Published on April 12, 2022
100+ participants including , Business Excellence (BE) Heads, and BE teams from across the Tata Group joined the virtual Global Business Excellence Meet 2022 organised by Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG) on April 12, 2022. The event is organised with the intention of bringing together BE Heads so that they can share their experiences, learnings, and insights in business excellence.
The event started with Subhrajit Basu, General Manager, TBExG, setting the context and explaining the agenda to the participants. Then, Deepak Deshpande, Vice President, TBExG, conducted the welcome address during which he thanked various BE Heads for their support throughout the year. He also welcomed BE Heads who had recently assumed charge as well as those from newer Tata companies. Some expectations he highlighted for the BE Heads included embracing the virtuous cycle of performance excellence, anchoring various excellence journeys including Data, Social and Safety, and encouraging senior leaders to be a part of these journeys.
Sanjeev Singh, Vice President, TBExG, shared key updates in Business Excellence. Providing an update on the 2021 BE Assessment cycle, he mentioned that during the past two years, TBExG has attempted to balance standardisation and customisation, and various templates of assessments have been used to make the process seamless for Tata companies. Within BE Capability Building programmes, the focus has been on the content, digital medium and an ecosystem for expertise. He also detailed various projects completed in Deep Dives, Benchmarking and Best Practices.
Swaminathan Gopal, General Manager, TBExG, provided an update on Data Excellence activities, in which he highlighted the 10 steps of the Data Excellence journey that build awareness about Data Excellence and unlock value for Tata companies. Only once these 10 steps are completed, would the company be ready for a Data Excellence assessment. Data Excellence being the newest excellence process that started in 2018, Mr. Gopal also provided an overall snapshot of the workshops, capability building programmes and assessments that have been completed in the subject since inception.
Gautam Gondil, Assistant Vice President, TBExG, then took the participants through the strategic building blocks for Safety Excellence and the initiatives that have been completed for the same. For Commonality and Convergence, the Tata Safety & Health team has released various documents including Safety Policy, Safety Standards, Safety & Health Management System, and Safety Beliefs. For Training and Capability Building, the team has completed many programmes. As part of Assurance & Verification, specific interventions like man-animal conflict workshops, culture assessments, enhancing emergency preparedness, etc. have been done. Finally, as part of Transparency & Sharing, the team has conducted Best Practices Conclave in Safety & Health, ARRE programmes and more.
With a focus on technology, TBExG has been introducing many tools to provide data and information to its customers. With this aim in mind, two new portals developed by TBExG were launched at the event: Company Value Report and User Profile Management System. Dr. Pankaj Kumar, Chief - Total Quality Management & Corporate Quality Assurance, Tata Steel along with Shreyas Desai, Deputy General Manager, TBExG, launched the Company Value Report, while Sanjay Daflapurkar, Corporate Head - Business Excellence, Tata Motors and Sayantan Roy, Deputy General Manager, TBExG, launched the User Profile Management System.
A session by a non-Tata company followed next: Anil Verma, ED and President, Godrej & Boyce and Anup Mathew, EVP and Business Head, Godrej Construction, gave a perspective on how the global conglomerate drives excellence within their companies. Mr Verma gave a brief overview of how Godrej & Boyce adopted the BE framework in 2004 and then different businesses embraced it at different points in time from 2004 till date. Mentioning that the Naoroji Godrej Award for Business Excellence recognises companies that progress on the excellence journey, Mr Verma added that Godrej & Boyce has reaped many benefits from business excellence. Mr Mathew then went on to throw light on Godrej Construction’s journey towards business excellence, which included various customer centricity and sustainability initiatives, which are deemed critical to a business in the construction and real estate industry.
An interesting panel discussion followed on the topic of ‘Leveraging the virtuous cycle of performance excellence in the newer companies’. Moderated by Sudipto Marjit, Group Head - Human Resources, Business Excellence and Office of Strategy Management, Tata AutoComp Systems, the panel members included Suvajit Chakraborty, Head - Corporate Strategy and Business Excellence, mjunction; Pooja Johar, Head - Strategy, Business Analytics and Risk Management, Nelco; and Sanjay Radhakrishnan, Chief Operations Officer, Tata ClassEdge. The panel discussed topics including the top two priorities as BE Heads of their respective companies, how the Tata ecosystem has been used to learn and adapt best practices, tips that panel members can give new BE Heads, and more.
In the last session of the day, Tarun Daga, Managing Director, Tata Steel Utilities and Infrastructure Services (TSUISL), spoke on ‘Living the TBEM way - A CEO’s perspective’. He talked about how TSUISL is building on TBEM Core Values within its process and initiatives, including systems perspective, customer focused excellence, agility & resilience, valuing people, organisational learning and societal contributions. Mr Daga left the BE Heads with his three suggestions for BE Heads to focus on, including bringing outside in perspective, initiatives that involve the grassroots and building capabilities within the organisation.
The meet ended with an open house session with S Padmanabhan, Chairman of the Governing Council, TBExG, during which the participants asked posed interesting queries to the senior leader.