Ford India teams bag top honours at National Quality Summit

Two teams from the quality department and body shop of Ford’s Chennai manufacturing plant won the India Quality Circle Forum’s Par-Excellence Award – the group’s top honor – at the Natural Work Group (NWG) Competition held in Hyderabad from Dec. 8-12. The Ford India Natural Work Group teams – which meet weekly to discuss strategies to improve quality, safety and productivity – entered as the “Quality Riders” and “Body Shining” and competed against 986 others from 330 manufacturing companies including Tata, Mahindra & Mahindra, TVS and Godrej. "Quality is one of the four core brand pillars at Ford and we try to ensure quality in each of our products and processes. We are extremely delighted to have won this top national recognition, which highlights the great efforts our teams are doing at the plant," said Michael Boneham, president and managing director of Ford India. "Through our best practices like NWGs, we remain committed to continuous quality improvement," he added. The par-excellence Award was given to teams who scored 80 percent or above during an extremely competitive and rigorous selection process. Only 12 percent of the 986 participating Quality Circle teams made it to this top bracket. While the Quality Riders team won the award for helping reduce the number of incidents at the Ford facility through multi-point interventions, Body Shining was adjudged best for its initiative to improve Jobs Per Hour on the Figo manufacturing line. Figo's quality manufacturing has already endeared it to over 125,000 proud owners in India and seen increasing exports to 30 countries. "It is a moment of pride for the Ford India NWG process and will reinforce our belief in constant quality improvement at all our existing and new manufacturing facilities," said Tom Chackalackal, Ford India's executive director, Manufacturing. Ford India has 232 NWGs within nine departments who meet weekly to brainstorm ideas related to safety, quality, cost, delivery, morale and environment. The teams have made significant contributions to the work culture at Ford India.