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Deming journey led to zero warranty claims: Siemens Gamesa
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SME Times News Bureau | 14 Oct, 2019
City based Siemens Gamesa
Renewable Power Private Ltd (SGRP), the first wind turbine company in
the world to win the prestigious Deming award, faced the challenge of
not having any ready toolkit to adapt from unlike the automobile
industries, said a top company official.
However, over a period
of time after starting the Total Quality Management (TQM) the company
started seeing benefits in the form of reduced raw material inventory
turnover, zero rework and nil warranty claims.
The Indian company
is a subsidiary of the global wind power major -- 9.1 billion euros
turnover Spain-headquartered -- Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy.
"Being
the first wind company in the world to challenge this award, we didn't
have any ready toolkit to adapt from. Every aspect of TQM practices were
totally tailor made to suit our wind turbine manufacturing processes
and operations," Ramesh Kymal, Chairman and Managing Director told IANS
in an interview.
The Deming Prize is one of the most prestigious
global awards on TQM given by the Union of Japanese Scientists and
Engineers (JUSE).
Kymal said the Deming tag further adds
credibility to their products and in the current market scenario, it
will certainly place us in a better light in the eyes of our customers.
Queried
about the tangible benefits derived after starting the TQM journey,
Kymal said: "The productivity levels had improved by 1.8 to 2 times as
compared to our previous recorded levels.
"We have achieved zero
rework and our warranty claims has been reduced to zero. Further, we
have reduced our raw material inventory turnaround time to two days for
local suppliers," Kymal said.
According to Kymal, renewables as an industry has become extremely cost competitive, forcing companies to reinvent themselves.
"We
were growing steadily and expanding our manufacturing footprints where
creating a common quality culture was imperative to ensure best in class
products and solutions to our customers. That sowed the idea for
implementation of TQM processes and challenging Deming Award," he said.
Though
SGRP did not have any benchmark in the wind turbine industry to
challenge the Deming award, it was advised by Yasutoshi Washio --
professor emeritus of Keio University, Japan and who had won the Deming
prize for Individuals in 1993 for his contribution of implementing
quality control in Japanese industries.
On the company's TQM
journey, Kymal said that it started in 2015 for its industrial
operations division, which included nacelle and hub manufacturing
facilities in Chennai, integrated manufacturing facility in Nellore and a
blade manufacturing facility in Halol.
"Our TQM journey
commenced with benchmarking ourselves with various Deming companies in
other industries. In 2015, we had our plant and functional heads
visiting few Deming companies like Toyota, Aisin in Tokyo, Japan," Kymal
remarked.
On getting the confidence to challenge the Deming
prize, Kymal said: "In 2018, we underwent the Deming diagnosis
examination, the results of which were quite encouraging from which we
gained the confidence to apply for the award in 2019."
On
involving the suppliers in their Deming/TQM journey, Kymal said that as
part of the process, 10 key suppliers were trained on the TQM
fundamentals and concepts like plan-do-check-act (PDCA), Kaizen, seven
quality control tools (check sheet, control chart, stratification,
pareto chart, histogram, cause and effect and scatter diagram) and
others thus ensuring that their processes are benchmarked to Siemens
Gamesa Renewable Power's operations.
Further training on TQM
fundamentals, quality control story approach, Kanban and others were
provided for around 90 suppliers based at Chennai, Coimbatore and
Vadodara region to improve their performance, Kymal said.
On
implementing the suggestions made by JUSE, Kymal said: "Generally JUSE
presents its final feedback report during the award ceremony and we are
expecting to receive the same on November 6, 2019. We will work towards
implementing the same."
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