Central Japan's quality control team visits Lucas plant

A team of 25 top officials, mostly belonging to Toyota Group and its suppliers from the Central Japan area, led by Tadashi Onishi of Jtekt Corporation (formerly Toyoda Machine Works) visited the Lucas-TVS plant to understand the total quality management (TQM) practices and exchange of ideas.

Highlighting some of the points on their visit to the plant, Onishi said that plating process section was well-maintained although it was 30 years old.

The involvement of top official in the volunteer group activity, carried out on Saturdays and Sundays was also lauded by the delegation. The delegation looked at the engineering capabilities and manufacturing processes of Lucas-TVS. However, he said that it would be making some suggestions for further progress.

Balaji said the company had moved from the 'high school' stage to the 'pre-university' status. He added that the company had learnt some lessons from the visiting delegation.

"We have been talking about zero defect. But they are going beyond zero defect and the quality should not be measured by absence of defects, which we learnt today," he said.

The visiting teams belong to the Central Japan Quality Control Association (CJQCA), which is a non-profit organisation to promote quality control in firms and organisations in Central Japan, with co-operation and partnership of the Japan Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) and Japanese Standards Association (JSA).

One of their annual projects is organising overseas study team to understand the best practices in other countries.