Arun Maira, Former Resident Director, Tata Motors

In search of excellence in India

The keys to excellence are, firstly to want it; secondly, expect people to deliver it; and thirdly, if one is responsible for the work of others, to give them the tools to produce it. Several Indian manufacturing companies, using these keys, have demonstrated that Indians can produce the best quality in the world. Nevertheless many Indian manufacturers have long ways to go yet. And the drive for excellence must be extended vigorously to the infrastructure and basic service sectors also. Therefore let us understand how these keys to excellence work.

Sumant Moolgaokar of Telco had a dream to create a factory in Pune that would make Indians proud. Young engineers were compelled to learn new skills to produce complex machines that had never before been produced in India. I remember the pride with which I took him, in 1981, to the factory floor to see a massive machine designed and built for the first time in the country. Over 50 meters long, with many miles of electrical wire and hydraulic tubing, it automatically machined a casting fed at one end into a cylinder head at the other. Instead of being pleased, Moolgaokar was visibly disturbed when he saw the result of our year's effort! "Look at the hydraulic pipes: they are not parallel to each other!" he said. "Trifles make for perfection. And perfection is no trifle", he added. The machine had to be redone. Because Moolgaokar was a man who wanted the best and was determined to get it. And his persistence enabled Indian engineers to show that they were inherently no less than the best engineers anywhere.

Moolgaokar, one of the country's greatest engineers, was striving for excellence. And so was Lakshman, a driver in Telco. I was barely thirty and Lakshman was almost sixty years old. Every time we arrived at a destination, he would run around the car to open the door for me. I suggested that I was young enough to do it myself. He said that it was not me that he was concerned about but the car! He did not want me to bang the door shut. He said he was striving to set a new standard for maintenance free performance of Ambassador cars before he retired in a year's time. He was tracking the maintenance records of all the company cars. While all other cars had chalked up the usual high costs, costs for his car were negligible. What amazed me was that there was no scheme to hold drivers accountable for maintenance costs. Therefore no one other than Lakshman even knew what he was striving for. He demonstrated to me, unforgettably, that pride in work and the pursuit of excellence are hardly the exclusive purview of the educated elite.

People want to do better. They want to be proud of themselves. The job of leaders is to provide them tools to help them along. When all the workmen in Telco were introduced to TQM in the-early 1980s, the group that turned in the best improvements were the 'uneducated' canteen boys employed by a workmen's co-operative. They were not even part of the official TQM rollout. But they were thirsty to learn. They formed teams on their own, picked up the tools of TQM, and applied them to improve the customer experience in the canteens and reduce cost. Very soon the canteens were showpieces of whose standards Telco was as proud as its machine shops. The canteen boys also won awards at inter-company TQM contests, competing against teams of engineers from other companies. Therefore let us not write off anyone as incapable of producing excellence.

Source: Excerpts from an article printed in The Economic Times, July 24, 2003.