IEEMA (Indian Electrical & Electronics Manufacturers’ Association), the national representative for manufacturers of large electrical equipment, industrial electronics and allied equipment organised an award function on December 16, 2009, at Mumbai to announce the winners of the IEEMA SME Quality Award— ISQA2009. The objective of the ISQA award is to recognise the unique achievements of small and medium organisations from the electrical sector in the field of quality systems and further encourage them towards operational excellence.

In his address, Murali Venkatraman, President, IEEMA, highlighted the association's various initiatives for the betterment of SMEs. These include export promotion by organising group participation in overseas trade fairs; visits to the countries with substantial export potential; cluster-to cluster cooperation in association with overseas trade associations and upgrading skills through workshops and seminars.The association has more than 650 members from private, public and joint sector organisations who together fulfill more than 95 per cent of the equipment and project services requirements of the Indian market.

The award function was attended by about 150 eminent invitees; top officials from the member companies, participating companies, examiners, jury and past presidents of the association. L Ganesh, Chairman, Rane Group, the winner of the coveted Deming Application Prize in 2005, felicitated the winners. While addressing the gathering, he drew the attention of SMEs to the need of quality systems and continuous improvement initiatives in order to ensure that products and processes can compete in the global market.

Amara Raja Power Systems won the IEEMA SME Quality Prize—this year’s highest recognition for sustainable quality systems, while Laxmi Hydraulics received the IEEMA SME Quality Commendation for significant achievement in quality in the small enterprise category.

Other winners of the IEEMA SME Quality Certificate for strong commitment to quality systems in the small enterprise category include Ashida Electronics, Astra Metal Systems, Elmex Controls, Huphen Electromech, Naraiuran Controls (India) and Scope T&M. In the medium enterprise category, the winners were DSA Electro Controls, PRS Permacel and Sipra Engineers.

This year,no company qualified for the highest award level—testimony to the stringent requirements to qualify for the coveted award.

In his address, CS Kumar, Chairman, ISQA Award Committee, explained the significance of the award, for which the evaluation criteria are leadership commitment to quality, customer focus, system principles and personal learning, quality management by facts and focus on future.

In order to maintain the credibility of the award, the award process has been designed to function professionally—beginning with training for participants to help them prepare the application document; assessment of the applications by experienced examiners for excellence in quality; site visits to ascertain the accuracy of the claims, operation and effectiveness of systems; scoring the applications and providing feedback to the applicants.The process involves a lot of effort, diligence and enthusiasm on the part of the examiners. Member organisations like ABB, Crompton Greaves, CTR Manufacturing Industries, Emco, Gilbert & Maxwell Electricals, Indo Asian, L&T, Legrand (India), Schneider Electric, Secure Meters, Siemens and WS Industries nominated their experienced officials to be a part of the panel of examiners who were trained through four sessions of induction.

SK Kakkar, Principal Counsellor, CII, and J Sridharan, President,World Class Manufacturing, Aditya Birla Group, who were members of the jury for this year’s ISQA award process, were felicitated on the occasion. They helped the ISQA committee not only to finalise the list of winners under the various categories but also to impart a few vital points for future awards based on their vast experience.

The institution of ISQA awards is one of the steps taken by the IEEMA towards developing the SME segment of the association and is an effort to connect with the vendors to the member companies. In the long run, the ISQA awards will become the national standard of recognition in the industry and help the electrical sector as a whole to achieve the industry vision of ‘global excellence leading to human enrichment’.