Make in India and The Culture of Quality

I am filled with immense pride as NGIVD’s products roll out from the production line with the ‘Make in India’ emblem proudly emblazoned on them. The emblem not only stands for the fact that these products are made in India, but more important that their quality matches up to the best in the world, both for local as well global customers.

The easy task is to build a cheaper product with a minimum acceptable quality (chalta hai) in India, but then we are not only tarnishing our brand but also what ‘Make in India’ should stand for.

Labelling the country of origin in products had an ironical beginning. At the end of the 19th century, when newly industrialising Germany pushed its products in the European market, more developed countries like Britain enforced labelling German made products with a ‘Made in Germany’ tag , more as a cautionary sign of inferior quality. Now, Germany is the standard bearer of quality. In Asia, there have been similar examples, starting with Japan, Korea, and now China. Each faced its share of discrimination and scepticism till their consistent performance and innovation coupled with market-competitive costs won the day. India is next.

While tomes can be written about quality, I would like to submit that a quality product cannot happen without a culture of quality in the environment around the workplace, which then should permeate into the broader social environment. When as a young government officer in the ’90s I asked the question “why are our trains dirty?”, a seasoned officer responded that a country cannot have two social systems. Our trains were dirty because our streets are dirty. Interestingly, the number of times a train was cleaned in India was many times more than countries with which we are impressed.

But it all starts with our own micrcosms—in this case, our enterprise. I found these five easy starts to establishing a quality culture:

• Invest in a QC team both in terms of capacity and quality, and listen to the team. No shortcuts, even if it means expensive rejections and delays of products.
• The environment should have quality processes, and quality should be seen in everything we do. No typos in product labelling, no leaking bottles or packs.
• Hire well—don’t go to the grocer hungry. A chain is as strong as its weakest link. Quality hiring is an important boundary condition for all functions.
• Go to Gemba. This is a key lean management practice where leaders go to the actual place where work is performed, identify issues, engage teams on the ground, and bring about quick resolution. Depending on crisp updates in a boardroom is the best recipe for disaster, especially in India where quality as a culture is still taking hold.
• Invest in SOPs and checklists and then train: People should know the steps to do a quality task. But the SOPs will gather dust till someone role models what good looks like.

Culture is the way things are done every day by teams. A lot needs to be done for ‘Make in India’, not only to be a matter of pride for us, but also a preference for our customers. We in NGIVD hope to play our small role in this journey!