New Delhi: With an aim to institutionalise a culture of quality that meets global standards, about 7 companies across sectors in the country have joined hands to form an industry body– Indian Federation for Quality Management (IFQM). These companies including Biocon, Boeing, L&T, Motherson Group, Sun Pharma, Tata Sons, and TVS Motor, have invested INR 25,000 crore.

"All the founding members have made a commitment and put INR 25 crore into the equity," Soumitra Bhattacharya, CEO & Director, IFQM told ETAuto. The first tranche of investment is already complete, and another one is expected to complete within a year.

“We will soon have a groundbreaking ceremony for the IFQM quality institute outside Bangalore airport,” Bhattacharya, the former Managing Director of Bosch and President for the Bosch Group in India, said.

The organisation aims to build global competitiveness for Indian products. With counselling and training, it will focus on hand holding the MSMEs across the manufacturing and services sectors.

Venu Srinivasan, Chairman, IFQM and Chairman Emeritus, TVS Motor Company, said, “We are trying to create a movement, where quality and customer satisfaction are the keys. Quality has to be ensured in a top down approach, starting from the leadership. The leadership of the member companies and those who join can create the clusters of excellence in TQM.”

Over the next year, IFQM wants to add more members to its body. “It will be a catalytic body. The idea is to have more member companies on this journey in a structured manner.”

High variability in quality

Giving an example of India’s excellence, Bhattacharya said the digital stack on UPI is for the world to adopt.

However, for manufacturing and services the product quality in various sectors have quite a high variability between the best and the worst products in the country.

“We will take best practices from all the countries including Japan, Germany, US, Korea, amongst others. These countries do not give an unreliable quality and experience. When you buy a product called Made in Germany or Made in Japan, you know that the product will give you an experience of a certain quality based on different price points, which meets your expectations,” he said.

These countries took about 20-30 years on this journey. We want to achieve a milestone in about 10 years, he added.

IFQM’s council members include N Chandrasekaran, Chairman, Tata Sons; Dilip Shanghvi, MD, Sun Pharma; Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Executive Chairperson, Biocon; TV Narendran, MD & CEO, Tata Steel; KN Radhakrishnan, CEO and Director, TVS Motor Company; Randhir Thakur, MD & CEO, Tata Electronics; Salil Gupte, President, Boeing India; SN Subrahmanyan, Chairman and MD of Larsen & Toubro; Venu Srinivasan, Chairman Emeritus, TVS Motor Company; and Vivek Chaand Sehgal, Chairman and co-founder, Motherson Group.

Dr Radhakrishnan emphasised on working in collaboration with educational institutions. “We are working with JUSE and other such institutes.”

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