Niraj Goyal

Newspapers face pressure from their external customers to minimize the cycle time of their production process at both ends of the supply chain. At the start of the chain, readers want the freshest news, while advertisers want the latest possible closing time for booking ads. At the end of the chain, even a few minutes […]

A common problem encountered in Lean, Six Sigma and TQM implementation is performance deterioration after the completion and handover of a breakthrough improvement. This can happen despite installation of control mechanisms to monitor ongoing performance. In this case study, a financial services company with a national sales network had already begun addressing concerns about its […]

Failed Six Sigma efforts often are attributed to ineffective training of Black Belts and Master Black Belts. But there is a more fundamental issue at hand: the training and experience requested of Black Belts. It may be time to reconsider the typical certification process in order to produce expert Belts and lower the odds of […]

Quality in the total quality management (TQM) method is defined as customer delight. Customers are delighted when their needs are met or exceeded. The needs of the customer are: Product quality Delivery quality Service quality Cost value Improving customer service was the focus of two projects within the deployment of TQM in a mid-sized newspaper […]

A Six Sigma project at a medical transcription company in India for U.S.-based customers first debunked the myth that output quality variability cannot be systematically improved because of the inherent variability of input quality and human skills. Then, encouraged by the results, the company launched a second phase of the quality movement to consolidate learning, […]

A young, rapidly expanding financial services company located in India runs an in-house help desk for responding to customer queries via email or telephone. Help desk response time is tracked using software that calculates the time between registering and closing calls. A project was instituted to train employees in the relevant tools and techniques of […]

A young, rapidly expanding insurance company in India, which was looking for breakthrough improvements in its customer service, decided its No. 1 critical-to-quality objective would be “reducing the turnaround time from an insurance proposal to policy.” Phase 1 of the project achieved dramatic success with turnarounds, reducing time in the central processing division by 80 […]

The work described in this case study was undertaken in a young, rapidly expanding company in the financial services sector with no previous experience with total quality management (TQM). The quality project began with a two-day introductory awareness program covering concepts, cases, implementation strategies and imperatives of TQM. The program was conducted for the senior […]

This Information Technology (IT) case study was done during the implementation of total quality management (TQM) in a financial services company with several hundred computers and computer users in multiple locations throughout India. The results have widespread applicability and in particular are aimed at organizations with large computer networks, IT facilities management companies and customer […]