Pro. Hitoshi Kume

Advisor of TQMI, Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo

Faced with the challenge of global recession leading to shrinking revenues and reducing margin financial service Since the economic liberalization in foreign investment and trade in 1991, India has achieved marvelous economic development. The situation is quite similar to Japan’s economic development made after her substantial trade liberalization in 1960. At that time quality control introduced from America was adopted in many Japanese organizations as a means to strengthen their international competitiveness. Since then Japan made rapid progress and developed a unique Japanese style quality management that is called TQM.

TQM is not a method to seek after short term profit but it is a method to develop profit making management, that is, it aims to maximize the ability of an organization to create mid- and long- term wealth. It is pleasing to know that there are several Indian companies that introduced TQM, achieved quite satisfactory results and have shown the effectiveness of TQM in Indian industry as well.

I stated above that the situation of India today was similar to that of Japan before. However, there are big differences in social and technological surroundings between the two. There has been innovative development in manufacturing technology and communication means. There is a stronger tendency for global economy. The population of India is ten times bigger than that of Japan. Even though Japanese methods can be applied well in India, there must be some modification of the methods that will be more suitable for India. I hope to do further cooperation with managers and experts in India to develop a new Indian quality management.