Asian Network for Quality (ANQ) has announced the list of winners of its prestigious Ishikawa-Kano Award for the year 2012.
This year’s winners include Venu Srinivasan, Chairman, TVS Motor Company, Dong Mingzhu President, Gree Electric Appliances and Liang Haishan, Executive Vice President, Haier Group. The awards were bestowed on them on the last day of the ANQ Congress, 1st August 2012, in Hong Kong. Asian Network for Quality (ANQ) which was established in 2002 is aimed at promoting the rapid evolution of Asia’s quality management.
The Ishikawa-Kano award is fittingly named after two eminent thinkers in the field of quality management in the latter half of the 20th century who passionately promoted quality as a way of life in different parts of the world often at their own expense and time, Prof. Kaoru Ishikawa and Prof. Noriaki Kano. Prof Ishikawa is considered the pioneer of the evolution of Total Quality Management in its holistic approach as it is perceived today. His most prominent legacy is in people involvement particularly at the Gemba through Quality Control Circles for harnessing their emotional and intellectual potential for managing their work for the benefit of all stakeholders. Professor Noriaki Kano is considered as amongst the handful of the contemporary leaders in the field of quality management in the world who made substantial contribution in many ways to the concept and practice of quality management. His most widely used legacy is the Kano Model for Attractive Quality Creation that has influenced product development processes in all sectors of economy around the world.
It is only appropriate that someone like Venu Srinivasan, who lives TQM, be awarded in only the third edition of this prestigious award. In fact, he has been the driving force behind his companies’ quest for achieving total quality and what is not well-known is the contribution of the total quality management (TQM) processes that were put into practice in the early ’90s that culminated in the company receiving the Deming medal.
A recipient of one of the highest honours in India, the Padma Shree Award, Srinivasan was conferred with an honorary “doctorate degree in science” by the University of Warwick, U.K. for excellence in manufacturing and contribution in the field of technology and R&D, in 2004. He is also the recipient of the Jamsetji Tata Life Time Achievement Award for the year 2004 by the Indian Society for Quality and was conferred with ‘Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa)’ by IIT Kharagpur, India, for outstanding contribution to the field of Quality Movement and Manufacturing Excellence in India.
It is Srinivasan’s firm belief that Quality consciousness is not a technology revolution but rather a human resource revolution. In other words, TQM is all about changing the mindset of the company, its suppliers, its vendors, its customers and then the larger society and making them quality conscious.
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