In a short ceremony, held at the SNTI Auditorium, Jamshedpur today, Mr. R.A. Venkatachalam, Managing Director, Underwriters Laboratories Incorporated (UL India) certification agency formally presented the ISO/TS 16949 certificate to Mr. B. Muthuraman, Managing Director, Tata Steel.

Present at the occasion were Mr. V.B. Gupta and Mr. Sengupta from UL India and from Tata Steel, Dr. T. Mukherjee, Dy. MD (Steel), Mr H.M. Nerurkar, VP (Flat Products), Mr. U.K Chaturvedi, VP (Long Products) and the Heads and Chiefs of flat products facilities and departments.

The ISO/TS 16949 code is based on the requirements of ISO 9001:2000 Systems and is adopted by major auto companies. The significant advantages of this certification are :-

1) Ensure entry into the highly competitive global automobile OEM market
2) Organisational self discipline
3) Reduction in variability and number of non-conformities
4) Cost saving as the result of less rejects
5) Continuous improvement in quality
6) Consistent Quality due to mandatory usage of FMEA techniques
7) Overall development of business

Addressing the function, Mr. R.A. Venkatachalam, commented that in today’s competitive environment, quality and consistency are taken for granted by customers, the deciding factors are that of price, cost and delivery compliance time. The TS 16949 is a significant milestone in Tata Steel’s quest of focusing on the auto industry. He congratulated Tata Steel on this "achievement of team spirit, endeavour and excellence".

Mr. B. Muthuraman, speaking at the event, commented that as Tata Steel grows and expands in size both within the country and overseas, it has to focus on specifically targeted customer and market segments. In this respect, the Company has taken a conscious decision to focus on the automotive segment. He congratulated the flat products team for earning this certification and stressed that this was an important step towards the better alignment of the organisation’s approach, customer orientation, facilities, knowledge and skills, processes and systems, towards the objective of being a world class supplier of steel to automotive sectors. He elaborated that the final objective of the Company is that of "Creating Value for Customers", better than the competition. Hence, in the auto industry this would imply, reducing weight and petrol consumption, improving process yields and reducing costs.