Total Quality Management Implementation in India

In the opinion of most of the respondents, the mere obtaining ISO 9000 Certification is not enough to make their companies competitive globally. So, the immediate reason for adoption of Total Quality Management practices in India is that Indian companies need to go beyond ISO 9000 Certification by adopting Total Quality Management practices that are prevalent in the rest of the world. Though most of the respondent Indian companies are ISO 900 Certified, they do not think it is enough to make them competitive globally, though most of them believe that ISO 900 Standards can act as foundation of TQM in companies.

Foreign Collaboration has a positive impact on management practices and Total Quality Management activities in Indian companies, as it gives an opportunity for Indian companies to imbibe the best Total Quality Management practices from the leading exponents of Total Quality Management practices in the world. Customer Satisfaction and Continual Improvement is the focus of the mission of the Indian companies. The Corporate Objectives of Indian companies centers around Customer Satisfaction and Quality of Products/Services. From these facts, it can be concluded that the main elements of a Total Quality Management in India are Customer Satisfaction, Continual Improvement and Quality of Products/Services of a company. However, several misconceptions about Total Quality Management exists which run contrary to the stated Mission and Strategy of Indian companies. Most of the respondents are aware of the importance of addressing the implied needs of their customers. At the same time, most of them are aware of TQM being a comprehensive long-term approach. However, most of the respondent Indian companies have failed to recognize their important roles in the discharge of CSR. The employees of a company are the internal customers of a company. Thus, to fulfill the basic tenets of TQM philosophy, Indian companies must take into account the welfare and well-being of their employees and workers. Only if they are satisfied, teamwork will prevail.

After all, teamwork is one of the basic pillars of TQM. India has a large population and Indian companies have a large workforce. So, Indian companies must take care of its Social Responsibilities. It has been found that the respondent Indian companies often lack incorporating Social Responsibility in their mission; vision and strategy the analysis of the research data also suggest that in some aspects TQM practices in India are not satisfactory, particularly in relation to Six Sigma and Market Research. Thus, it can be said that there are several barriers to implementation of Total Quality Management like unsatisfactory educational profile of management personnel, poor participation of workers in management, limiting Human Resource Management responsibility to a single department, low average man-days 161 devoted to training of employees, lack of proper partnership development with the different stakeholders, low Corporate Social Responsibility, inadequate Research and Development Venture with Universities and Colleges, inadequate use of Six Sigma, lack of proper Market Research, and so on. TQM has important repercussions on HRM, workers” participation in management, and especially on the top management.

Total Quality Management implementation is possible only through top management commitment. In India, often, there is lack of top management support for Total Quality Management. From the responses, it is evident that most of the respondent Indian companies do not encourage workers” participation in the management of the company. As a result, the upward communication chain is broken and the management-employee interface is not completely fruitful. This hampers the team spirit of Indian companies and act as a barrier to TQM.

Government companies do more to discharge their Corporate Social Responsibility as they are pledged to contribute at least 4% of their Net Profits annually. Similar commitment is awaited from the private sector. Many respondent Indian companies do not have joint Research and Development Venture with Universities and Colleges. This acts as an obstacle to more fruitful Research and Development work which could have been used to synergize and develop power and technology that could be subsequently transferred back to Industry. Many respondent Indian companies tend to think of quality as a part of Total Cost of a company. Most Indian companies have inadequate Six Sigma and Marker Research activities. The concept of JIT and Zero defects are still not clear to most of the respondent companies. From all these, we can conclude that the development status of Total Quality Management in India is not up to the mark. Total Quality Management has repercussions on all the management areas of 162 the company, be it in production or operation or personnel or cost or marketing or research/planning or human resource development.

To overcome all the obstacles and barriers, TQM strategies need to be developed in different operational areas. Like in production, Six Sigma and Kaizen needed to improve efficiency and reduce job time that are often lacking in Indian companies. In operation management, the top management must shape the strategy and the supervisors should take tactical decisions for more efficient use of company resources and effectiveness in meeting customer requirements. More trained supervisors with more exposure to modern Total Quality Management practices like Benchmarking, Poka-Yoke and Quality Circles are also the need of the hour. Among the sample companies, not all companies employ Quality Circle or PokaYoke activities. These value-added activities must be aligned to marketing management where the orientation is towards the needs and wants of customers.

Here also, Indian companies do not always invest in adequate marketing research. In human resource development, Indian companies need to enlarge the responsibility of the human resource management to rest of the departments of the company.