From belonging to breakthroughs: Worker-led innovation at Maruti

Bhargava shared that simply asking for suggestions is not enough. Workers must be taught how to turn observations into actionable ideas.

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In the second episode of a five-part series on the podcast Counterpoint, hosted by Satyashri Mohanty, Founding Partner of Vector Consulting Group, R.C. Bhargava, Chairman of Maruti Suzuki, shared how the company tapped into the hidden potential of its shop-floor workers. The series examines what Indian manufacturing must do to become globally competitive — not through government policy, but by transforming how organisations themselves think and operate.In Part 1, Bhargava described how Maruti built a culture of belonging. Workers were treated not as hired hands to be policed, but as members of the company to be trusted. That sense of dignity and voluntary discipline laid the foundation for reliability and commitment.Part 2 carries the narrative forward: once workers feel like partners, how do you systematically convert their knowledge into a flow of continuous improvements and innovations?

“Workers are the ones who actually make the product,” Bhargava noted. “Over time, they understand the problems associated with processes far better than supervisors or managers. But their knowledge remains dormant unless the system allows them to express and use it.”

Also watch:

Can India become the world’s manufacturing hub? | R.C. Bhargava & Satyashri Mohanty | EP 2

Two preconditions for ideas to flow

Bhargava identified two non-negotiable conditions for harnessing shop-floor knowledge:

1. Respect: Workers’ suggestions must be taken seriously and evaluated, not brushed aside.
2. Shared benefit: Employees must believe that improvements to the company will ultimately benefit them too.

Absent these, he warned, programs like quality circles and kaizen risk becoming symbolic — exercises that look good on posters but deliver little real value.This point resonates widely. Across Indian factories, many kaizen boards are filled before audits and forgotten afterwards. The issue is not worker indifference, but a lack of trust that their effort matters.

Training workers to become innovators

Another key insight Bhargava shared was that simply asking for suggestions is not enough. Workers must be taught how to turn observations into actionable ideas.“Making suggestions for improvement requires a certain methodology,” he explained. “We had to teach workers how to solve problems, not just expect it to happen on its own.”

Maruti set up cross-functional teams and small quality circles where workers learned to:

• Identify and prioritise problems
• Analyse root causes
• Develop and test solutions
• Institutionalise successful practices

Managers played a guiding role initially, until workers became adept at problem-solving themselves. Over time, this built confidence and capability across the shop floor.

Adapting Kaizen to Indian realities

Japanese manufacturers institutionalised kaizen decades ago, with workers often staying back after hours to participate. But Bhargava realised this would not work in India, where most employees depended on buses or pooled transport and could not extend their shifts.So Maruti adapted: it created one dedicated hour each month during shift-change for quality circle meetings. This small but important adjustment ensured participation and, more importantly, demonstrated that management valued worker contributions enough to allocate time within paid hours.

This adaptation contrasts sharply with many Indian firms, which attempted to replicate Japanese practices without tailoring them to local realities. The result, as Bhargava put it, was a “minuscule” impact.

Results at scale

The outcomes at Maruti have been striking. In FY 2023–24, the company implemented over one million worker suggestions — its highest ever.These ranged from incremental improvements, like trimming cycle times and reducing minor defects, to creative solutions such as low-cost automation that eliminated bottlenecks. Each idea may be small, but together they compound into significant productivity gains.

“There is never an end to improvement,” Bhargava reflected. “The Japanese word kaizen means everything is capable of being improved. Even after 70 years, Japanese companies are still drawing a competitive advantage from worker suggestions. We, too, have barely scratched the surface.”

Why most Indian firms struggle

During the discussion, Mohanty observed that many Indian firms have experimented with quality circles and kaizenprograms, yet most fizzled out. Bhargava’s explanation was blunt:

“Unless the worker feels he is part of the company, and unless he sees benefit in the company’s growth, the initiative will remain paper-deep.”

This diagnosis explains a widespread failure. Indian companies often adopt management fashions — from lean manufacturing to quality circles — in form but not in spirit. Without the cultural foundation of belonging and trust, these initiatives become compliance rituals rather than engines of competitiveness.

Beyond Maruti: Lessons for Indian manufacturing

The Maruti experience holds lessons far beyond the auto industry:

• Engineering firms often rely on expensive consultants to troubleshoot plant-level issues, overlooking the knowledge of operators who live with the processes daily.
• Textile mills complain about rising costs, while looms and dyeing units run with hidden inefficiencies visible only to workers.
• Pharma plants struggle with compliance and yield loss, yet frontline workers often know where quality risks originate.

In each case, competitiveness is not constrained by lack of technology or capital, but by the failure to channel shop-floor intelligence.

The bigger lesson

From belonging to breakthroughs — that is the arc of Maruti’s story. First, create ownership and voluntary discipline. Then, build systems that channel that ownership into structured problem-solving.

As Bhargava concluded, firms that neglect this lose out on the knowledge and experience of 60–70% of their workforce — a vast reservoir of competitiveness waiting to be tapped.