Indian
automobile market was ruled by just two brands, Fiat and Ambassador,
till Suzuki motors brought in a car known as 'Maruti 800' sometimes
in 1980's. Around 1977, I had taken delivery of a brand new
Ambassador car, that had already done 2000 Km on road. This was
because my car was driven by road from Kolkata all the way to Pune
before delivery. The car dealers had never heard of those monster car
carrying trucks in those days. Any way, after I started using the car,
in about three weeks, the gears started slipping automatically, when
car was in third gear, to neutral. Obviously, this was not acceptable
and I had to return the car to the dealer with a complaint. What the
dealer told me was really surprising; he said that almost 70% of the
new cars have this problem. We have complained to the manufacturer,
but they have not taken any action. Then in another month or so, the
rear leaf springs became quite flat and gave way and I had to change
them.
Compare
this with the cars that are sold in India today. Most of them are so
well built that the owner does not even have to open the bonnet of
his car. All he needs to do is check tyre air pressure and fill the
tank with fuel. It is true that the cars of today are built with
modern technology no doubt. But that is not the only reason. The main
reason is the greater amount of quality consciousness and policy of
zero defect, the car manufacturers follow today.No wonder that the car production has zoomed from a paltry figure of 32000 per annum to more than 3.5 Million.
When I
ran my manufacturing business, I had to purchase on regular basis
fasteners (or screws and nuts in simple language.) My supplier,
always had two types available. One was as per Indian standards and
the other was known as “Chalu” type. It is this second one, that
was very interesting, because it would cost at least 30% lower than
the standard one. There used to be no guarantee whatsoever for
“Chalu” type. The screws would be undersize, nuts would start
slipping, when being tightened. The slot in the head of the screw
missing. Obviously, the “Chalu” materials were all from factory
rejected stuff, which happens in any industrial product manufacture.
What stumped me was that the manufacturer openly sold this rejected
stuff as “Chalu” at lower cost and there were distributors,
sellers and above all buyers for that.
Maintaining
quality of products is primarily the concern of a manufacturer. But
aren't the consumers also are supposed to be conscious about quality,
when they buy the stuff ? Quality can not be said to be owned only by
the producers. It is everyone's responsibility to adhere to quality
standards.
Till
information technology industry came up in India, service industry
had not even heard such words as maintenance of quality. Take service
providers like banks, transport, insurance or even postal department.
In the past none of these had any standards to which they would
function. Take simple task like clearing of outstation cheques by
banks. I remember having waited for more than three weeks to receive
payment for an out station cheque. Department of Posts could not
guarantee, when a letter will reach the destination.
The
attitude of an average Indian towards quality can be summarised in
two words “ Chalata hai.” To translate exact meaning of these
two words is a pretty tough task. It means, “ Well! Tolerate!
Things like this keep happening all the time, we have to accept it,
otherwise we wont get anything at all. We have to tolerate and
somehow manage with this thing only.”
With
advent of IT industry in India, which mainly catered to US
organizations, quality came to be accepted as norm of the service
industry. The developed software or the call center type service
provided, had to have, in built quality assurance to standards agreed
beforehand. This slowly changed the expectations of the users of
services, even in India. Service providers have to adhere to quality
standards, that they have promised. Tolerance or “Chalta Hai” was
no longer acceptable.
Health
sector, is another such service sector, where quality of service is
most important. Unfortunately, Indian health services fail to provide
good quality service. Similar is the case of Education sector, where
quality of education provided is going down the drain. One single
factor that perhaps is responsible for this journey is abolition of
examinations up to eighth grade. Since everyone gets promoted, no one
bothers whether the students have learned, what is required. Poor
availability of finance is another major hindrance.
The
point, I want to make is that quality assurance can not be a
responsibility of a single factor in a system. In case of commodities
it does not rest only with those who make them, but also on who
distribute them, who make them available, store and sell and finally
even those who use them.
Or let
us consider a school, if it has to maintain the quality or standard
of education, it can not be the sole responsibility of the head
master, but rather of all the stakeholders involved, like teachers,
administration, finance providers to school and finally parents of
students, all within the system. Unless all of them agree to
ownership of quality, the school can never hope to improve.
It can
be said that accepting to adhere to certain standard or quality,
within a system, is usually the first step towards implementing a
desire to improve or grow. The truth of the matter is that real
growth and improvement and acceptance of quality standards, go
together and one can not be separated from the other.
5th
April 2015
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