Bharti Airtel awarded first prize at CII’s 6th National Convention on SIX SIGMA

Quality is an integral part of a company’s strategy while the mechanism to achieve quality is a matter of choice. The quality deliverables should be driven from the top and Airtel takes pride to call itself a quality company, stated Mr. Sanjay Kapoor, Deputy CEO, Bharti Airtel Ltd. He was speaking at the 6th National Convention on SIX SIGMA; Sustaining Growth through SIX SIGMA organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)

The convention commemorated an award ceremony for enterprises undertaking SIX SIGMA route. Bharti Airtel Limited Transport Network bagged the first prize followed by SKF India Limited Bangalore and Whirlpool of India Limited. The companies were judged on the parameters like, customer impact, results achieved, sustaibility of gains, employee involvement and commitment and linkage to strategic objectives of the business.

Delighted about  winning the award, Mr. Joydip Datta, Head Business Excellence, Bharti Airtel Ltd Transport Network stated that the team adopted six sigma to improve the voice quality network. The project scaled up subscribers satisfaction by adding 700-800 million minutes revenue for the company which translates into Rs. 200 crore. The mechanism helped scaling up the customer satisfaction index from 61% to 82%.  

Representative of the first Runner-up, Mr. K N Manjunatha, Six Sigma Development Champion, SKF India Limited Bangalore stated that SIX SIGMA was adopted for reducing the cost of poor quality product. The entity achieved 0% defects and earned 5.4 crore through the project.

Mr. Zafar Khan, Director, Operational Excellence, the Coca-Cola Company, Atlanta added that high quality of information presented at the convention reflects that the Indian industry is on a good working mode. In addition a lot of opportunities rest in paying more attention to the issues of standardisation and capacity building.

Judging the participants, Mr. K Kulbhushan, Senior Vice President-Business Excellence & Organisation Development, Jubilant Organosys Ltd said, "It is time that application of Six Sigma becomes an integral part of any organisation in India. The Six sigma strategy creates the much required momentum in the work environment which ultimately benefits the long term business strategies. It involves every employee in bringing a significant improvement in the functioning of a company."

Mr. K N Rattan, Convenor, Core Group on National Convention on Six Sigma remarked, "The 6th National Convention on Six Sigma marks the success of the  SIX SIGMA strategy in the Indian companies. This time companies like Bharti Airtel, Tata Teleservices, Xerox, Max New York Life Insurance, SKF India, Whirlpool India among others competed against each other for the most coveted award on Six Sigma. The convention saw showcasing of some exemplary case studies which had adopted SIx Sigma to achieve pre-defined goals."

The Second Runner-up Mr. Jaipreet Kohli, Master Blackbelt – Six Sigma, Whirlpool of India Limited said that the project was aimed at improving priming performance in washing machines. This has helped in achieving cost reduction of 1.2 Euros per product. Acknowledging the success of the project, a new variant of this washing machine in USA will have a mandatory improvement of prining performance through Six Sigma.