Akarsh Jayaprakash

19BBS0067

MGT2001 Introduction to Innovation, IP

management and Entrepreneurship

Digital Assignment II

Slot-F2-TF2

Student Name: Akarsh Jayaprakash

Student ID: 19BBS0067
Date: 17th November 202I

MGT2001 Introduction to Innovation, IP management and

Entrepreneurship
 Akarsh Jayaprakash
19BBS0067

Honda Cars
Honda was found by Soichiro Honda and Takeo Fujisawa on 24th September 1948
in Hamamatsu, Japan. Honda's automotive manufacturing ambitions can be traced
back to 1963, with the Honda T360, a kei car truck built for the Japanese market.
Honda cars have been serving the world for 73 years now and is one of the best
brands in the market.

Quality Control

Honda aims for 120% product quality

Honda says that if it makes 99% of the products perfect, that would be seem like a
pretty good record. However, the customers who become the owners of the
remaining 1% surely consider their product 100% defective.

It is unacceptable that even one person in a thousand of ten thousand receive a

defective product, hence Honda aims for 120% product quality.

Honda’s Quality Cycle

MGT2001 Introduction to Innovation, IP management and

Entrepreneurship
 Akarsh Jayaprakash
19BBS0067

Honda builds the processes that creates new levels of enhanced qualities by
adhering to following policies.

1. Assuring quality through drawings

2. Assuring quality through production processes
3. Assuring part quality through supplier audits
4. Assuring long-term reliability through aggressive durability testing

These are some of the quality measures taken by Honda. But we can see a dip in
the quality in the recent years. In the earlier days, whenever someone said reliable
car brand Honda was one of the top options along with Toyota but now it is
somewhere in the middle of the table. This statement is the proof that the
company’s quality has been declining and company needs to adopt newer
methods in order to gain the crown of reliability or if worst comes to worst survive
in the market. If they don’t work on the quality soon the next thing, we know is
Toyota pulling out of some countries like Ford did for India.

Some of the vital factors that could be seen are-

1. The company has way too many regional models, options and derivatives of
each car, this increases the cost of production which in turn decreases the
profit of the company and hence leaving company with less amount to
spend on research and development.
2. The lack of proper management in the company is also one of the major
factors that has contributed to decreased qualities of the car.

MGT2001 Introduction to Innovation, IP management and

Entrepreneurship
 Akarsh Jayaprakash
19BBS0067
3. The third reason that I feel is the competition, the competition is bringing
out cars with a lot of features at lower costs due to which Honda also
decreased the quality to make the cars cheaper.
4. One of the other reasons that have been seen/experienced by people in
India are high cost of spare parts due to low availability, which leads to
people going for third party parts in the car which degrades the quality of
car further.

Honda seems to be a follower of Japanese quality control effort, Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa.
Like Dr. Ishikawa’s concept of company-wide quality is in particular is seen to be
followed by Honda. Also, the fact that the entire staff of Honda that is from CEO to
a front-line worker are involved in the production of cars, which is one of the salient
features of Honda. Other features that have been followed by Honda are Improved
product quality; Honda has been a brand that comes to mind when someone says
reliable and quality cars for decades, inter-departmental barriers in Honda don’t
exist because everyone in the company is devoted to performing their tasks and
this can only be implemented by proper communication, company’s reputation is
another feature in the list which is something that is not something Honda isn’t
aware of. Continuous development has been taking place since the first day to
ensure higher quality products.

Above mentioned are some of the reasons for the downfall of Honda and luckily
for Honda, the CEO Takahiro Hachigo has openly has realized that they have to
start working to fix the issues. Thus, the first step, that is admitting the wrong doing
has been accepted.

The following steps could be performed to revive the company to its riches.

MGT2001 Introduction to Innovation, IP management and

Entrepreneurship
 Akarsh Jayaprakash
19BBS0067
1. The major issue for the company is the presence of too many regional
models which leads in increased costs, the costs of manufacturing the cars
doesn’t earn much profit thus the first and foremost thing that could be
done is to stop offering variants, rather create one-models that could serve
the entire population. This includes stoppage of the practices of offering
colors, model types. This would save up a lot of money for the company to
invest into other areas like research and development.
2. Higher Investment in research and development has been very successful for
Honda Motorcycle, so there is no reason why that won’t be the case for
Honda Cars as well.
3. The Research and development should not be just reserved for just the
department and all the other departments should be able to contribute as
well.
4. Since the company can now allocate the money to a better use, Honda
should open its door to Open Innovation which will allow ideas and
developed ideas from field experts, technology enthusiasts and what not.
5. Since the CEO has accepted that corporate reforms are necessary, it should
be put into place as soon as possible so as to change the mindset from profit
to the shareholders of the company to actually building better and more
reliable products for the users of the brand.
6. Once proper research and development has been done which might lead to
better and reliable products, Honda wouldn’t have to cut costs in order to
compete with the other brands and it could justify the prices by the higher
quality as compared to the other brands. Honda could then stand by their
cars for comparatively higher prices when compared to other cars.
7. After Research and development, the money could be spent on market
research, this should include what the customers are looking for, what are
the recent trends that have been becoming famous like what features or the

MGT2001 Introduction to Innovation, IP management and

Entrepreneurship
 Akarsh Jayaprakash
19BBS0067
segment of the car. Only with proper market research can a company know
what a user truly desires.
8. Only making new and better products will not be enough. Providing the
users with proper service and maintenance are just as important.
9. Providing good finance and assurance policies like better insurance policies
can also attract a lot of people back to the company that could help in the
rise of the company again.

Road Map

MGT2001 Introduction to Innovation, IP management and

Entrepreneurship
 Akarsh Jayaprakash
19BBS0067

Tata Nano
Tata Motors Limited is an Indian multinational automotive manufacturing
company, headquartered in the city of Mumbai, India which is part of Tata Group.
The company produces passenger cars, trucks, vans, coaches, buses, luxury
cars, sports cars, construction equipment.

The Tata Nano is a compact city car that was manufactured and marketed by Indian
automaker Tata Motors over a single generation, primarily in India, as an
inexpensive rear-engined hatchback intended to appeal to current riders of
motorcycles and scooters — with a launch price of ₹1,00,000 on 10 January 2008.

Tata Believes With quality comes efficiency

At Tata, it ensures focus on quality control across all the processes. The quality
management system (QMS) uses tools for continual improvement, defect
prevention and reduction of variation and waste in the supply chain.

Tata Motors have adopted a 'process approach' that focuses on outputs and
customer satisfaction first; thus, we work back into the process to see what is being
done to enhance customer satisfaction. This system is firmly rooted in the plan-do-
check-act (PDCA) philosophy of Total Quality Management (TQM).

MGT2001 Introduction to Innovation, IP management and

Entrepreneurship
 Akarsh Jayaprakash
19BBS0067
Tata Knowledge Management cycle

Tata is one of the biggest and the oldest car manufacturing companies in India, and
has been working to provide better cars to people. Tata in general is itself a mark of
quality and has its own quality control measures but it has been a follower of Dr.
Edward Deming’s principles. Tata has been following all the fourteen obligations of
top management. Tata believes in establishing long term profitability and hence
when many companies have just started making electrical cars, Tata has already
begun shifting to the electrical vehicles. Tata continuously learns from all the
previous mistakes and is quick at adopting new philosophies for developing better

MGT2001 Introduction to Innovation, IP management and

Entrepreneurship
 Akarsh Jayaprakash
19BBS0067
products. Tata is mark of quality in the country so its clear that Tata focuses more
on quality than quantity. Tata is known to provide regular training sessions for all
the employees to improve the performance and staying up to date with the latest
technology. Tata has clearly defined the management’s commitment to continue
improving the quality and productivity. Tata doesn’t believe in any sorts of barriers
and have been known to remove all the barriers to quality product, thus
departments and staff have been working with a systematic communication with
each other and this has also helped in developing and maintaining relations among
people. Tata wants the people to be free of any sorts of fears so that they could
work properly without the fear of being fired, thus improving quality of work from
all the workers.

While company released the car with the pure intentions of helping people that
were to bring modern and safe mobility to the people, helping middle class and
lower sections of the society from two-wheelers to four-wheeler. It was considered
as a great invention as it aimed at bringing the cost of a four-wheeler to 1 Lakh
rupees. But still it was not well accepted by the society, and thus it couldn’t become
the game changer as planned by Mr. Ratan Tata. The following are the major
reasons due to which it was not accepted-

1. Even though the plan was to launch a cheap vehicle to help the people, the
lack of market research made it difficult for them to reach to their target
audience, as that portion of the population was not ready to buy a car, or
were not familiar with the car-buying process or experience.
2. The car faced many technical issues like faulty wiring which led to many cars
catching fire putting various lives in danger. It was so bad that in some cases
in caught fire on the way from showroom to the house of people.

MGT2001 Introduction to Innovation, IP management and

Entrepreneurship
 Akarsh Jayaprakash
19BBS0067
3. Tata is known for its sturdy build quality, but this was not the case with Nano,
to make the car cheap the company used low quality materials and thus the
car was very poorly built.
4. Due to this issue Nano was scored zero in the crash test on the contrary the
claimed rating was four, the car didn’t even meet the basic UN safety
requirements. There were also no airbags in the car.
5. Another issue that surfaced was that Nano gained a reputation of a “Poor
man’s car”, which caused many people to stay away from the vehicle and
even a second car was given a better status than Nano.

Tata Nano was a nice car and still it didn’t get enough attention from the people
because of the reasons we saw above, but the dream of the company of making
that car a success can still work by following some of the below ways:

1. Better market research policies are one of the first steps that need to be
taken in order to revive the project. The major issue was that the company
was not able to bridge the group which could lead to people finally
accepting the car, the main reason was that the target audience consisted of
people who have never bought a car and are still confused if that is the
correct thing to do.
2. After Market research is done the next main issue is safety, the car had a very
poor build quality, which is not characteristic of Tata, who have been known
for sturdy design. So, remaking the car with a better build quality might help
to increase the sales of the newly revamped Nano.
3. Accidents are one of the leading costs of deaths in the world and this can’t
just be prevented by better build quality, the car needs to have many basic
security features like Airbags.

MGT2001 Introduction to Innovation, IP management and

Entrepreneurship
 Akarsh Jayaprakash
19BBS0067
4. We all are aware of the fact that Tata owns some world class companies like
Jaguar and Land Rover so those resources could be used to make the design
less boxy, because exterior of the car is the first thing that is visible to a
person and first impression is the last impression.
5. The above-mentioned approach has worked for many current Tata cars like
Tiago, Nexon and Altroz. I can’t see any reason why Nano can’t be successful.
6. The increased waiting time has also been one of the issues that were faced
by the people, that can be improved by doing various things like, changing
structure of organization in order to maintain maximum efficiency.
7. For the security the car should at least pass the basic test by UN. This can be
done by introducing some airbags, adding power steering.
8. Low power engine also made it difficult to drive on slopes, this can be
improved by using at least 800 cc engine as used by the rival Alto 800.
9. The above-mentioned ways will increase the price, but that is a step in a right
direction. A step towards safety, A step towards better driving and finally a
step towards a good name of company. This will also take away the title
“poor man’s car”.

Road Map

MGT2001 Introduction to Innovation, IP management and

Entrepreneurship