Sundaram-Clayton's integrated Deming's 10 parameters into the 4 streams of its quality practices, namely policies, people, processes, and

products, respectively. Its TQM model ensures Total Employee Involvement, Policy Deployment, Standardisation, Kaizen, and Training, besides promoting employer employee relations. In short, everyone everywhere in the company is a custodian of quality.

At Sundaram-Clayton, the Quality Policy deployment spreads across the entire organisational value-chain, including the HR team. This is especially crucial in the context of the Deming Prize, which grades the performance of every department and function separately--including the CEO himself.

CASE STUDIES FOR DEMING PRIZE WINNERS IN AUTO-COMPONENT COMPANIES A) Sona Koyo Steering Systems Ltd., India quality must be omnipresent total quality means is trying to achieve excellence in everything you do. It has to be supported by an excellent human resources package for communication, motivation, and the development of people who, then, take ownership of quality and everything that is done and, only then do you try to implement quality in all activities.

One person who has been closely associated with your quality journey is Yoshikasu Tsuda. In fact, you refer to him as Sundaram-Clayton's guru. What exactly has he done for your company? As soon as I met Professors Tsuda, and Y. Washio--who is no more--I told them: "You are our gurus. You are not our teachers, you are not our consultants. We will deal with you in the traditional Indian, or Asian, way of doing what the guru says. Even if we don't like or agree with what you are saying, we will go ahead and do it." Rather than argue with our gurus, we did just as they said. And, if there was a problem, we went back and told them: "Look, we did what you told us to do, but there is a problem." I think that's the reason why the Japanese like working with us. Usually, Indians love to get into intellectual arguments--why this will work, why that won't. But we never let that happen at Sundaram-Clayton. If Professor Tsuda said something, we just did it. Initially, there was a lot of unhappiness about it. But when the professors saw that we were committed and doing what they told us, they also started giving us the leeway to do it our way. Others helped us too. For example, when it came to technology, product technology, business strategies, and human resources, we took help from the University of Warwick's S.K. Bhattacharya, S. Ramachander of the Academy for Management Excellence helped us with marketing. But full credit goes to Professors Tsuda and Washio. They worked with us directly.

SCL is total customer satisfaction. Comprehensive integration of the supply chain through implementation of ERP (Enterprise-Wide Resource Planning) programme has further enhanced SCL's responsiveness. TEI (Total Employee Involvement) forms the base of SCL's quest for excellence through TQM. They understand the importance of the need to continuously honing the expertise of our human resources and learning from the best practices across the world. Training is imparted not only to the employees but also the suppliers. Their policy statement, Sundaram-Clayton will deliver a level of quality that totally meets customer expectations. Supplying products of the right quality will obtain this customer satisfaction, at the right time, and at the right place. Total employee involvement and continuous improvement in every sphere of activity will be the twin supports on which Sundaram-Clayton quality will stand" spreads across the entire organizational value-chain, including marketing, operations, product development, finance, and personnel. we see that the SCL s strategic clarity about its long term goals has facilitated its journey towards business excellence. The major benefits derived during the ERP implementation in the excellence journey for SCL are Process and activities standardized as per Japan Institute for Plant Maintenance (JIPM) for their Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) standards, Better control over costs and delivery, Increased integration and collaboration with suppliers & customer and Improved controls and reduced transaction processing time; and operational quality excellence.