It’s a balmy day in Hosur. A gentle breeze blows across a pond that’s surrounded by a large patch of shaded green lawn, lush enough to hurt your eyes. Geese swim lazily while a few waddle about on the grass, honking noisily. Farther up, there’s a clump of multi-layer, dense forest — over 8,400 trees packed in a 2,500 sq m area — part of an aggressive afforestation drive. Beside the young trees, there is a clump of older trees. And beyond these, one comes upon a large lake spread over two-and-a-half acres, whose sparkling waters are rippling in the morning breeze.

Observing that tranquil scene, you would think you were wandering about in a resort. But just metres away is the bustling plant of bus and truck maker Ashok Leyland, which believes in intense greening of the land around its plants. We are at Hosur 2, its second plant at this industrial estate in western Tamil Nadu about 60 km from Bengaluru. This plant was awarded the prestigious Deming Prize for its Total Quality Management (TQM) by the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) in 2017, the second plant of Leyland to win Deming Prize after the first was awarded in 2016 for its plant in Pantnagar, Uttarakhand.

“Earlier we were the only commercial vehicle manufacturing company to have won a Deming Prize outside of Japan. And now we are the only CV manufacturer in the world to have won this award twice in two years,” declares P Harihar, Senior VP, Manufacturing and Project Planning and former Plant Head of this Hosur factory and one of those who spearheaded Leyland’s TQM journey.

Inside the factory, the humming of machines and whirring of pneumatic nut runners is loud as workmen methodically work on a large upturned truck chassis, fixing numerous components on to it. Many of the improvements in Leyland’s TQM journey of five years have come from the suggestions of workmen, or associates as they are called at the plant, explains C Unnikrishnan, VP, Manufacturing.

Arumugam, who has worked 20 years at this plant, came up with a suggestion that not only enhanced productivity, but also obviated the need for awkward bending in adjusting the clutch play setting for Leyland’s bestselling light commercial vehicle, Dost. As Arumugam explains, earlier the workmen had to bend to reach the clutch pedal connection area inside the cab. He crouches inside the cab to demonstrate the cramped position they had to be in to adjust the end-play; also using standard tools meant additional time taken and tedium in completing the activity “Without much space for hand movement meant we could only do half a turn with the spanner, so we cut the spanner handle in half to allow us more free play,” he says.

A quality circle team was formed, led by Arumugam, and it applied several problem-solving tools and techniques, resulting in the development of a set of creative, three-pronged counter-measures to resolve the problem. What emerged was an improvised tool that allowed the workmen to complete the task of clutch play adjustment from outside the cabin, from a comfortable vantage position, leaving only the nut tightening activity inside, thereby ensuring a smooth flow. The upshot: the cycle time of the setting process was drastically reduced from seven minutes to 2.5 minutes, while simultaneously improving the Effort and Ergonomic Index (EEI), from 264 to 69 points. “Productivity improved and we eliminated daily loss in production numbers,” says Unnikrishnan.

This is only one of many such improvements that have been implemented. Cumulatively, Unnikrishnan points out, 51,196 improvements in various manufacturing functions were successfully implemented across the plant in the past five years. A consequence of this is that defects per vehicle (DPV) prior to the final inspection stages drastically reduced from 110 DPV to 8 DPV per vehicle, on an average.

The vision for the Hosur plant when Leyland started its TQM journey in 2012 was three-pronged: to have a flexible plant with a wide range of products and to have operational efficiency, says Unnikrishnan. The role of the JUSE examiners deputed for the Deming examination was to validate if the objectives of the three-point vision translated all the way down to associates like Arumugam in the plant. “A huge mindset change and interventions are required to make people think differently. We wanted have a cultural shift from an intuitive way of problem-solving to a data-based one using scientific ways. Done this way, the improvements are comprehensive and sustainable. TQM is meaningful only if it translates into excellence in business results,” says Harihar.

Leyland embarked on the TQM journey in 2012. In 2012-13, the commercial vehicle industry was down in the dumps, and Leyland was steeped in debt. “We wanted to do something dramatically different — not just incremental in nature but something transformational. We needed a mindset change,” recalls Harihar. The TQM journey began with the appointment of a Japanese consultant, Prof Yukihiro Ando — Ando San to everyone in the plants — who would be Leyland’s TQM sensei or guru.

R Sivanesan, Senior VP, Quality, Sourcing and Supply Chain, who had spent over two decades at Maruti, seeped in the Japanese culture, also joined Leyland a few years ago. “TQM is creating a mindset to continuously improve. One is a top-down, management driven mindset, but a bottom-up approach is equally important. We have to get people from the ranks below to think and act, as they are in contact with the machines and their work-stations every day. To change the culture, don’t blame them for the mistake, instead enable them to tell us how it could be avoided and improve. This is the kaizen culture or continuous improvement,” explains Sivanesan.

The worker then comes up with solutions on what can be done to address the issue. He is more open and also responsible for implementing the suggestions. As a result of the TQM way of doing things, the number of kaizens carried out by employees in each of Leyland’s manufacturing plants has gone up to 10,000-plus a year, from around 1,000 a year, and all employees, irrespective of their roles and responsibilities, participate in this continuous improvement drive.

Two important factors form the nuts and bolts of the TQM process: Policy Management and Daily Management (DM). The former essentially refers to a leadership intervention and is usually a direction at the corporate level. But how does this policy translate into something that impacts the worker on the shop floor? Leyland established cross-functional management teams (CFMs) that focus on five areas: quality, cost, delivery, new product introduction and HR practices. These cover all key functions in a business unit.

For example, to improve product quality and reduce defects, it can’t be done merely on the shop floor. HR is told to recruit, train for skills and motivate the right people. The production department will then have to build ‘mistake-proof’ methods in their manufacturing processes which, in Japanese, is known as poka-yoke. “In a mobile phone, for example, you cannot fit your SIM card except in one way. In many high-end cars if the seat belt isn’t locked it simply won’t start. There is no way you can make a mistake in such cases and that’s poka-yoke. One of the critical focus areas in manufacturing is to ensure all parameters that are critical-to-quality are covered by poka-yoke systems,” explains Harihar. This will help build quality in manufacturing as opposed to ensuring this through inspection and, in turn, the CFM on quality. On a broader level, HR’s role is to ensure that whoever is deployed on the shop floor has the required level of skills and job abilities, and enables the associates to read and comply with written instructions as under the TQM process, everything is documented and catalogued for reference and traceability — there is simply no room for verbal descriptions or instructions.

Daily Management comprises all routine activities that must be carried out efficiently. It provides a framework to manage functions and processes which are defined, standardised, controlled and improved upon by the process owners. Here, daily does not necessarily mean at a 24-hour frequency. Rather, it extends to weekly, monthly or even annually done routine activities and is applicable from supervisors to top management.

One obvious example of Daily Management at the plants is the review of production plan vs achievement, gap analysis and reasons and corrective and preventive actions for improvement. As Unni explains, the shop floor relentlessly follows the PDCA cycle, which stands for Plan, Do, Check and Act. Both these initiatives — PM and DM — carried out from the top floor to shop floor ensure that the Hosur unit’s objective of a flexible plan, wide range and operational efficiency are met.

While the general perception of the Deming Prize is that it is a product quality certification, this is essentially incorrect, clarifies Harihar. The Deming examiners check for alignment with the business vision and excellence in whatever a company does, at every step and stage. “What they actually check is if one step is linked to another and together do you achieve the vision of the company. It’s all about business process validation. The Deming Prize is a recognition of the state of maturity of TQM practices in the company,” he explains.

“The journey is TQM, Deming is a milestone, an expert who sees and endorses that you are on the right track, or if you need to do more. The philosophy of TQM is they don’t give a prescriptive process,” says Sivanesan. In Leyland’s case, the objective was to have a customer-oriented business. The second step is to ensure that the company has the framework through which it can realise this objective in a systematic way and by involving everyone. “You can achieve it in many ways, but it has to be a systematic and catalogued process. And third is to check if the stated objectives are met following these processes, and if the results reflect that,” he adds.

Leyland’s Pantnagar plant, established in 2010, produces only its bigger vehicles with around 4,000 employees. It received the Deming Prize in 2016. As a manufacturing plant is more amenable to processes involving statistical quality controls, Leyland chose the youngest and most modern of its seven plants for the Deming certification in 2016.

Hosur 2 presented a completely different challenge. It was an older plant, established in the early 1990s, with legacy practices and a unionised workforce and a certain way of doing things. Besides the final leg of preparations for the Deming examination were being driven at a time when the vehicles were migrating from Euro 3 to Euro 4, and an imminent wage settlement was pending. As if this was not enough, Hosur also produces the widest range of vehicles, from LCVs to medium and heavy-duty vehicles.

However, an amalgam of all the TQM systems followed and actions taken resulted in a substantial improvement in the quality levels of Leyland’s products from all its plants. “Once the focus areas are frozen at an organisation level, each function then aligns its goals towards these areas and synergy is created, enabling a faster, more efficient and effective method of realising the goals,” explains Sivanesan.

A true reflection of this is the significant improvement in the company’s market share from 23 per cent a few years ago to 32 per cent in the last two years in commercial vehicles. Leyland is also close to its objective of being among the top five in buses and the top 10 in trucks in volume terms. Its global ranking rose from 17 to 12 in MHCVs in three years while its bus ranking improved from 6th to 4th position. Its derring-do and the Deming Prizes are pushing Leyland to achieve more.

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