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jamshedpur: It may not make sense to many in the steel industry to invest in various quality
control drives during such a tough time, but for Tata Steel, pursuing such goals has been a
passion and the very essence of its existence. The company has recently won the Deming
Application Prize for its excellence in total quality management (TQM), the only steel company
in the world outside Japan to bag the award.

The steel major, which in earlier years had been saving around Rs 200-300 crore annually,
would, aided by Deming this year (2008-09), target to save around Rs 600 crore.

"This is not because of the effect of market prices or impact of raw material costs going up or
down, it is purely internal—from improvements in the work processes the company has brought
about," said Avneesh Gupta, TQM chief of Tata Steel.

The steel major’s commitment to the best practices can be gauged by the remarks of Tata Steel
managing director B Muthuraman recently: "In every walk of life, whether it is in running a
business, in sports or education, if you take care of the processes, the results will take care of
themselves." He was speaking at the ‘JJ Irani award for excellence in education in Jamshedpur
schools’.

Tata Steel, which expects to emerge strongly from the ongoing global recession, has already put
in place a revised plan for the second half of 2008-09 (Oct onwards). The plan includes
techniques/benefits learnt in Deming and the target has been set in crores.

Various items, right from the raw material side to marketing & sales, several daily management
items which could be done better while bringing about cost reduction, cost-cutting contributions
from its ‘Aspire’ projects (problem solving, Six Sigma application, etc), efforts from supply
chain management by following inventory replenishment models (while ensuring that whatever
the customer was wanting was readily available to him) have been listed.

"It (Deming) is a very robust and a very involving process in which you cannot escape the
enlightenment at the end of it," Gupta told FE here recently. It is only the application of the steps
involved in Deming and the consequent effects that emerged gives one the real insight into its
working, he added.

"Each key performance indicator (KPI) is being tracked by the company, like zinc consumption,
coal rate, coke rate, etc, including whether any delays were taking place or not," Gupta...