Satyashri Mohanty – Mr. Bhargava, we discussed, how to make workers as part of the team and so that they feel engaged with the company. And, as a result, we also discussed how to... how that can lead to cost reduction because you are getting workers who work on time and, the attendance levels are very high and then there is a huge value release can happen. But I remember you talking about, a point where you said that there are 70% of the workforce whose experience and all can also be encashed. So, can you talk about that part as to how do I get more…&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - Yes&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - …out from these workers?&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - Certainly, you get a lot of gain if workers don't have to be, if I may use the word ‘policed’, and they do things on their own, they don't have to wait, be enforced discipline, but it is voluntary discipline. But the other thing which we must not forget is that the workers are actually on the shop floor and they are the persons who are making the products, whether it is machining or welding or fitting or electrical works or whatever.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - They are the guys who do it. Now, over a period of time, a worker who's working at a particular station in the company gets to understand a lot of the problems associated with the processes which have been given down to him. And if he feels that it would be in his interest. In his interest in two ways - one, that if he makes a suggestion, his manager will actually take that seriously and examine it properly.&nbsp;And the second is that if he does it and the company benefits, then company benefit will ultimately also reflect in some benefit to him.&nbsp;If these two conditions are met, then the workers with their experience on the shop floor can have a potential of contributing a lot of suggestions on how to improve the process time, make it shorter, how to avoid wastage, how to avoid defects, where one can look at some low-cost automation to avoid a difficult situation which can't be solved otherwise, and a whole lot of improvements.&nbsp;Now, the reason why it's more important for the workers to do this, because their managers or their, even their supervisors who have not been working on the line, are actually not able to do this kind of thing. Because those guys who are the supervisors and higher they don't know how to make the product.&nbsp;Because there's a difference between actually welding and knowing the theory of welding. I mean, anybody who's, been to college will understand engineers, if they're asked today to weld something, they won't be able to do it.&nbsp;But the guy who's doing it will do, with his experience with his eyes shut.&nbsp;And the experience in Japan first was that if you actually first motivate these workers by making them understand that their future depends on the growth of the company.&nbsp;And if you motivate them by making them realise that they will benefit if they do this, and then you can train them as to how to use the knowledge which they have gathered to actually make suggestions for improvement. I'm saying train them because it will not come automatically.&nbsp;It's very difficult for a person to make suggestions for improvement. But it requires a certain amount of training and time over which he then understands how he should solve problems.&nbsp;And this is what we did in Maruti. We started the cross-functional teams and small quality circle groups. And they made initially not very much suggestions, but then our managers worked with them and taught them the methodology of trying to solve problems. How to identify a problem, how to determine its priorities, how to determine the possible causes of the problem, how to eliminate those causes, come to the root cause, then how to look at possible solutions, and then try those solutions and see then which one actually solved the problem.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - So, how did you do this tactically? Because if I look at a typical shop floor, what managers should be bothered about is “how do I get eight hours from this guy then he goes home”. And, and what you're talking about is, you know, spending time in training, suggestion, ideating, brainstorming sessions.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - See, I'm assuming that…&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Yeah&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava -... you have done one part of the job, which is&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Yes&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava -... to make workers feel…&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Feel as&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - …that they are part of the team. Now, how to actually identify and solve problems and make suggestions. What Japan had, and we had, we put aside every month a time period of about one hour, during which we, we have a quality circle meeting. So, people in that area get together and then the process starts with the help of the manager initially. What I said, identify all the possible problems in that area which people encountered. Then to prioritise them and pick the most important problem to be solved first. Then to, get everybody's ideas that how can we solve this problem, what is the cause of it and that process then, over time, builds up. And people get more and more capable of doing this exercise of solving problems and making suggestions.&nbsp;It's been increasing in Maruti over the years. Last year, 2023-24, we had over a million suggestions which were actually implemented.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Wow.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - Itis the highest ever.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Okay.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - Now, you see that over 40 years people. Well, these suggestions didn't start 40 years ago. Started maybe 30 years ago, but over 30 years, people have been making suggestions, and the numbers have been growing. In Japan, they still have suggestions coming up after 70 years of work and getting to be so highly competitive.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Still there's so much more to extract from the system.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - So there's never an end to this. The word ‘Kaizen’ in Japan, as you know, means that everything is capable of being improved.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Yeah.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - And there's no end to this process of making improvements in your manufacturing processes. So, I think not only in India, but all over the world, except for places where they have implemented this worker's participation, companies are losing out on the experience and the learnings of the 70% or 60% of the workers who are on the shop floor.&nbsp;We are losing out that we don't get this value in. They could do so much more to help the company grow.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Very interesting because I also see these two topics are linked to each other. The first part of, you know, dealing with workers being part of the company, and the second is trying to, you know, engage them for ideation. What I've seen in many companies is you have this, uh, quality circles, but they fizzle out within no time. And from this discussion, I'm just thinking that if you don't do the first part right, and you just do the, "Let's do a quality circle program," and…&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - Correct.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - …you can't get that, value. So the, the two things fit together.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - One time, maybe 20, 30 years ago, there was a great movement towards learning from Japanese management.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Yes.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - And amongst the things was Just in Time and these quality circles. We have all India Kaizen competitions.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Correct&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - But if you actually look at the results which are achieved in the company in terms of suggestions implemented and benefits, value coming out of that, it's miniscule.&nbsp;And that, the reason why I told many of these companies, I was in the boards of some of these companies also, I said, "The reason is unless the worker feels that he is a part of the company, that making these improvements and suggestions for improvements will actually also benefit him because as the company grows, he grows, why would he do it?"&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Yeah.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - In Japan, workers actually do this on their own time.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Wow.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - Not within the working time.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - So they just find out time for&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - They spend an extra hour a month for the quality circle meetings.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Yeah.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - We found that India, we couldn't do that because most of the workers didn't have their own transport. They came by buses, or they had some other arrangement of pooling and things. And therefore, they could not stay back after a shift because then their transport system would go bad. So, we decided that it would be worth our while to cut short the working time in the shift by half an hour this way and half an hour that way and then get one hour together in two shifts. So, the shift change time became one hour a month for doing quality circle work.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - And what is very important is you're tactically facilitating the entire process as well while taking care of the workers and...&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - Well, they get involved.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty – …so a lot of things has to fit together.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - They have sense of involvement in the company.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Yeah, yeah. And you, you can't just start a quality circle and a Kaizen program by just putting posters and…&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - No&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - …expect workers to contribute and…&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - No, no. And, and you have to educate them on the process.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Yes.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - I do think while we understood the importance of quality circles from, from what the Japanese did, we never went deeper into it to understand how and why quality circles were successful in Japan.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - I think, yeah, that's, missing piece in many of the companies where they have the so-called Kaizen Quality Circle. But if you really go deep into it, you see it's just an eyewash to the external world.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - Mostly on paper.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - Nothing done about it. Very, very interesting. So, I think there's a lot of these, as you talked about, the time taken to produce a car. All those, I think, improvements should have translated into that, resulting in more cars getting produced.&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - Yeah.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - So, it's, it's something that even if you're doing locally, it is connecting to the benefits to the company as well. And from these benefits, you're saying there's a share also coming in to the workers who have been part of those circles, right?&nbsp;R. C. Bhargava - That's right.&nbsp;Satyashri Mohanty - That's, that's very interesting.

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Role of management in making India a manufacturing hub | Chapter 2: Harnessing workers as company assets

Satyashri Mohanty – Mr. Bhargava, we discussed, how to make workers as part of the team and so that they feel engaged with the company. And, as a result, we also discussed how to... how that can lead to cost reduction because you are getting workers who work on time and, the attendance levels are very high and then there is a huge value release can happen. But I remember you talking about, a point where you said that there are 70% of the workforce whose experience and all can also be encashed. So, can you talk about that part as to how do I get more…R. C. Bhargava - YesSatyashri Mohanty - …out from these workers?R. C. Bhargava - Certainly, you get a lot of gain if workers don't have to be, if I may use the word ‘policed’, and they do things on their own, they don't have to wait, be enforced discipline, but it is voluntary discipline. But the other thing which we must not forget is that the workers are actually on the shop floor and they are the persons who are making the products, whether it is machining or welding or fitting or electrical works or whatever.R. C. Bhargava - They are the guys who do it. Now, over a period of time, a worker who's working at a particular station in the company gets to understand a lot of the problems associated with the processes which have been given down to him. And if he feels that it would be in his interest. In his interest in two ways - one, that if he makes a suggestion, his manager will actually take that seriously and examine it properly.And the second is that if he does it and the company benefits, then company benefit will ultimately also reflect in some benefit to him.If these two conditions are met, then the workers with their experience on the shop floor can have a potential of contributing a lot of suggestions on how to improve the process time, make it shorter, how to avoid wastage, how to avoid defects, where one can look at some low-cost automation to avoid a difficult situation which can't be solved otherwise, and a whole lot of improvements.Now, the reason why it's more important for the workers to do this, because their managers or their, even their supervisors who have not been working on the line, are actually not able to do this kind of thing. Because those guys who are the supervisors and higher they don't know how to make the product.Because there's a difference between actually welding and knowing the theory of welding. I mean, anybody who's, been to college will understand engineers, if they're asked today to weld something, they won't be able to do it.But the guy who's doing it will do, with his experience with his eyes shut.And the experience in Japan first was that if you actually first motivate these workers by making them understand that their future depends on the growth of the company.And if you motivate them by making them realise that they will benefit if they do this, and then you can train them as to how to use the knowledge which they have gathered to actually make suggestions for improvement. I'm saying train them because it will not come automatically.It's very difficult for a person to make suggestions for improvement. But it requires a certain amount of training and time over which he then understands how he should solve problems.And this is what we did in Maruti. We started the cross-functional teams and small quality circle groups. And they made initially not very much suggestions, but then our managers worked with them and taught them the methodology of trying to solve problems. How to identify a problem, how to determine its priorities, how to determine the possible causes of the problem, how to eliminate those causes, come to the root cause, then how to look at possible solutions, and then try those solutions and see then which one actually solved the problem.Satyashri Mohanty - So, how did you do this tactically? Because if I look at a typical shop floor, what managers should be bothered about is “how do I get eight hours from this guy then he goes home”. And, and what you're talking about is, you know, spending time in training, suggestion, ideating, brainstorming sessions.R. C. Bhargava - See, I'm assuming that…Satyashri Mohanty - YeahR. C. Bhargava -... you have done one part of the job, which isSatyashri Mohanty - YesR. C. Bhargava -... to make workers feel…Satyashri Mohanty - Feel asR. C. Bhargava - …that they are part of the team. Now, how to actually identify and solve problems and make suggestions. What Japan had, and we had, we put aside every month a time period of about one hour, during which we, we have a quality circle meeting. So, people in that area get together and then the process starts with the help of the manager initially. What I said, identify all the possible problems in that area which people encountered. Then to prioritise them and pick the most important problem to be solved first. Then to, get everybody's ideas that how can we solve this problem, what is the cause of it and that process then, over time, builds up. And people get more and more capable of doing this exercise of solving problems and making suggestions.It's been increasing in Maruti over the years. Last year, 2023-24, we had over a million suggestions which were actually implemented.Satyashri Mohanty - Wow.R. C. Bhargava - Itis the highest ever.Satyashri Mohanty - Okay.R. C. Bhargava - Now, you see that over 40 years people. Well, these suggestions didn't start 40 years ago. Started maybe 30 years ago, but over 30 years, people have been making suggestions, and the numbers have been growing. In Japan, they still have suggestions coming up after 70 years of work and getting to be so highly competitive.Satyashri Mohanty - Still there's so much more to extract from the system.R. C. Bhargava - So there's never an end to this. The word ‘Kaizen’ in Japan, as you know, means that everything is capable of being improved.Satyashri Mohanty - Yeah.R. C. Bhargava - And there's no end to this process of making improvements in your manufacturing processes. So, I think not only in India, but all over the world, except for places where they have implemented this worker's participation, companies are losing out on the experience and the learnings of the 70% or 60% of the workers who are on the shop floor.We are losing out that we don't get this value in. They could do so much more to help the company grow.Satyashri Mohanty - Very interesting because I also see these two topics are linked to each other. The first part of, you know, dealing with workers being part of the company, and the second is trying to, you know, engage them for ideation. What I've seen in many companies is you have this, uh, quality circles, but they fizzle out within no time. And from this discussion, I'm just thinking that if you don't do the first part right, and you just do the, "Let's do a quality circle program," and…R. C. Bhargava - Correct.Satyashri Mohanty - …you can't get that, value. So the, the two things fit together.R. C. Bhargava - One time, maybe 20, 30 years ago, there was a great movement towards learning from Japanese management.Satyashri Mohanty - Yes.R. C. Bhargava - And amongst the things was Just in Time and these quality circles. We have all India Kaizen competitions.Satyashri Mohanty - CorrectR. C. Bhargava - But if you actually look at the results which are achieved in the company in terms of suggestions implemented and benefits, value coming out of that, it's miniscule.And that, the reason why I told many of these companies, I was in the boards of some of these companies also, I said, "The reason is unless the worker feels that he is a part of the company, that making these improvements and suggestions for improvements will actually also benefit him because as the company grows, he grows, why would he do it?"Satyashri Mohanty - Yeah.R. C. Bhargava - In Japan, workers actually do this on their own time.Satyashri Mohanty - Wow.R. C. Bhargava - Not within the working time.Satyashri Mohanty - So they just find out time forR. C. Bhargava - They spend an extra hour a month for the quality circle meetings.Satyashri Mohanty - Yeah.R. C. Bhargava - We found that India, we couldn't do that because most of the workers didn't have their own transport. They came by buses, or they had some other arrangement of pooling and things. And therefore, they could not stay back after a shift because then their transport system would go bad. So, we decided that it would be worth our while to cut short the working time in the shift by half an hour this way and half an hour that way and then get one hour together in two shifts. So, the shift change time became one hour a month for doing quality circle work.Satyashri Mohanty - And what is very important is you're tactically facilitating the entire process as well while taking care of the workers and...R. C. Bhargava - Well, they get involved.Satyashri Mohanty – …so a lot of things has to fit together.R. C. Bhargava - They have sense of involvement in the company.Satyashri Mohanty - Yeah, yeah. And you, you can't just start a quality circle and a Kaizen program by just putting posters and…R. C. Bhargava - NoSatyashri Mohanty - …expect workers to contribute and…R. C. Bhargava - No, no. And, and you have to educate them on the process.Satyashri Mohanty - Yes.R. C. Bhargava - I do think while we understood the importance of quality circles from, from what the Japanese did, we never went deeper into it to understand how and why quality circles were successful in Japan.Satyashri Mohanty - I think, yeah, that's, missing piece in many of the companies where they have the so-called Kaizen Quality Circle. But if you really go deep into it, you see it's just an eyewash to the external world.R. C. Bhargava - Mostly on paper.Satyashri Mohanty - Nothing done about it. Very, very interesting. So, I think there's a lot of these, as you talked about, the time taken to produce a car. All those, I think, improvements should have translated into that, resulting in more cars getting produced.R. C. Bhargava - Yeah.Satyashri Mohanty - So, it's, it's something that even if you're doing locally, it is connecting to the benefits to the company as well. And from these benefits, you're saying there's a share also coming in to the workers who have been part of those circles, right?R. C. Bhargava - That's right.Satyashri Mohanty - That's, that's very interesting.&nbsp;

Dr. R.C. Bhargava explains how Maruti unlocked the hidden potential of shop-floor workers through quality circles, and voluntary discipline to drive continuous improvement in Ep# 68 of the Counterpoint Podcast by Vector Consulting Group

Role of management in making India a manufacturing hub. Chapter 2: Harnessing workers as company assets | Counterpoint Podcast | Vector Consulting Group