The Indian automotive industry has witnessed dramatic and large-scale
transformation, in the past two decades. Most of the global Original Equipment Manufacturers
(OEMs) have their presence in India and have built strategic partnerships with their suppliers
in order to control costs, reduce cycle times and meet stringent delivery schedules. The tier
1 and tier 2 suppliers to these OEMs have to manage the ever mounting pressure
of delivering the best.
One of the strategies that Indian component manufacturers adopted as a Total
Quality Management (TQM) initiative, to become a part of the global value chain, is the QS
9000 certification. QS 9000 is a mandatory quality assurance certification of the
automotive industry. The requirements of QS 9000 standard make it mandatory for the suppliers
to have a formal, documented, comprehensive business plan both on a long-term and
short-term basis and to have it periodically reviewed.
Many research studies have established the positive catalyzing effect of
TQM implementation on firms' performances, wherein the Critical Success Factors
(CSFs)—the driving forces for effective TQM implementation—are identified and strategies
evolved for superior performance. Identifying critical success factors is the key for
structuring environmental analysis and organizational strategies for successful implementation
of TQM (Digman, 1990).
This paper tries to understand how OEMs foster automotive supplier organizations
to build systems that prevent the occurrence of problems and allow for
continuous improvement throughout the supply chain. |
