Published on December 16, 2019
Managing quality is crucial for all businesses, irrespective of size or industry. Any organisation’s quality management system helps in increasing the levels of customer satisfaction and creating positive impacts for their bottom-line. World Class Quality (WCQ) is an organisation-wide initiative to enhance maturity of key business processes by focusing on all quality aspects diligently.
WCQ at Tata Motors
Tata Motors has an established WCQ model that is inspired by the operational excellence models developed by the auto OEMs across the globe. WCQ is an operational excellence programme directed at harnessing and driving improvements at the grass-root level with active involvement of senior leadership.
In 2013, Tata Motors adopted the WCQ model while making necessary modifications to suit their work environment and culture. WCQ has been hugely successful at all plants of Tata Motors and has shown significant improvements on the shop floors and has had a positive impact on the company’s operational and business results. This model has been successfully implemented across all plants of Tata Motors, and almost all plants have matured up to Level 3.
With the success of this model across its operations, Tata Motors shared its best practice with several Tata group companies through a Learning Mission in the month of October 2016. Tata Steel Global Wires India picked up the learning and started implementing the model after customizing it to their kind of industry. They branded the initiative as Global Wires Operational Excellence Model (GWOEM).
Adoption of WCQ at Tata Steel Global Wires
TBExG facilitated the implementation of GWOEM at Tata Steel Global Wires Division, Tarapur, through a pilot programme at the Spring Steel plant with the help from subject matter experts (SMEs) from Tata Motors. The GWOEM initiative at Tata Steel Global Wires is showing encouraging results in process maturity and associated business results. Moreover, this initiative is aimed at transforming the quality culture and mindset across all employee levels including the contractual employees.
The following steps were initiated to ensure effective and continued roll out of the initiative:
• Establishing a governance structure with direct involvement of top leadership and function heads
• Training and workshops at all levels of the plant and customising GWOEM to align with business objectives
• Assigning lead roles according to WCQ framework’s five principles, as well as a company-wide GWOEM champion
• Linking GWOEM progress and performance to the KRA’s of most people across all employee levels
• Rigorous on-site reviews, training and support by TBExG and SMEs from Tata Motors
• Weekly internal progress reviews by each principle owner and monthly reviews by senior leadership
• Establishing and tracking KPI’s for overall GWOEM and principle-wise performance
• Extending relevant GWOEM requirements for implementation to workmen and even suppliers (RM, transportation, production consumables, etc.)
• Providing application-oriented training on lean management tools and techniques through which more than 30 improvement projects have been identified and are being implemented
Significant improvements have been achieved within Tata Steel Global Wires in the last one and half year in terms of process and result maturity. Currently, the process maturity is more than 85 percent whereas key result indicators have shown the following improvements:
As of November 2019, the Spring Steel plant at Tata Steel Global Wires, Tarapur, is gearing up to challenge the GWOEM level 1 certification. Based on this encouraging holistic outcome, steps have already been initiated to horizontally deploy this initiative at other plants of Global Wires.
Senior Leadership Speak
“The TBExG team has been guiding Tata Steel Global Wires team in developing a Global Wires Operational Excellence Model (GWOEM) based on World Class Quality (WCQ) model used by Tata Motors. With this, we have made a positive start in the journey of operational and quality excellence. The initiative has brought product quality at the centre stage of daily activities across functions. It is focused on improving skills, practicing new concepts, and empowering of workmen to prevent defects. It has changed the face of the shop floor and has resulted in a positive work culture and better employee morale. While it has been kicked off at the Spring Wire plant only, we definitely plan to horizontally deploy this initiative to all other plants across Tata Steel Global Wires.”
Rajiv Kumar Soni, Executive-In-Charge, Tata Steel-Global Wires India
“Global Wires Operational Excellence Model (GWOEM) has instilled a passion within the entire workforce of Spring Steel Plant at Tarapur and has created an increased awareness to the entire chain of operations and support services to relook at the aspects of total quality in a new perspective. This initiative has been able to foster a culture in which all employees take ownership of quality in their area of work. Looking at the encouraging results across internal & customer processes, we have decided to take this transformation initiative across all the plants of Tata Steel Global Wires.”
Satish Kumar, Chief – Operations, Tata Steel-Global Wires India