Venkatachari
Jagannath
23 December 2003
Chennai: It is work as usual at the Brakes India — the Deming Prize or not. The company''s foundry division became the first foundry in the world to win the Deming Award this year.
As a bonus the company''s foundry as well as the brakes divisions won the Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) Excellence First Category Award from the Japanese Institute of Plant Maintenance (JIPM) this year. Yet there is not much of a celebration. Perhaps due to the fact that winning quality awards year after year has become a habit for the TVS group.
The group has several firsts in this field. Sundram Fasteners is the first Indian company to get an ISO certification. The company has been winning the Supplier of the Year awards from the US auto giant General Motors and has won TPM awards from the JIPM.
Sundaram Clayton won the honour of being the first Deming company in India. In 2002 Sundaram Clayton''s brakes division got the Japan Quality Medal from the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (Juse). And this year, TVS Srichakra Tyres has won the TPM Excellence Award-First Category from JIPM.
The group can now boast of four Deming winners — Sundaram Clayton (brakes division), Sundaram Brake Linings, TVS Motor Company and Brakes India (foundry division). It is certainly the Indian Deming group.
The Brakes India foundry turns out about 42,000 tonnes per year for ductile iron and permanent mould castings and earns over Rs 200 crore with a growth rate of 15 per cent. Forty-eight per cent of the revenue is from exports to Europe, the US, Japan and South Africa.
