MQW

MQW is an intrinsic part of the efficient business planning process in a company. MQW ties up with the MAPC in terms of promoting excellence in the manner in which a company develops and translates its long term strategy by improving the quality of its operations.

The steps described in the Cycle below are broad guidelines to the actions to be taken by the company in order to systematically apply MQW as a part of the MAPC.

M Q W A D O P T I O N C Y C L E

Click on the respective step for details

It is important to note that the MQW Adoption Cycle is for companies who are adopting MQW for the first time or have yet to clearly define aspects like their vision, strategic priorities or quality management strategy.

For more mature companies, some of the first few steps of the MQW Adoption Cycle are only valid to the extent that they should annually review their vision, priorities, etc. as part of the PDCA of the previous year's performance, assessment feedback, or a change in the environment or business circumstance.

Under this step, a company must define its long term vision - what the company aspires to achieve in the next five to seven years. A vision statement is not likely to change on a yearly basis, unless there are significant changes in business circumstances or long term objectives of the company, and therefore the vision needs to be carefully formulated.

The vision should be formed after a thorough analysis of the business environment and after taking into consideration the company's strengths & weaknesses, so that its selection and formulation is sound, logical and clear. It needs to be simple, brief and easy to understand, so that it can serve the purpose of being motivating and provide challenge and excitement.

At the same time, the vision should be measurable and time bound so that it is credible and provides concrete long term goals for which the entire organization is collectively aiming. These goals should ideally reflect the needs of all stakeholders and therefore include aspects such as financial results, customer & employee satisfaction indices and market share.

These long term goals should be further broken down into interim milestones which provide the organization with convenient measures for regular review and corrective actions during the long term planning period.

TOP^

Once the vision and long term goals for a company have been established, it is important for the company to carry out an in-depth analysis of where it currently stands. This analysis considers the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, on the basis of which the company can formulate its strategic priorities. All of these are included in the M11 matrix of the MAPC. Typically, a company would identify between 6 to 8 strategic priorities which are likely to contribute most significantly to its long term business goals.

Against each strategic priority, the company should then identify the various strategic initiatives it will take up and their progress over the strategic time plan. These

initiatives would ideally involve major actions, changes, significant allocation of resources like management time or money and potentially involve many departments of the company. They generally run beyond one annual planning cycle and therefore, like the annual milestones towards the long term goals, these strategic initiatives should also be reflected in detailed road maps.

Each of these strategic initiatives then needs to be translated into specific action plans, so that the concerned functions and departments can relate to what they have to do to contribute towards the ultimate corporate objectives.

TOP^

Once steps 1 and 2 above are completed, the company would have developed a long term strategic framework for its business, identified the key initiatives it needs to take to achieve its long term goals, and these initiatives would have been translated into specific time bound action plans cascaded

across the company, thereby providing corresponding action road maps for different functions. Based on the above, the company should prepare its annual plan and budget as part of the MAPC process and fix the corresponding key annual targets for the BSC.

TOP^

MQW is all about the process of improving the quality or efficiency of a company's processes and operations. To do this in a manageable fashion, it is important to prioritize the processes which the company will start working on.

This step therefore involves the selection of the priority areas within the company in which management plans to implement improvement. MQW requires this selection to follow a structured logical approach. The areas selected for improvement should be those which are most critical and will have the greatest impact for the achievement of long term goals.

The four Management Processes (explained in Framework) are fundamental contributors to the achievement of long term goals for any company and therefore, every company that is implementing the Mahindra Quality Way, is expected to specifically plan

improvements in these four processes.

In addition to planning improvement in the four Management Processes, a company should select key Business Processes having a maximum impact on the achievement of the business priorities. Steps 1, 2 and 3 mentioned above provide the basis for the selection of these.

A company which has just adopted MQW is expected to apply its process improvement efforts to at least two different Business Processes in addition to the four Management Processes. Once the improvement efforts in the these two Business Processes start showing concrete results, the company would be expected to take on more business functions / processes for improvement.

TOP^

MQW gives very high importance to a structured approach in the planning of improvement of the four Management Processes and the selected Business Processes. Mentioned below are guidelines for systematically addressing process improvements, which in essence, follow the PDCA approach.

Addressing Process Improvements

	Identify and prioritize the critical gaps/ issues in the process
	Assess the current status of the process
	Collect data and facts
	Analyze the data

	Run a pilot implementation to assess efficacy of improvement plan
	Move to full scale implementation, committing necessary resources
	Check if the results have been achieved

	Decide plans to improve the process
	Communicate and train employees on tools and techniques required to implement the plan

	Standardize the improvements and plan to deploy the same horizontally
	TOP^

While the Mahindra Quality Way is prescribed across companies in the Group, its success will largely depend on the fundamental commitment of the management of a company to continuously seek improvement in all its activities in order to succeed in today's business environment. Such commitment requires management to set its own internal goals and keep examining its progress.

Self assessment is therefore an important step of MQW and refers to a comprehensive and systematic review of the improvements carried out in the four management processes and selected business processes by senior management of the company.

This assessment should focus on:

	The implementation status of the improvement activities
	The approach followed for implementing the improvements
	The results achieved

This will help the organization to clearly identify the areas which need more focus, resources and effort.

It will also help validate some of the improvements and results achieved, which can then be standardized and horizontally deployed to other areas so that best practices are spread across the company.

The Section which follows has guidelines which are used in the formal MQW annual assessment. The same guidelines can also be conveniently used by the company to carry out self assessment.

TOP^

A company's efforts for improvement under MQW are an important set of strategic actions. They continue from year to year and reflect management's progress in improving levels of quality in all parts and operations of the company. It is important to ensure a continuous record of this process, its learnings and successes as well as the logical development of plans from one year to the next.

This documentation is contained in the Description of Mahindra Quality Way (DMQW) and is the base document for a company adopting MQW. After the base DMQW is prepared, it is updated every year. It is also an important document used for the Mahindra Quality Way assessment.

The DMQW is a document which has a base section giving a brief background of the company and its business, which provides the assessors the backdrop for the company's quality improvement initiatives. Very importantly, the updated document also summarizes the actions taken by the company on the suggestions and comments from the previous cycle's assessment. It also provides

a complete description of the manner and extent to which the application of MQW has been progressively improved in the critical processes in different parts of the company during the current year.

The DMQW serves two purposes.

Firstly, its preparation ensures a structured review of MQW progress in the company, particularly highlighting the improvements in the current financial year compared to the previous. The management in the company is therefore necessarily involved in a structured internal review of the extent to which MQW has been applied to the critical processes in different parts of the company.

Secondly, it provides assessors with a useful summary of the performance of the company over the previous year and a description of the manner in which MQW has been implemented and deployed. This saves time during the on-site assessment.

TOP^

In order to provide companies with an impartial review of their progress in the MQW drive for excellence, an annual assessment is done by experienced assessors. The assessment focuses on the evaluation of the company's processes, systems and practices, the improvements in quality implemented by the company in the same and the corresponding results achieved.

The companies are awarded a consolidated score based on the assessment.

The assessment lays equal emphasis on

improvements achieved in the process as well as actual results achieved for each of the four Management Processes and selected key Business Processes. Equal marks are therefore, given in the score for the efficiency achieved in the process and the corresponding results achieved.

The score gets reflected in the awarding of an 'MQW Stage' to each company to reflect the level of maturity in the practice of MQW.

TOP^

The MQW assessment is followed by a feedback given by the assessors to the company. This is done in two phases.

First, there is a brief on-site feedback session immediately after the assessment, wherein the assessors share their overall impressions with the company's senior management. The company also gets a chance to clarify any comments or suggestions made by the assessors during this session.

This is followed by a detailed assessment report which is submitted to the company. This report, made by the assessors after the on-site assessment, is an important document which provides useful suggestions for further improvements.

The assessment report highlights the strengths and suggests areas for improvement for each function and process.

TOP^

Once the assessment report has been received by the company, the MQW coordinators and the concerned process owners should interpret the comments made by the assessors in the context of the presentations and discussions during the on-site assessment.

Based on this, they should discuss and agree on the action plan. This should then be reviewed with the senior management for formal approval and kick-off.

TOP^