"Quality should permeate all walks of life so that even the grassroot-level people get to enjoy the fruits of the quality movement in India” said Mr K N Shenoy, Chairman CII-IQ while addressing a distinguished gathering of eminent personalities from diverse Industry sectors on the occasion of the Institute’s 8th Anniversary Day Celebration on 9th May in the Institutes premises in Bangalore. “The Quality Movement promoted by CII Institute of Quality has made a significant contribution to the growth of Indian industry and, today, there are several examples of global excellence achieved by Corporate India”, he added. “It is a never-ending journey and the benchmarks keep changing. We, in CII Institute of Quality, are continuously working to bring in new practices and take the Quality movement to all sectors of the economy, including Services, Education, Healthcare and Governance", Mr Shenoy further emphasized.

This year, three eminent personalities were felicitated for their significant contribution in the pursuit of Excellence and Quality. The Moon Man Mr G Madhavan Nair, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was honoured for his outstanding leadership and contribution in the application of Quality Philosophy in the field of Science and Technology for Development. Often referred to as India’s Steel Man Mr B Muthuraman, Managing Director, TATA Steel was felicitated for his outstanding leadership and contribution to the Quality Movement in India, while Mr S Viji, Managing Director, Brakes India Limited and Trustee, Kuruvila Jacob Memorial Educational Trust got the coveted honour for the Trust’s pioneering effort towards imbibing Quality Philosophy in the field of Education.

Mr B Muthuraman was stern in his warning to those companies which did not follow the “culture of Quality” as they would not survive in the present recessionary period. He advised companies to immediately adopt a three-pronged strategy – Standardisation of processes, continuous improvement and innovation to deliver quality products, if they wanted to stay afloat in these “difficult times of global economy”.

Mr Madhavan Nair commended CII-IQ for relentless partnering with companies to get the concept of Quality completely ingrained in them. He said that as far as ISRO was concerned, Quality was the key which has made the agency attain a top-end position in the global space map.

Mr S Viji said that creating an initiative in a non-competitive manner has brought about excellence in educational Institutions. He said that simple standards like maintaining attendance, constant parent-teacher interaction, completion of homework is all that it requires to bring about a drastic revolution in the education sector.

This year’s ‘Anniversary Day Lecture’ was focused on the Car maker Maruti Udyog Limited’s experience in the assembly-line management which has greatly helped the company to remain strong, despite severe competition from domestic and trans-national auto majors. Mr Rajiv Gandhi, Chief General Manager of Maruti Udyog who delivered the Lecture said that by “adopting over 1,000 fool-proof critical processes, the company has achieved significant cost-cutting and also improved quality products tremendously”. In addition he said that “right automation, employee-friendly HR policies and constant re-engineering/redeployment has considerably helped the company gain an upper hand that too in the difficult period of recession”.

The Anniversary Day witnessed another significant development in the launch of the first of its kind initiative called Road Safety Initiative, being introduced in Namma Bengaluru. Road Safety Initiative is a project that encourages adoption of a Voluntary Code of Conduct for Road Safety under the People Move People Project (PMP). It is aimed at preventing deaths/injuries caused by road accidents through a structured approach detailed in the Voluntary Code.

Another path breaking initiative was the launch of the Online Business Excellence Self Assessment Tool. This tool will enable organisations to do a quick, effective yet comprehensive self assessment of the quality of the organizational enablers and results in its excellence journey.