Shubha Madhukar

Friend, philosopher and guide, TQMS works with Tata companies, helping them to achieve higher levels of excellence as they seek to gain a bigger footprint in the global marketplace

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For the layman, the word 'quality' has a certain mystique; it can have any of several meanings. But at Tata Quality Management Services (TQMS), quality is sharply defined as the degree or extent of excellence. This perfectly sums up its mission — to make business excellence a way of life in the Tata Group. Stopping to take stock after a decade's striving, TQMS CEO Sunil Sinha says, "We have come a long way… and we have a long way to go," a succinct but solemn affirmation of the institution's commitment.

The values of TQMS — integrity and maturity, unity and understanding, learning and sharing, and a passion for excellence — reflect its ethos. Formed in 1996 with the objective of inculcating a culture of quality in Tata Group companies, TQMS has been a champion of quality, and a trusted partner to Group companies in building and sustaining business excellence.

A small group of about 15 consultants working actively with about 50 Tata Group companies, one of its key roles is implementing the Tata Business Excellence Model, or TBEM, in Tata companies. Adapted from the model of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards in the US, TBEM is the framework that TQMS uses in its pursuit of excellence.

The tightly managed company performs this vital role through what it calls FACT — facilitation, assessment, consulting and training. To facilitate the business excellence initiatives of Tata Group companies, TQMS consultants design the assessment process, train assessors, and consult on the know-how and do-how of business excellence, apart from conducting training. They also identify and disseminate best practices from within and outside the Group.

Although TBEM is broadly based on the Baldrige model, it is unique and complete in itself. Even the Baldrige people have shown a keen interest in it. Harry Hertz, director, National Quality Program, National Institute of Standards and Technologies, USA, says, "If we could take one best practice from the Tatas, we would take its TBEM mentorship."

Complex as the process is, TQMS consultants have simplified some of its components, breaking them down into workaday routines. That's what comes from moving up the learning curve for over a decade. This doesn't mean they work any less hard than they did 10 years ago; it just means that by working smarter, they are able to do more for more companies in the Group.

In the assessment process, applicant companies submit information about their processes in a standard TBEM format. Assessors from within the Tata Group and from outside evaluate the submissions, visit the companies and provide a feedback report to their leadership teams.

TQMS handpicks its internal assessors through a meticulous two-tier training programme and invites Baldrige assessors to add their expertise and objectivity to the process. A senior manager, usually a CEO-level executive, is included in each team as a mentor, to bring a wider perspective and a deeper understanding of business issues.

The good thing about TBEM is that irrespective of whether a company receives an award or not, it usually helps them improve their processes and performance. Participation in the process increases team motivation, energises improvement efforts and gives the company an objective external view of the organisation's business processes.

If this sounds easy today, it wasn't always so. In the early years, says Mr Sinha, "There was resistance because many companies did not then see the benefits." This is not surprising, considering that when TBEM was launched, India's economy was just emerging from a closed-door, excessively regulated system and managers had barely even begun to feel the impact of competition. For them, quality was uni-dimensional — product quality — rather than the sum total of the organisation's strategic direction and operational methods.

Tata Steel, where Mr Sinha worked earlier, introduced an excellence initiative even before the Group adopted TBEM. He recalls, "It was very difficult. In those days, Tata Steel did not need to be competitive. The production department just produced steel and passed it to the sales department, which would ration steel; it never really had to make an effort to sell." In these circumstances, talking quality seemed no more than a fad.

But the excellence process continued. Mr Sinha explains, "We had a visionary leader in Dr J. J. Irani, director, Tata Sons, who was then joint managing director of Tata Steel. He correctly anticipated that the situation would not last for long and called on us to gear ourselves up to face competition. That's how Tata Steel initiated its own 'TBEM' in the early 1990s."

Soon after, market dynamics changed. The concept of quality became all pervading. Companies took a little while to understand the vital shift from product quality to total quality, but the biggest impetus for adopting TBEM came when they realised that it improved their business performance and made them more competitive.

Since then, TQMS has found far greater acceptance. From 12 participating companies and business units — with high performing companies logging an average score of 215 out of 1,000 — today, after 10 years, there are 42 participating companies and business units, and their average score is inching towards 500.

With the success of its initial efforts to build a commitment to excellence and structure improvement processes and systems, TQMS has moved to establishing a seamless cross-company quality exchange through group-level initiatives such as regional network forums and conventions. It also assists Group companies in competitive intelligence. Now, the Tata Group agenda for internationalisation is changing the way TQMS thinks.

The challenge for TQMS is to remain relevant, now that quality consciousness has been securely embedded in the Group. Says Mr Sinha, "We need to remain ahead on the knowledge curve, so that we can remain valuable to the companies." In this new role too, TQMS continues to provide guidance from the background, unobtrusively pursuing its goal of creating more winners in the Group.

By no yardstick is it easy to run a business that creates an abstract entity called quality. Nonetheless, this small group of consultants continues on its single-minded quest. There are many arduous roads yet to be travelled in the journey to excellence. But Team TQMS has reaffirmed its commitment. Quality is no longer a fad; it's the passage to the future, the key to survival and success in the 21st century.

Uploaded on March 9, 2006