What moves you at 7:51 am?

I have been working for Bosch Rexroth in Germany since 2019. From the beginning of this year, I have global responsibility as Head of Quality Management (QM) and Health Safety and Environment (HSE). In my current role, I lead a global team of Quality Managers who have responsibility for Quality in our Business Units, Sales Units and locations.

I start my day early at 5 am with planning and organising my work and prioritise my agenda. I also focus on scheduling my priorities based on business and stakeholders requirements as well as spend time on new reading and learning as I enjoy it in morning time. My business meetings start at 8 am and depending on topics, it continues until 6 pm on an average day. Afterwards, in the evening, I spend time working on business related topics and prepare my learning notes focusing on what went well and what needs to be improved. I believe in self-reflecting and short self-feedback loops on a regular basis.

Bosch Rexroth is an international company and market leader known for its Technology and Quality products. We have wide product diversity and a wide customer base worldwide. It is always inspiring for me to learn about international culture and to know how effectively it fulfils its brand promise to the global society with complexity of: structures, systems and processes – which are implemented by employees across the globe. Every day I get fascinated while reviewing and talking to various colleagues and team members which: enhances my confidence in approach and at the same time gives me many new ideas to think through and implement in our organisation. I strongly believe that Quality topics are always culture and context dependent. Hence, in a global organisation like Bosch Rexroth, it is always important to discuss them and create common understanding on its meaning and purpose. This is only possible with constant exchange of information and communication with colleagues and creating a unique direction for Quality. While doing so, I believe we develop an open communication exchange and atmosphere of trust within the organisation.

I joined this company in 1994 at Ahmedabad in India, as an Apprentice Engineer in a production shop. Since then, I have performed various roles in this esteemed organisation such as team member, functional leader, group leader, regional leader, plant manager and central department leader before I became global leader in my current role.

In our company, there are effective processes for leadership development, through which I got various opportunities to develop myself. Additionally, I was also given many chances to widen my experience by taking up additional responsibility in other departments in the organisation. My experiences outside the Quality department helped me to widen my view on Quality and helped me to strengthen my belief – Quality is everyone’s responsibility.

In our company, training and education is very important. Through several web based trainings as well as classroom training and projects, employee get’s an opportunity to learn. Every year, supervisor and employee get time to plan for such development training.

It is my personal belief that it is an individual responsibility to plan for his or her development. There are two possible ways of development for any individual. One, which your organisation provides you through training and development workshops to meet current and future requirements. The second is what a person acquires by investing his extra time and resources to fulfil his or her interest or ‘vision’. I also focused on the second part and invested in myself on a regular basis in line with my ‘vision’.

During the time 2007 to 2008, I got my first international experience to work in Germany. This experience helped me to enhance my understanding of quality to that of global requirements. It enabled me to understand that quality is not merely product quality but has a much larger perspective which encompasses vital other topics as part of any culture. During this time, I got a chance to interact with many friends, teachers and others from whom I developed a kind of model that quality is not only related to product but is outcome of various elements which are contextual and culture oriented. I also learnt that the way quality is perceived and understood in one part of the world could be different in other parts!

Thereafter, during 2010 to 2012 I had an opportunity to lead an international team in region India and ASEAN. Subsequently during 2019 to 2020 I got a role to lead the central quality department in Germany and from this year as Global Head of QM and HSE.

During this international experience, I learnt that our cultural and regional diversity is unique and our employees are our strength in our organisation. Especially in times of pandemic situation, it was highly inspiring to know how our plants have worked uniquely to deliver products to our customers!

Yes, undoubtedly! It is very important for our company to maintain a leading position in the global market. Therefore, it is essential for all of us to focus on Technological Innovation in our products and services. Various training in latest topics such as IoT, Digitalisation, Artificial Intelligence etc. are also provided and available for various levels of employees and they are encouraged to implement them through projects.

While advancing on Technological development, we also focus on ‘Simplicity’ topics and try to find out how we can reduce complexity and make it simple and yet be effective and fast. Additionally, we need to continue strengthening our ‘basics’ and ensure right data quality.

According to me, the biggest challenge is to create the right ‘mindset’ and prepare for future requirements for Quality. We need to lead the change within the organisation, which, on one side strengthens the base for Quality, and on the other side creates leading edge of advanced technology for our customers.

I relate to many of the values of our company culture. Some of them include - Future orientation, bringing employees together for common cause, result focused, open communication and shorter feedback loops, belief in team and empowering with trust, proactive approach, encouraging diversity and care for the environment!

I strongly believe that no one is perfect alone, but together we can be the best team in the world!

We have been already working on projects on latest topics, for instance, Quality 4.0, Data Mining etc. to provide future solutions to serve Customers in a better way. These projects involve cross-functional multi-location teams. We collaborate with experts from other Bosch divisions also to find the best solution for our business and Customers.

In addition to preparing for the future with new technology, I also attempt creating a stronger base for quality and hence I too believe in ‘going back to basics’ and practice shorter feedback loops to check its effectiveness.

In my previous role in India as Quality Manager and then Plant Manager, I focused on working with technicians, engineers and group leaders to develop the right mind set and work on basic topics in a proactive and systematic way. It was a proud moment while our plant was awarded Global Rexroth Quality Award for the first time. After a few years, our team’s efforts on resource conservation - environmental project was selected for the global Bosch HSE award. It was a proud moment for every team member to be recognized globally!

I have been personally associated with the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and have been honoured to be awarded as ‘Fellow’ of ASQ, USA. This association broadened my understanding of quality by interacting with experts from other organisations. I also co-edited six books on Quality and Operational Management with a Professor from a university in India.

During 2019, I changed my role from Plant Manager to Head of Central Quality department in Head Quarters and moved from India to Germany. From this year in 2021, I am working as Global Head of Quality Management. This new change is very interesting for me and currently I am focusing on understanding our stakeholder’s requirements, our organisation and also our diversified products and processes. This inspires me a lot on a daily basis. Together with my global team, we are working to create the next level of Quality in our esteemed organisation.

Journey towards Excellence!

Yes of course! I have so far recommended many friends, relatives and mostly to college students aspiring bright engineering careers. When in India, I was often invited as guest speakers to a couple of Engineering and Management Colleges and I never missed the opportunity introducing Bosch Rexroth!

This depicts the company’s motto being Customer oriented. Our main goal is to help our esteemed Customer through our products and services so that they ‘win’ in their respective market segments.

For this, internally, we need to be constantly working on being faster, leaner and effective to meet Customer requirements.