QUALITY CIRCLES

By
Zaipul Anwar
Business & Advanced Technology Centre,
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
 Overview
 What are Quality Circles?
 Summary of History and Practices
 How Do Quality Circles Work?
 How Can They be Used in an
Organization?
 Example and Activity
 Problems with Quality Circles
 Bibliography
Summary of History and
Practices
 Quality Circles were first seen in the
United States in the 1950’s
 Circles were developed by Dr, Kaoru
Ishikawa in Japan in the 1960’s
 Circles were re-exported to the US
in the early 1970’s
Summary of History and
Practices (continue)
 1980’s brought Total Quality
Management and a reduction in the
use of Quality Circles
 Quality Circles can be a useful tool if
used properly
Summary of History and
Practices (continue)
Inspection (1950’s) Quality Control (1960’s)

Total Quality (1980’s) Quality Assurance (1970’s)

“World Class”
Zero Defect,
Customer Focus, 2000’s ?
Quick Response (1990’s)
What is a Quality Circle?
 Voluntary groups of employees who work on
similar tasks or share an area of responsibility
 They agree to meet on a regular basis to
discuss & solve problems related to work.
 They operate on the principle that employee
participation in decision-making and problem-
solving improves the quality of workThe
reduction, by their efforts, of the countless
number of problems which impede the
effectiveness of their work
 Encourage circles to elect their own leaders
towards the end of the training period
What is a Quality Circle?
(continue)
 Frequency and duration of meetings is set
by the group
 Circle should be autonomous in that it
should select the problems that it wishes to
solve QCCs useful for mutual-self-
development and process control and
improvement within their workshop.
 Utilising basic 7 QC Tools.
 Japanese experience indicated that 95%
of the problems in the workshop can be
solved through 7 QC Tools
The Japanese description of
the effectiveness of a
quality circle is expressed
as:

“It is better for one hundred people to take one step

than for one person to take a hundred’
The World Turned Upside Down!

CONTROL
CUSTOMER FOCUSED /
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
CEO
OPERATORS
SNR MGT
SUPERVISORS
MANAGEMENT
MANAGEMENT

SUPERVISORS SNR MGT

OPERATORS CEO
MASS PRODUCTIVITY / COACH
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT
 How Do Quality Circles
Work?
 All members of a Circle need to receive
training
 Members need to be empowered
 Members need to have the support of
Senior Management
 Characteristics
 Volunteers
 Set Rules and Priorities
 Decisions made by Consensus
 Use of organized approaches to Problem-
Solving
 Formation of Quality
Circles
 Start on the Shop Floor
 Base Circle on Training
 Allow the Circle to Form Itself
 Do The Training Properly
 Support with Information
Required
 Provide Skills and Experience
Requirements of Quality
Circles
 Management Support
 Training
 Recognition System
How Can They be Used in
an Organization?

 Increase Productivity
 Improve Quality
 Boost Employee Morale
The Premise of Quality
Circles
 Much of the trouble originated
from the gulf between
management and shop floor
 Operators were frequently well
aware of the cause of quality
problems and, with modern
standards of education, often
knew how to cure them
 Team Exercise
 Break down into teams of 6-8 people
 Establish a leader and rules for your
Circle
 Have a brainstorming and problem-
solving session to resolve the issue
on the next slide
 Team Exercise
 A Collegiate class on Statistical Analysis
has a total enrollment of 45 people.
 Average attendance is 18 students
 The class consists mainly of lectures
 How can the professor of this class
improve the quality of this course and
increase student involvement?
 The Benefits of Quality
Circles
 A Direct Pay-off (cost/benefits)
 An Operator To Manager Dialogue
(involvement, participation, communication)
 A Manager To Manager Dialogue (awareness)
 An Operator to Operator Dialogue (attitudes)
 A Quality Mindedness (product quality and
reliability, prevention of non-conformance)
 The Personal Development of the Participants
 Reasons for failure of
Quality Circles
 Inadequate Training
 Unsure of Purpose
 Not truly Voluntary
 Lack of Management Interest
 Quality Circles are not really
empowered to make decisions.
 Reasons for failure of
Quality Circles
(continue)
 They have not had enough training
 They have not been given
sufficient autonomy
 The Quality Circles have been
started in isolation and not part of
a wider programme of Company-
wide Continuous Improvement
 Bibliography
 Cole, Robert E. 1999. Managing Quality Fads:
How American Business Learned to Play the
Quality Game. New York, NY: Oxford Press.
 Aubrey, Charles A. 1988. Teamwork: Involving
People in Quality and Productivity Improvement.
Milwaukee, WI: Quality Press.
 Foster, S. Thomas. 2001. Managing Quality: An
Integrative Approach. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall. Author Unknown. 1984. Quality
Circles in the Community College [online].
Available online via
http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed3530
08.html
 Author Unknown. 1994. Kaizen and Quality
Circles [online]. Available online via http://
sol.brunel.ac.uk/~jarvis/bola/quality/circles.html
 QUALITY
IMPROVEMENT
TEAMS
 QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
TEAMS
 Team formed where there is a specific
problem whose solution is unlikely to
reside in a single department and
which is large enough to justify the
establishment of a team to resolve the
problem
 For example (the combined actions of
Production, Testing, Technical
Departments as well as the Supplier
for persistent equipment breakdown)
CHARACTERISTICS OF
QITS
 Set up by management
 Inter-departmental
 Group is usually formed to resolve
a problem identified by others
 Team is usually disbanded once
the problem solved
 BENEFITS OF QITS
 Break Down Inter-Departmental Barriers
 QIT process is part of team building and ownership of the
problem
 Solutions Are More Global In Concept
 optimised for corporate rather than departmental goals
 Improved Communications
 solutions are sought for the corporate good rather than to
shift blame
 Improved Problem Solving
 create a degree of mobile expertise in problem solving
within the company
 THE QIT PROCESS

 Adequate training in appropriate

skills must be provided before the
QIT starts work
 To deny the team the problem-
solving tools it needs to carry out
the task is inviting failure which
will affect not only the issue under
consideration but the credibility of
the QIT process itself
 THE QIT PROCESS

 Identify the Project And Form The

Team
 Define The Problem Accurately
 Identify And Verify Root Causes
 Plan And Implement Corrective Action
 Standardise And Seek Other
Applications
 Conduct A Review Of The Project
 You
hank
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