Kaizen and Quality Circles
Quality circle are typically said to have originated in Japan in the 1960s but others argue that the practice started with the United States Army soon after 1945 with the Japanese then adopted and adapting the concept and its application.
Quality circles are not a panacea for quality improvement but given the right top management commitment, organisation and resourcing they can support continuous quality improvement at shop-floor level. What is a quality circle?
a group of staff who meet regularly to discuss quality related work problems so that they may examine and generate solutions to these. The circle is empowered to promote and bring the quality improvements through to fruition.Thus the adoption of quality circles (quality improvement team) has a social focus. There must be commitment from senior management, unit management and supervision, other staff and of course the circle members. A team of 6-9 people need to participate freely together, to challenge assumptions and existing methods, examine data and explore possibilities. They need to be able to call in expertise and ask for training. The quality circle needs a budget so that members can be responsible for tests and possible pilots. The need a skilled team leader who works as a facilitator of team efforts not a dominator.
The circle needs to have a very good approach to
- analysing the context of the problem and its situation
- defining just exactly what the problem is and the relationship between its component parts.
- how it identifies and verifies that the causes are indeed the causes. These must be understood otherwise solutions as developed may fail to address the real problem.
- Problem definition requires quantitative measurement and often a consensus of qualitative judgement. The impact of the "problem" - if it continues - must be comprehended. Where is it affecting other parts of the "problem system"?
- we need to understand the quality objectives to be achieved and evaluate the resources that can be brought to bear on the problem and possible solutions. Objectives relate to both what must be done and what we would like to do - if only everything else will fit into place.
- in the classical "functional, problem analysis" cycle, solution generation involves conceiving what might be done.
We can typically develop options from DO NOTHING to do everything. The options (MAX/MIN, optimistic/pessimistic, high/low budget etc.) are all models to be tested against objectives and constraints.
- We must recognise also that there are tensions between
- resource constraints and solutions and
- the imagining processes of solution development. These must then be elaborated and grounded in detailed planning and operational implementation.
- such implementation planning and management of the change/operational programme involves scheduling, work allocation, capacity management, communicating, development of information monitoring systems and overall coordination and control of the solution programme.
Such steps are reflected in more detail in the very sound approach to problem analysis and solution development recommended by Charles Kepner and Ben Tregoe in their classic 1965 work (revisited 1981), "the Rational Manager" .
Other techniques may brought into use also by quality circle participants e.g.
- process flow charts
- brainstorming
- cause and effect analysis
- reverse engineering
- value analysis
- pareto analysis
Team members will need training and support to apply these to the context and issue they are experiencing.
Management have to believe in the quality team process, listen to proposals and enable feasible solutions to be progressed through pilot stages and into full operation. Open-mindedness and a desire to avoid blocking is essential. It is a useful philosophy to realise that experimentation enables learning.
BOLA is maintained and developed by Chris Jarvis