By Mr. Sridhar Dharmarajan (DS),
India has never been known for its strong quality culture in manufacturing. Several reports have highlighted how quality complaints and fulfilment delays have constrained India to ‘punching below its weight’ despite its potential to become a manufacturing powerhouse.
However, building a quality culture is crucial if India hopes to leverage the tremendous opportunity presented due to emerging geo-politics. Consistent and superior quality is important, not just from the perspective of branding and reputation but also from an efficiency point of view. Getting products first time right saves costs since it reduces wastage and eliminates the need for rework.
Quality manufacturing also helps bring down warranty costs.
Following stringent quality processes is critical to building global competitiveness. One great example is the Indian pharma industry. The industry realized the importance of documentation and good manufacturing practices (GMPs) when industry players started to expand into the Western markets. The quality practices they build have stood them in good stead in their growth journeys.
As consumers, quality is the number one determinant that influences our buying decisions, irrespective of the size or complexity of the product. Consumers are very savvy when it comes to judging quality the quality of a product. Even with something as small as a bar of chocolate, they instantly know if there is something wrong with the product.
Therefore, quality is important for all manufacturers whether they manufacture automobiles or toothpaste or excavators or pharmaceuticals. Therefore, maintaining the highest standards of quality requires not just stringent processes but also a culture that prioritizes quality and excellence.
The need for ‘Connected Quality’
Several factors are making it harder each day for quality professionals to produce consistently manage product quality.
- Interdependency with supply chain
Businesses are becoming more complex since OEMs have several manufacturing facilities and suppliers across the globe, especially in a post-COVID world. Therefore, they need to worry not just about their own quality but also the quality of players in the supply chain. In addition, with the growing proliferation of social media, any error or shortcoming is immediately magnified on social media.
- Regulations
Growing regulatory burdens is an important factor. The US, for example, has seen an average of 1.5 new regulations per week for several years. At the same time, buyers who are increasingly spoilt for choice, want higher quality products at lower costs. Even compliance standards such as ISO9001 require organisations to prove that the processes are stringently followed.
In order to address these challenges, quality professionals need access to the right data at the right time during the manufacturing process. Forrester estimates that if each company in the Fortune 500 can increase their use of data by just 10%, they add USD 65M to the bottom-line for every Fortune 1000 company.
Using software platform to run quality management processes makes it possible to get all the quality data in the company see it, analyse it, and put it to work. This quality data is coming from myriad sources such as customers, connected products, employees, suppliers, and other connected enterprise systems. Enterprise-level quality management software can digitise all the processes and optimise them and to make them a competitive advantage. Software can also help them run them differently from their competitors, with more agility.
In addition, quality management software can help lower costs across the board by reducing scrap, field failures, and warranty costs. It can also improve top-line growth by getting products to market faster. In addition, it can help streamline operations since engineers need to spend less time in smoking out instances of non-conformance. From a strategic point of view, the emphasis on quality can help get customers to love the product and even pay a premium. In turn, this creates brand loyalty and improves market capitalisation.
One important way to make business operations more sustainable and autonomous is to ensure that quality control and quality management systems are able to talk to each other, thereby enabling them to deliver much greater value. When quality management system is connected to quality control systems on the shopfloor, it helps achieve the vision of connected quality, which Hexagon is well positioned to deliver.
Building a connected quality culture
Building a quality culture requires a delicate interplay between various aspects such as people, technology, process and the identification of the ‘vital few’ parameters for quality control.
- People
The role of people participation is extremely crucial in quality control. Unless everyone is aware and trained about the mission is to create a quality product, it cannot translate on the ground. Unfortunately, most companies delegate quality to the quality assurance and quality control department, which simply does not work. Unless quality is democratised across the entire value chain starting from product design to supply chain manufacturing encompassing logistics, sales, and even post sales, it is near impossible to create a culture of quality.
- Identifying the ‘Vital Few’
The 80-20 rule applies to manufacturing quality too. 20% of KPIs have can have an 80% impact on the quality of the product. So, identifying these is crucial. The second important aspect is the ability to track these KPIs closely by providing employees visibility into real time quality scores. This visibility can prove to be a huge motivating factor for employees and encourage them to keep these KPI at the top of their minds. Some examples of KPIs for quality control could be defects which are measured in ppm, on-time complete shipments, or even the cost of poor quality.
- Process
It’s often tempting to dismiss processes as a waste of time, but over time, one realizes that processes are a necessary evil to scale up. Without processes, it would be near impossible for large teams to function and move towards a common goal. Processes are especially crucial around quality. At the same time, ensuring that processes are not too complex to be practical and also not just trapped in an obscure Excel is important. Unless the processes are streamlined and made visible to all the employees, they do not serve a real purpose.
- Technology
There are two facets of technology that play a role in quality management. One is automation. The second is establishing a quality management system, which consists of a technology framework that allows for tracking of documentation, compliance etc.
Businesses must contend with factors such as external business pressures and thousands of processes to run, with the company’s brand promise hanging in the balance. Good quality also means doing things right the first time and eliminating waste. It drives operational efficiency through continuous improvement. It mitigates business risk and disruption through preventive action.
Businesses therefore need a portfolio of enterprise business processes that allow them to produce top quality products the first time and also fix problems that may emerge during the manufacturing process. For example, this means registering complaints, investigating instances of non-conformance on the factory floor or making a change to quality documentation and retraining and re-certifying the entire team.
India is already a $3.1 trillion economy and one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The massive disruption in the global supply chain brought about by the pandemic has exposed the need for diverse sourcing. India is an attractive option given its good infrastructure, fairly well-developed domestic market, and a reasonably trained labour market. Indian Government initiatives such as Aatmanirbhar Bharat are encouraging local manufacturing.
In this scenario, building a strong quality culture is important part of driving the paradigm shift in India manufacturing.
The author is Executive Vice President & Managing Director – India, Manufacturing Intelligence division, Hexagon
Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of Financial Express Online. Reproducing this content without permission is prohibited.
