taguchi has evolved his concept of “robust design”. His approach avoids testing for all the possible defects and uses an assortment of graphs and tables to find the key variables.
In a ceramics factory, for instance, inspectors would throw out the warped tiles. The Juran approach would take these up as a project to reduce warping in tiles, thereby reducing cost of poor quality. Deming on the other hand, would throw out the inspectors and get hold of the variables in the process such as changes in temperature or time in the kiln to reduce the warping. But Taguchi goes a step further with his robust design concept and comes up with a process that produces good tiles even with erratic ovens.
There has been some criticism of Taguchi’s statistical approach as being too cumbersome. Nevertheless, he is able to solve problems and that is what counts.
Besides these three, there are others who have tried different approaches and have experienced some degree of success, but not to the same extent.
Coming to India (and Dr Taguchi has been coming to India regularly since the 1950’s!), our attitude towards quality has mostly been NIMBY (not in my back yard). The protection afforded by state regulation, intended to nurture indigenous industrialization, has had the unfortunate effect of making the customer the least important consideration. The direct antithesis of Gandhi’s exhortation, ‘the customer is the reason for our business’. But things have changed.
India has returned from self imposed exile to the mainstream of the global village. The age of the ‘technological craftsman’ has dawned. India’s survival in the village depends on accepting new cultural norms. The culture of competition.
What is India’s fitness for survival? Is it equipped to cope with competition? When we transfer the concept from biological species to human institutions, we are dealing mainly with the interrelated parameters of quality and cost.
Over the past few years, a number of our Indian industrial institutions have commenced strengthening their fitness for survival by completing hundreds of quality improvement projects. These projects have improved quality while at the same time reducing costs:
- At Tata Steel quality improvements in refractories at the LD Shop and processes in the Tubes Division have generated savings of the order of Rs 2 to 3 crores. This has encouraged the company to introduce the process of quality improvement in the Bearings Division, Town Administration, Hospital Services and Marketing.
- At Mukand, there are almost a hundred concurrent cross-functional quality improvement projects in addition to several departmental QC Circles. The estimated savings potential on a conservative basis is of the order of Rs 5 crore annually. However, the nonquantifiable benefits in terms of change in culture, improved communications and pride in the job are an end in themselves.
- Bombay Dyeing has achieved a breakthrough in customer satisfaction overseas by supplying sheetings that have challenged historic norms of acceptable defects. Customers are now anxious to develop stronger vendor relations with Bombay Dyeing.
- Punjab Tractors have halved their waste per tractor through a determined strategy on quality improvement.
- Modi Rubber has declared war on spiralling costs of utilities, using cross functional quality improvement teams. The company, through cloning remedies, has saved utilities costs to the order of Rs 2 crore.
Companies with a global vision have gone beyond the ISO 9000 quality systems criteria and the quality improvement problem solving techniques. They have assessed themselves against the Malcolm Baldrige Criteria for Total Quality Management. The results explain our positioning in the global quality market. A leading automotive manufacturer rated itself 225 points on a 1000 scale. Similarly, a leading steel plant rated itself 250 points. The scores are eloquent. To be a global player, we need to upgrade to a minimum of 700 points.
The journey to becoming world class is long and very difficult. We need to address key issues of culture (caste, religion, state, industry), the role of Chief Executive Officers (including longevity), integration of quality improvement into job design and above all, have an obsession for delighting customers. Only the fittest shall survive.
THE TAGUCHI STEPS
Identify the main function, side effects, and failure modes
Identify noise factors and the testing conditions for evaluating quality loss
Identify the quality characteristic to be observed and the objective function to be optimized
Identify the control factors and their alternate levels
Design the matrix experiment and define the data analysis procedure
Conduct the matrix experiment
Analyze the data, determine optimum levels for the control factors, and predict performance under these levels
Conduct the verification (also called confirmation) experiment and plan future actions.
JURAN’S FORMULA
Build an awareness of the need and give an opportunity for improvement
Set goals for improvement
Organize to reach the goals (establish a quality council, identify problems, select projects, appoint teams, designate facilitators)
Provide training
Carry out projects to solve problems
Report progress
Give recognition
Communication results
Keep score
Maintain momentum by making annual improvement part of the regular systems and processes of the company.
DEMING’S 14 POINTS
Create constancy of purpose towards the improvement of product and service
Adopt a new philosophy. We can no longer live with commonly accepted levels of delays, mistakes, defective materials, and defective workmanship
Cease dependence on mass inspection. Require, instead, statistical evidence that quality is built in
End the practice of awarding the business on the basis of price tags
Find problems. It is management’s job to work continually on the system
Institute modern methods of training on the job
Institute modern methods of supervision of production workers. The responsibility of foremen must be changed from numbers to quality
Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company
Break down barriers between departments
Eliminate numerical goals, posters, and slogans for the work force, asking for new levels of productivity without providing methods
Eliminate work standards that prescribe numerical quotas
Remove barriers that stand between the hourly worker and his right to pride of workmanship
Institute a vigorous programme of education and retraining
Create a structure in top management that will push everyday for the 13 points.
CREDITS: Suresh Lulla, Founder & Mentor, Qimpro Consultants Pvt. Ltd.