How has JLR’s experience with TBEM been?
When we were acquired by Tata back in 2008, one of the things that was clear to us was that we needed a business excellence model that could allow us to review our processes. Also, we wanted ideas about how we could operate more effectively.

It became quite clear to us that we should leverage the TBEM process, testing ourselves to make sure that our processes were integrated across the company. While this was the initial purpose, it was also an opportunity for us to understand the Tata language, TBEM and how these processes operated in Tata companies.

TBEM provided two really great opportunities to move JLR forward: to review our cross-functional processes in order to make us more competitive and also to understand how Tata operates on a broader basis with the model.

Was the implementation process difficult? Were there any cultural issues?
The TBEM processes essentially related to the questions that are outlined in the ‘blue book’. We realised early on that these were questions that any competitive business needs to answer. To be candid, there was never any cultural issue at all, because the blue book asked questions that were relevant to us and to any other company.

The other aspect was that we are a global company and the questions that were posed did have resonance for a company such as ours. We received help from the TQMS team in steering us through and in understanding what the blue book was talking about.

We did not see it as a cultural issue; we saw it as a business excellence opportunity.

What were the reasons and the factors that helped in implementing TBEM so smoothly and quickly?
The first thing we did, towards the end of 2010, was to have an awareness session with all our executive committee members and our chief executive. We had a candid discussion on our readiness to commit the resources, time and effort to go through the TBEM journey.

We then quickly adopted the model, setting out company-wide cross-functional teams, and a governance structure that had representatives from all the functions that were empowered to lead the TBEM process.

We had a working leader’s group that met regularly and we reviewed the progress. We embedded TBEM as part of our day-to-day business, making it a fundamental part of our operations. And from early 2011, we had regular communications in Team Talk, our internal magazine, to make people aware of the TBEM programme.

Our focus was on how we could improve our processes to become globally competitive, rather than just going for a high score. Of course, we wanted to get the best possible score, but that wasn’t the key objective.