DEVELOPING A CULTURE FOR QUALITY- A CASE STUDY OF THAL ENGINEERING
By: Sohail P. Ahmed
INTRODUCTION & ABSTRACT
CEO & Vice Chairman Thal Ltd, Director TUSDEC, Director NPO, Director PJBF, Chairman, Pakistan Auto sector Skill Development Company Karachi, PAKISTAN. Thal Engineering started operations in July’96. It was a unique opportunity to create a company with the right culture which would carry the company over a century forward. Having reached the conclusion through a root cause analysis that people are the single most important resource that will make the vision come alive, of quality and customer delight at all times and knowing the weakness in work ethos in our country, it was a challenge to step by step guide the company towards the cherished goal.
Whilst SOPs were prepared for all activities, policies were developed as a guide line for mundane as well exceptional circumstances, experiments on the organizational structures were carried out, team work exercises were repeatedly carried out, incentives for going an extra mile were created, prompt recognition methods were developed, mindset changing activities for all echelons of team members were carried out and many homegrown activities as night outs, Du-be-du, Sachi Kahani, Value Sessions etc were developed and institutionalized.
The company in the meantime moved from ISO 9001 certificate in 1998 to its latest version as well as acquired ISO 14001 and TS 16949 certification. It is now working to be certified for OSHAS. The company has a short and a remarkable past and a long future InshaaAllah. It has grown from a 48 people / Rs. 300 million company to Rs. 6 billion with 1000 employees in the last 15 years. The journey continues.