Press Release

"Quality is not perfection of the same but being different", says Dr. Mehra

"With the cambrian explosion in customer expectations, quality has been commoditised. The internet has brought forth a profound change in the competitive environment. In the warpspeed economy of today the value is added not by perfecting the same but by being different, profoundly different. Using our best people simply to cut costs through industrial age techniques such as Kaizen, Benchmarking, TPM and Six Sigma can be a gigantic waste of human capital". This was stated by Dr Madhav Mehra, Chairman, World Quality Council in his theme address at this 12th World Congress on Total Quality organized by World Quality Council, together with Institute of Directors. The theme of the Congress was "Business Excellence models for success in the 21st Century".

Dr. Mehra asserted, "With the onset of knowledge economy the gap between what can be imagined and what can be achieved could never have been smaller. The problem is our business models are unable to recognize the changed equation in the drivers of human agenda on this planet. We are still captive to history and continuing to persist in refining models for a world that no longer exists. We are unable to recognize that we are living today not in an economy of hands or heads but the economy of hearts and our business models need to be recast on the paradigms of new economy, to ensure they touch the hearts and not the minds"

The key driver of knowledge economy according to Dr Mehra is innovation. "This means we need to raise the bar of quality by a few notches. Instead of satisfying customers' existing needs, the focus of quality shifts to anticipating their future needs. Quality is no longer conformance to requirement. It means anticipating customer needs and providing goods and services which customers cannot even imagine let alone specify. But once they are offered they wonder how they could ever live without them." Dr. Mehra added.

The Conference was inaugurated by Chief Justice A M Ahmedi who also presented the Golden Peacock Awards for quality and innovation. Golden Peacock Global Award for Quality was presented to Thai Carbon Black of Thailand. Other awardees included Jay Shree Textiles, Indian Rayon, VIP Industries ,L & T, Tata Metaliks, Pepsico, Wipro, Reliance Industries, British Biologicals, Honeywell India Software, HPCL and Punjabi Chandu Halwai