MUMBAI, February 12: The Golden Peacock National Quality awards for 1997 were given away by the Maharashtra governor, P C Alexander, at the Eighth World Congress on Total Quality here on Thursday. The awardees include Larsen & Toubro, Mathura Refinery, Bharti Telecom, Vysya Bank, Bax Global, and CPTI-SAIL among others.Speaking on the occasion, chairman of the World Quality Council, Madhav Mehra, highlighted the importance of empowering workers at the lower levels to achieve total quality. "The focus has to shift from product standards to systems standards," he said.The need for quality control has primarily been fuelled by one, the information explosion and two, rising customer expectations, he said. Quality control is all about identifying customer needs and matching them with design and production processes, according to Mehra. The Golden Peacock awards were instituted in February 1991 by the Institute of Directors to encourage total quality in the service and manufacturing sectors. The panel ofjudges is headed by N Vittal, chairman of the Public Enterprise Selection Board.
