Quality Circle

“A Quality Circle is a volunteer group composed of employees who meet to discuss workplace improvement, and make presentations to management with their ideas, especially relating to quality of output in order to improve the performance of the organization, and motivate and enrich the work of employees. The ideal size of a quality circle should be from eight to ten members.”

Well, the definition really looks good and impressive. Let’s go through another definition.

A small group of employees doing similar or related work who meet regularly to identify, analyze, and solve product-quality and production problems and to improve general operations. The circle is a relatively autonomous unit (ideally about ten workers), usually led by a supervisor or a senior worker and organized as a work unit."

-- Joel E. Ross and William C. Ross

After Second World War, Japan was the first country who started working on a very serious node on Quality. Quality circles were among the first Japanese management practices, which plays a major role in the success of most of the Japanese companies like Toyota. I have covered the success of Japan and meaning of Quality in some of my previous blogs.

When visiting Japan in the 1970s, American managers noticed groups of workers meeting to address the quality problems. The American managers recognized this as a practice that could easily be copied and returned home to institute it in their own companies. Quality circles (QCs) took off in the United States as a Japanese management mania peaked. The movement boomed in early 1980s as most large companies introduced this practice in United States.

But the bloom was soon off the rose, however, as firms fond themselves devoting a lot of time and attention to QCs and receiving relatively little in return. There were a number of reasons for the lack of results. Employees were only encouraged to work on quality problems during their meetings (usually about an hour a week) and spent the rest of their week just “doing their job”. Supervisors were often not involved in the program and were indifferent, if not downright hostile, to it. Perhaps the biggest problem was that QCs were “just a program”, cut off from and often opposed to the way the organization usually worked. Managers preached about the importance of quality work during their QC events, but when crunch time came, their attitude was, in the words of one QC member,” If it doesn’t smoke, ship it!” that means management’s goal was to get the product out the door as soon as possible. Not surprisingly, companies started to disband their QC programs, which were soon dismissed as just another passing fad. In the context of current interest in total quality, many managers look back on QCs as essentially a false start on the road to quality. It is interesting in this light to note that many Japanese companies still operate QCs and that they are seen as a critical part of the total quality control (TQC) effort in these companies.

According to the Union of Japanese Scientist and Engineers, 5.5 million workers take part in 750,000 circles. Managers as well as frontline employees are involved, and the circles are considered as normal part of working life, rather than a program. In fact, QCs often work to achieve the objectives set in the Kaizen process, (will define it further) which puts them in the mainstream of TQC activity. Some organizations provide monetary incentives for suggestions provided by circles, and employees in some firms make dozens of suggestions per year. It appears that the mistake made in the United States introduction of quality circles was not in introducing them, but in not taking them seriously.

Now coming back to Kaizen.

Kaizen (pronounced ki-zen) strategy has been called “the single most important concept in Japanese management – the key to Japanese competitive success”. It is the cumulative effect of hundreds or thousands of small improvements that creates dramatic change in performance. In the Kaizen approach, as practiced in Japan, financial investment is minimal; everyone participates in the process; and improvements results from the know-how the experience of workers.

According to Japanese manufacturing expert, Shigeo Shingo

“Since improvement demands new procedures, a certain amount of difficulty will be encountered. Initially, new methods will be difficult. Old procedures, however, are easy just because they are familiar. As long as it is unfamiliar, even an improved procedure will be more difficult and will take more time than the old procedure. Thus no improvement shows its true worth right away. 99 percent of all improvement plans would vanish without a trace if they were to be abandoned after only a brief trial.”

Managers need systematic approach to drive continuous improvement programs. Some organizations follow some standard and popular approaches, while other develops unique approaches to meet their own needs and cultures.

A seven steps technique for accelerated continuous improvement.

1. Focus and pinpoint. Focus is about getting everyone on the same page with regard to goals and Pinpoint is about specifying in measurable terms what is expected.
2. Communicate. Communication should be done company-wide by publicizing key result areas, the vision, and the mission statements so that employees can answer the questions: what is being improved? Why is it important to the customer, to the company and to me? What has the management team committed to do to help? And what specifically company asking me to do? (I have covered the Vision. Mission and Policies in my last blog. Have you gone through it?)
3. Translate and link. Teams should translate the company-wide objectives into their own language and environment.
4. Create a management action plan. Management should create a plan with specific actions to reach a goal, including metrics to measure success. Each team member should asked to know what tasks need to be done, why they are important, and what the team role is in getting them done.
5. Improve process. Use the techniques like Fish bone, Pareto, QCs, Six Sigma. Management should know the difference between the experience and expertise.
6. Measure progress and provide feedback. Feedback should be visual, frequent, simple and specific. The baseline performance should be shown for comparison. The past, current period, and goals should be posted.
7. Reinforce behaviors and celebrate results. Learning leads to positive results by encouraging teams to celebrations to answer the questions: what did you do? Why is it important for the customer, the company, and the team? How did the team accomplish this achievement?

Products are better and cheaper to produce when everyone, at every stage in development, is responsible for the quality of their work. Actually, Quality is like buying oats. If you want nice, fresh, clean oats, then you must pay a fair price. However, if you can be satisfied with oats that have already been through the horse --- That comes a little cheaper!

Every time, I am saying that Quality is everybody’s job,’ and that’s true. But it must start with management. Management’s job is to lead people toward a goal. And Quality is the only goal that matters because Quality is planned, designed and built in – not inspected in. Quality is never improved unless it is a part of your personality.

-- Sanat Sharma