Tata Steel organises APEX TQM Awards Nite 2024

Jamshedpur, November 22, 2024:  Tata Steel organised the Apex TQM Awards Night 2024 at Keenan Stadium on November 20, 2024. T V Narendran, CEO & Managing Director, Tata Steel and Peeyush Gupta, Vice President, TQM, Group Strategic Procurement and Supply Chain, Tata Steel were present during the occasion to give away the awards.

The event was aimed to recognise top improvement projects from ASPIRE (Green Belt, Theory of Constraints, Critical Chain Project Management, Self-Initiated Project and Value Engineering) & Shikhar25 methodologies (Business Process Enhancement, Operations, Marketing & Sales), the Best Shikhar IMPACT Centres, and the Best Divisions in Knowledge Management.

Tripti Srivastava, Chief TQM & CQA, Tata Steel gave the welcome address and shared some of the key highlights and major milestones of the previous financial year with the audience. She stressed on the need for reducing variability across processes, building capability and improving focus on internal customers.

75 projects from various categories were recognised during the event. While giving away the first set of awards, Peeyush Gupta congratulated all the winners and participants. He reiterated that the event was part of the Quality movement in Tata Steel in the form of various excellence projects where problems are identified, solved, and finally recognised.

For FY 24, Shikhar IC Assessments were carried out for 33 IMPACT centres across the value chain. The top performers were:

• Best IMPACT centres: Raw Material Value Optimization (OMQ)
• 1^st Runner up: Hot Metal Value Maximization (Tata Steel Jamshedpur)
• 2^nd Runner up: Reliability & Shared Services (Tata Steel Meramandali)

For FY24, Knowledge Management Assessments were carried out for 78 units across all divisions, with the top 26 units advancing to the Apex Assessment. The top performers were:

• Best KM Division: Mechanical Maintenance team from One Shared Services
• 1^st Runner up: Safety team from Safety, Health & Sustainability
• 2^nd Runner up: Long Product Rolling team from the Long Products division.

Chief Guest for the evening, T V Narendran along with Peeyush Gupta and jury members Atrayee Sanyal, Vice President Human Resource Management, Tata Steel, and D B Sundara Ramam, Vice President Raw Material, Tata Steel, launched the 7th edition of EDGE CAST book, showcasing the finest improvement cases from FY 24. 

Narendran congratulated all the winners and reiterated the need for creation of strong and consistent TQM culture across geographies, acquired companies, merged entities and across younger demographics who have not been part of the Quality Journey of Tata Steel like the JRD QV journey or the Deming journey of the Deming Award prize Journey.  He also emphasised that with the emergence of new competitors with equally good products and competitive pricing, the differentiator for Tata Steel would be by ensuring customer loyalty through customer experience & customer support by reading into the unspoken needs of customers, spending more time with customers and understanding their requirements and problems and benchmarking against companies which offer greater customer experiences. The Apex TQM Awards Nite 2024 also witnessed a QUIZ ‘Quest for Excellence’ and cultural performances.