Knowledge Management in the Tata Business Excellence Model

 Here's how the Tata group uses KM as a core pillar of their group-wide excellence model

Image from wikimedia commons

The Tata Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate, and one of the biggest and oldest industrial groups in India. The group uses an annual assessment against the TATA Business Excellence Model (TBEM) as an  part of their organisational management practices. They claim that "the Business Excellence Assessment process has been critical in strengthening the strategic and operational capabilities of Tata companies since its inception".

You can find images of the model here. It is akin to the Baldridge Model, and contains the following 7 main elements:

1. Leadership
2. Strategic planning
3. Customer/Market focus
4. Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge Management
5. Workforce focus
6. Process Management
7. Results

These elements are linked to Tata's core values, which include "continuous learning". Where one organisation in the group shows particular strengths, it shares its good practices with the rest of the group to help them improve their own capabilities, and this is as true of Knowledge Management as it is of the other elements. The TATA business excellence site for example quotes workshops where TATA steel has shared good KM practice with the group, and where TATA Metaliks held a peer assist to learn from the KM approaches of other TATA organisations. These and over 600 other best practices are shared in the EDGE Best Practice portal.

Through application of this model, the TATA group has shown a continuous improvement in their TBEM score over the last 25 years which has driven an improved focus on continuous improvement, process orientation, informed decision making, and measured risk taking.

It's great to see KM taking an integral part in such a powerful excellence program.