The steel man moves on: How JJ Irani helped Tata Steel transform into a powerhouse

When the team spoke about Dr J J Irani in private, they always referred to him as ‘Doc’. A complete Jamshedpur man, he brought to Tata Steel a refreshingly new way of going about its business. Irani joined the company, when it was still known as Tisco, in 1968. Handpicked by Russi Mody, the then company boss and a larger than life personality, Irani was then with the British Iron and Steel Research Association.

The deep understanding of R&D that Irani possessed was what came in handy at Tata Steel, then faced with enormous challenges of high cost of production and cost structure that needed a makeover. His academic credentials were impeccable and included a masters and a doctorate in metallurgy from the University of Sheffield.

If Mody was the man who travelled often to Mumbai and other parts of the world frequently as the face of the organisation, Irani was a complete Jamshedpur man.

He was only 32 when he joined Tata Steel and quickly earned the reputation of a hard taskmaster and never took no for an answer. Colleagues remember him as someone who knew the “nitty-gritty of steelmaking.” A big feather in his cap was unfurling the modernisation at the Jamshedpur plant, which included automation in the mid-1980s.

“His desire was to take Tata Steel to the 21st century and in every sense, he was the architect and the man who took complete charge of implementation of every project,” says one former colleague, who recalls Irani turning up at the factory on an occasional Sunday to check if everything was on track.

TQM (Total Quality Management) as a concept was still not very well-established in India and Irani brought that to Tata Steel. In an industry that was not heavily dependent on a large workforce, there was not one strike that took place from the time he took charge to when he called it a day in 2001, thirty three years after joining the company.

Over this long stint, Irani honed his people skills to take care of delicate issues. He became so good at it that difficult decisions such as downsizing the workforce or highlighting the importance of performance went through without any significant hurdles. To the staff, he always emphasised the need for Tata Steel to measure itself against international peers, most notably Japan for its high per capita productivity. In many ways, the journey the company has today traversed is a result of that obsession of Irani for it to go global.

Also read: Who is Jamshed J Irani, the veteran who steered Tata Steel through economic liberalisation in the 90s

Also read: Jamshed J Irani, the Steel Man of India, passes away at 85