Interview with Mr. K. Kovaichelvan, VP HR & TQC, TVS Suzuki Limited.

Tell us about your major operations in India, and Bangalore in particular?

We have two manufacturing plants, one at Hosur, which started in 1978, and another one at Mysore. At Hosur, we manufacture motorcycles and mopeds. At the Mysore plant, we manufacture the Scooty. We have a total of 4000 employees with around 20 area offices all over the country.

What educational qualifications do you look for, before you hire?

We do campus recruitment of graduate engineers, MBAs, diploma engineers, mechanical and electrical engineers and if needed, metallurgical engineers. We then induct, orient and train them on the job. This was being done only in the South. However, last year 60% of the recruitment was outside the South. We even have mid-career recruitments. Most recently, we have been hiring a lot of women.

We hire workmen who have passed their secondary school (SSLC) and train them before they are put on the job. The latest needs in maintenance requires a new set of skills. So we have undertaken major skill enhancement programmes for the workmen and also to train new recruits. After the training, their performance on the job is reviewed to measure the effectiveness of the training.

What are the core values that drive your organisation?

The founders of TVS believed in a strong sense of value. It started with trust, value and service. Whatever TQM and TQC that we talk of today, were all practised since the beginning. Basically, people trust the services and products offered by the company and get value for money. Today's customer has many intrinsic needs, which are sometimes sidelined. We at TVS consider the customer's point of view. Some of our managers survey and observe how customers use products. This sensitises us to the customer and his needs. We call this customer connectivity.

Tell us about your collaboration with Suzuki Motors Corporation.

Suzuki Motors is an equity-holder in our company. They provide the technology for our motorcycles. Some of our products are co- branded, unlike mopeds and the Scooty, which are our brands that have been developed using our own indigenous technology. In the case of motorcycles like the Hero Honda etc. we get the know-how from Suzuki.

Any best practices that you would like to share with our readers?

We have quite a few best practices. One of them is on new product development. From 1990 onwards, the company has grown tremendously. We introduced new products developed by our R&D. A strong in-house R&D team has helped us develop products based on customer understanding and concurrent engineering.

Rapid product development using concurrent engineering is our next best practice wherein the lead-time is shortened. Today if one doesn't develop products to match the market demand, it is difficult to keep pace with the competition. We have reduced our product development process time to as less as 20 months from the conceptual stage to the launch. In the future, we may even reduce it to 12- 15 months.

We have also adopted TQC and TQM practices. Our growth since 1990 can be attributed to the TQM approach. TQM basically has three aspects. It is a system of excellence to sustain the best results through the best process. Respect for people is the other component of TQM. Right from the level of the workmen, we have various forums for employees to participate in self-improvement activities. We have suggestion schemes, quality circles, cross- functional teams, and supervisory improvement.

How do you reward high performers?

The best performers have the opportunity to grow much faster in the organisation. Apart from that, we have cash rewards. We sponsor people for continuing education programmes and send our engineers to the Warwick and Cranfield Universities in UK. We also send people to AOTS Japan, for quality management programmes, the National University of Singapore for marketing programmes, and to Michigan University for HRD programmes.

Last year, a skill matrix for engineers and managers was prepared. Based on it, we identified their training needs. We are into preparing modules, some of which are also provided by overseas and indigenous faculty. The top two quality circles are sent to Japan, Singapore, and Thailand to participate in the QC conventions there. We send them to auto fairs in Europe. Training is also provided at Suzuki. We have an Intranet, a library, AV facilities and the Internet. We assist in career and succession planning. For the engineers and MBAs, we have the mentoring programme. We conduct mentoring workshops and hold sessions on communication skills etc. Employee welfare facilities include the TVS colony, recreation clubs, health-care and help desk facilities. All this has ensured that we have a single digit attrition rate.

ARCHANA JAYAKAR

archana.hyd@careercommunity.co.in