ICICI Bank 2008 Annual Report Download - page 50

The Organisational Excellence Group (OEG) was set up in 2002 with the mandate to build and institutionalise quality
across the ICICI Group. OEG has over the years worked towards integrating the local efforts of business units on
a common platform and building a quality strategy and roadmap to meet the growing needs of the Group.
The following have been the major focus areas of OEG:
l Institutionalise quality across the ICICI Group;
l Work with business units to catalyse improvements;
l Create a culture of quality and continual improvement;
l Build knowledge capability in the domain of quality in business groups;
l Develop and implement quality practices for the Bank;
l Cross-pollinate best practices among group companies; and
l Remain at the cutting edge in our global search for quality practices.
ICICI Bank was among the first services sector organisation to undertake enterprise-wide deployment of Five S,
an industrial quality methodology in a services organisation. Today ICICI Bank has more than 1,300 locations
which regularly practice Five S. This simple, yet extremely powerful technique, has helped in building workplace
efficiency and engage teams in local level improvements.
The Bank has developed its own Process Management Framework (PMF) which is built around the foundations
of leadership, process thinking, training, continual improvement and results. The processes of the Bank have
well-defined metrics and performance is tracked through dashboards on an ongoing basis. The leadership of
each business unit continuously reviews existing processes, drives improvements and works towards instilling
process thinking among employees.
The organisation believes that Five S and process management would form the basis of the larger excellence
journey of the Bank and significant efforts continue in instilling and sustaining the practices of Five S and PMF.
The Bank has an improvement engine branded War on Waste (WoW) under which quality techniques such as
Lean and Six Sigma are used for business improvement. These projects are targeted towards resolving chronic
business difficulties and helping to meet the strategic objectives of the business units. In FY 2008, 60 WoW projects
were taken up which delivered significant financial benefits.
ICICI Bank is the first financial services company in the Indian sub-continent to have leveraged “Lean” for operational
excellence. We began the developmental work of applying Toyota principles to a services context as early as
2003 when it was still at its infancy globally. Today we have attained expertise in applying lean principles for
operational excellence. These are accomplished through value stream mapping which identifies inefficiencies in
processes and is followed by project execution vehicles called “Lean Breakthroughs” which focus on delivering
improvements within a period of a week. So far more than 150 lean breakthroughs have been executed in the
Bank and we believe that this will be one of the major improvement vehicles going forward for the ICICI Group.
Over the years, OEG has evaluated and drawn upon quality techniques practiced by world class companies in
the automobiles, hospitality, financial services, heavy engineering and aviation sectors. The focus has been to
adapt these practices at the ICICI Group.
The Bank recently won the award for the best six sigma project at the improvement colloquium organised by the
Indian Statistical Institute. The Bank also won two awards at the Five S Excellence competition organised by the
Confederation of Indian Industry.
Organisational Excellence
Organisational Excellence
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