Quality culture creates healthy work environment: RINL

Visakhapatnam: Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL) CMD PK Rath said on Thursday that a quality-focused culture creates a healthy work environment and leads to customer satisfaction.

Inaugurating the two-day 19th Chapter Convention on Quality Concepts organised by Quality Circle Forum of India (QCFI) here with the theme focussed on 'Quality concepts for cultural breakthrough,' he elaborated on how quality concepts play vital role in total quality management.

Stressing the importance of consistent quality maintenance with total employee involvement, Rath said that over the last few years, quality and productivity have emerged as major areas of focus for business and the main ingredients for quality culture include togetherness, host communication, access to information, focus on processes and doing best for improvement.

The RINL CMD stated quality circle is a unique tool for having an impact on productivity, quality, cost reduction, safety, customer satisfaction and teamwork and added that quality circles represent bottom-up innovations in productivity management. He observed continual improvement is the key to success for any organisation.

Besides financial benefits, quality circles and 5S teams contribute significantly in bringing participative work-culture and work towards improved quality of work life for quality management. Rath mentioned that RINL has been constantly encouraging employee empowerment to enhance the quality worklife through participative forums such as QCs, 5S and suggestion schemes.

RINL has been consistent through implementation of several QC projects every year setting a benchmark in the steel industry, he stated and called upon the industries to see that more employees get involved in this movement of Quality Circles, 5S etc.

Director (Projects) RINL - VSP & Chairman of Visakhapatnam Chapter KK Ghosh highlighted the concept of quality movement and stressed the need to develop quality culture or mindset within the organisation.

Capt Giri Prasad, GM, Naval Dock Yard, Vice-Chairman and Secretary of body spoke on the occasion. Madhusudhan Rao, Divis Director (Projects), Divis Laboratory participated as the guest of honour. G Gandhi, DGM(CSR), VSP and acting secretary of the chapter explained about the programme details.

Chapter convention is an important event in the annual activities of QCFI as it acts as a prelude to the national convention on quality circles held every year. This year, national convention will be held in Varanasi in December. The Quality Circle teams selected here will be participated at national level.

This year, 93 teams consisting of 500 Quality Circle, 5S team members, facilitators and coordinators from 24 organisations like Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, NTPC-Simhadri, Naval Dockyard, Naval Armament Depot ,Bhilai Steel Plant, NTPC- Korba, NTPC- Faridabad, JUSCO-Jamshedpur, BEL Machilipatnam, RCF Mumbai are participating in the two-day convention. Various events like case study presentations, quiz competitions, crossword competitions, seminar on convention theme, form a part of the two-day event.