VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL EXCELLENCE

Elgi Equipments won the 2019 Deming Prize for excellence in Total Quality Management (TQM). Dr. Jairam Varadaraj, its Managing Director, briefly explains the thought process and the efforts behind this achievement.

- Niranjan Mudholkar

First of all, congratulations on winning the 2019 Deming Prize for excellence in Total Quality Management (TQM). When did the TQM journey at ELGi start and what inspired you to undertake the same?

ELGi has an ambitious aspiration; and to achieve this, we recognized that the company needed to adopt a management philosophy that builds vertical excellence in each operating function and customer-centric horizontal excellence across the business, operations and support functions. We strongly believe in endeavoring to accomplish ordinary tasks in an extraordinary manner, and turning extraordinary ambitions into ordinary tasks; TQM has significantly enabled this vision. Our TQM journey began in 2008 and gained momentum in 2014 with the implementation of ELGi’s TQM system – the EBS (ELGi Business System), as a means to achieve ELGi’s goal of becoming the world’s second-largest air compressor manufacturer by 2027. It also helped establish a strong emphasis on customer-centricity and human resource development initiatives.

Today, we’re proud to be the first global, industrial air compressor manufacturer, to win the prestigious Deming award in over 60 years. And while the Deming prize is a milestone in our journey, I commend our employees for their continual support and focus on building excellence in TQM, across the organisation.

Winning an award of such stature cannot be possible without the active involvement of all employees. Tell us how they have contributed to this success?

Yes, it’s been an exciting journey for all our employees and a challenging one as well. Taking a step back, the key foundations of the ELGi Business System are business processes, measurement-based management and alignment of individual goals with company goals.