The Hindu Business Line : Unravelling TQM

FEW movements have impacted Indian manufacturing as the Japanese movement, now widely practised and popular as Total Quality Management (TQM). The factory origins of quality control as a departmental function are obvious. So how does TQM broaden the idea further? To unlock its mysteries, one must understand the full impact of the word `total'. It implies the whole business, bringing a quality focus to the shop-floor as to the canteen, dealer showroom or office. Its outstanding feature is an almost un-Indian attention to detail and data-based decision-making.

Next, the Japanese also brought in a deeper connection between marketing and manufacturing that did not exist in the large majority of Indian industries earlier. Some Western writers at first erroneously spoke of quality control circles (QCC) along with employee participation via suggestion schemes as the core of this movement. In reality, though, TQM is best understood as a philosophy that defines quality, first and last, in customer's language, and not the manufacturer's.

What is of the essence is not controlling quality through inspection after the fact but to design with knowledge of what the customer senses as performance. Her expectations define what the product should do or the service must deliver. Therefore, one is enjoined in TQM first to "bring in the voice of the customer" referred to in the previous article in this column. In this, it is totally in consonance with the most widely accepted Marketing notion of a customer-centric business.

Thus the strange bedfellows of Marketing and TQM start at the same point. Conventional methods of bringing the voice merely distorted it. The Japanese method of linking between the manufacturing plant and the market does not merely redress this but goes much further, as demonstrated at a recent workshop on lean manufacturing run by the Madras Management Association. Attended by a large number of enthusiastic middle-level managers from hardcore operations, the programme included exercises showing how a simple set of rules and processes could make a dramatic reduction in line inventories, cycle time and rejections. First of all, the responsibility for the cleanliness and upkeep of the workplace is given to the operator himself. He also often knows best exactly what improvements can be made and what could save time and material, to help the company satisfy the customer on time at a reasonable cost.

The key, therefore, is his involvement and ownership — right from the work location to his feeling confident and free to make suggestions. Second, the Japanese attack inventory in a manner that would have been very strange to the US manufacturers, even till the 1980s.

In TQM language, all inventories are a waste and a potential loss. Therefore the smoother the flow, the less the stoppages, the lower the in-process material and waiting time, the greater the productivity. So we wage a war on all waste — in movement, in flow of material and people, in waiting time and unnecessary inspections and delays.

Detailed analyses have shown that nearly all processes resulted in a non-value adding time of over 95 per cent. In other words, nothing really happens and the piece meant to be shaped, formed, fitted or worked on just waits. Indeed, it appears that 25 per cent value added time in a work cycle would be way beyond the best in the world. Surprisingly, the benefits of such savings are easy to demonstrate and apply to all aspects of the business.

Unnecessary re-work and revisions are not limited to the factory. They occur in offices too, due to poor communication as regards what is expected, what has been achieved and poor "thinking through" of pitfalls. In order for this to be dealt with, the Japanese invented the visual factory where everything is visible in graphs and charts and no one is left in any doubt as to standards expected and currently attained. Some Indian companies have already reaped rich rewards in both product quality and profits from adopting this style of management, contributing not a little to the resurgence in Indian manufacturing in the last decade.

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