M&M’s journey to Business Excellence was flagged off in 2008 by the Mahindra Quality Way (MQW). As we grew in size and complexity, there was a need felt to adopt certain common policies and practices across the Mahindra Group. So, in 2013, MQW evolved into The Mahindra Way (TMW) – “An integrated approach to promote excellence in everything we do.”

Based on TQM principles, TMW provides a structured approach in achieving business excellence. It is a model that extends beyond the quality of our products and services to encompass excellence in all functions, processes and operations within the business.

It promotes sustainable growth through application of robust systems and processes. It creates synergies and uniformity through a set of group wide common policies (GCPPs) and practices. In short, TMW is a comprehensive framework that sets out the way the Group expects its diverse businesses to function in our quest for world class standards. 

Mahindra Susten started it’s TMW journey in 2016. We have reached Stage 3 maturity level in our assessment. Being a part of this journey since its adoption and implementation, I can reflect on what challenges we faced during implementation of the model and how we approached it to have a unified implementation of the same.

Challenges faced while implementing TMW

• Training and communication of the entire model and seeking a commitment from all employees with respect to its roll-out
• Cascading of the Vision and long-term goals into Strategy and till the last level KRA /KPI
• Bringing synergy in process and result approach
• Adoption of group common policies, core values and principles.
• Identification and prioritization of customer, supplier, and employee needs, and formulating strategies around it 
• Determining the critical processes that can make a substantial contribution to our offerings
• Creating a culture of Standardization
• Creating a culture of continuous improvement and to stimulate employee involvement and awareness.

7 Ways of how we approached adoption of TMW at Mahindra Suste

1.  Stakeholder Centricity

Sustainable business results require attention being paid to the current and future needs of all stakeholders. At Mahindra Susten we started focusing on all our stakeholders by starting the following initiatives:

1. Detailed Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) Survey, Customer Complaint Management and SPOC for Customers to identify and help customers fulfil their needs
2. Detailed Internal Customer Satisfaction Index (ICSI) Survey to improve interdepartmental cohesion and coordination
3. Supplier Meets, Vendor Satisfaction Survey (Vsat) to cater to the needs of the Suppliers
4. Various programs like #CutTheCrap, #GreenSole, #SuryaMitra, #Hoonar and Plantation Drive at various sites and locations focuses on the Environmental and Societal needs.

2. Process Approach

Focusing on process rather than outcome is a much better strategy. It eliminates the noise of external factors. It encourages experimentation. It puts you in control. It lets you enjoy and benefit more from whatever outcome does occur. It will give you confidence.

1. Daily Work management Practices – SOPs, Kaizens, RCA, CAPA practices brought in a lot of standardization 
2. Lot of work is going on towards Digitization of the key business processes.

3. Results Approach

The success of any organization is measured on how well it delivers value to its customers. The value equation is owned and calculated by the customer and contains his/her viewpoints on benefits of the product/service, consistency, ease of use as well as cost. So, how does leadership get everyone focused on these results that matters? The PDCA Cycle provides a simple and effective approach to solving problems and managing change. It enables businesses to develop hypotheses about what needs to change, test these hypotheses in a continuous feedback loop, and gain valuable learning and knowledge. Some things we have done keeping these points in mind: 

1. We have started with a department and BU wise KPI dashboard covering all PQCDSM parameters which ensures monitoring of KPI with respect to targets
2.  Focus on doing abnormality analysis to ensure targets are being met
3.  Focus on benchmarking of certain parameters like Productivity and Quality of site operations.

4. PDCA Approach

PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) is an iterative, four-stage approach for continually improving processes, products or services, and for resolving problems. It involves systematically testing possible solutions, assessing the results, and implementing the ones that have been shown to work. We do the following at Mahindra Susten:

1. We do PDCA analysis of the previous year’s non-achievement areas to formulate next year’s strategies
2. Increased employee Participation in Kaizens, Six-Sigma YB, GB, BB projects, Value engineering projects to establish culture of Continuous Improvement.

5. Fact-Based Decision Making

 In order to know how well an organization is performing, data on performance measures are necessary. IT requires that an organization continually collect and analyse data in order to improve decision making accuracy, achieve consensus, and allow prediction based on past history. At Mahindra Susten, we do the following: 

1. BSC and functional policies are made based on SWOT which is formulated using inputs from Environmental SCAN, Competitive analysis, Benchmarking, PDCA of previous FY.
2. We have been setting our targets based on the baseline of the previous year and trend to ensure right plans and changes are made.

6. Strategic Approach to Improvement

A critical part of the management of quality is the strategic and systematic approach to achieving an organization’s vision, mission, and goals. This process, called strategic planning or strategic management, includes the formulation of a strategic plan that integrates quality as a core component.

1. We have started cascading Vision, Long term goals, Intermediate milestones into BSC.
   
2. Company level strategic priorities and Initiatives are aligned with the functional level priorities and initiatives and then drilled to the KRA level.

7. Communications

During times of organizational change, as well as part of day-to-day operation, effective communication plays a large part in maintaining morale and in motivating employees at all levels. Communication involves strategies, methods, and timeliness. Effective communication training, and reward mechanism helped us in getting larger employee involvement.

To ensure full employee participation in continuous improvement initiatives we started with different programs:

1. Extensive training on TMW model, handholding, best practices sharing helped get employee commitment and Involvement
2. We conducted our first Kaizen competition “Kaizone” wherein we received an overwhelming response in terms of participation and quality kaizens
3. In the program “Udaan” contract employees are participating in huge numbers to submit Kaizens
4. Created cross functional teams to drive value engineering and six sigma projects deriving huge cost savings.

As we have seen, through various initiatives, self-assessments, and constant refining, we have defined The Mahindra Way (TMW) and are constantly evolving in out maturity level through the 7 ways outlined.