QUALITY CIRCLE

Quality Circles, although surprisingly, had its roots in the U.S.A. in the 1950s, is a topic which evokes widely opposing views. Eminent authorities like Dr Juran have thrown doubt on their effectiveness in the West and warns that there are no short cuts to quality, whereas Dr Ishikawa is best known as a pioneer of the Quality Circle movement in Japan in the early 1960s. 

For Quality Circles to succeed, there must be total commitment from upper management, so that whatever the Circle has suggested will be implemented, or a good reason given why it could not, thereby providing encouragement for the Circle members. Circle members receive no direct financial reward for their improvements. 

In Japan, a typical Circle comprises 5-10 voluntary workers from the same work area, led by a foreperson, a deputy foreperson or a leader from one of the workers. The aims of the Circle are  

Have mutual respect of human relations and help build a happy and contented workshop providing job satisfaction 

The Circle members have been taught and are proficient in statistical quality control covering  

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On a smaller scale, a facility manager may rely on participatory management techniques, such as quality circles or task teams, or may pursue a more traditionally hierarchical approach. Similarly, a division may display entirely different management styles in several different function areas the sales organization may be highly structured, while research and development is more collegial and informal. 

Involvement of all employees in decision making Quality Circles... 

Although the steps involved in normative creativity are likely to follow a fairly standard pattern, many points in the process demand an imaginative input. But because the normative creative process is usually well structured, it is possible, Majaro suggests, to utilize structured idea generation techniques, for example brain-storming sessions. He also lists quality circles as among the structured techniques appropriate for use in this context. 

RODNEY N. HOWARD joined the Space Studies Board as a senior project assistant in 2002. Before joining SSB, most of his vocational life was spent in the health profession—as a pharmacy technologist at Doctor s Hospital in Lanham, Maryland, and as an interim center administrator at the Concentra Medical Center in Jessup, Maryland. During that time, he participated in a number of Quality Circle Initiatives that were designed to improve relations between management and staff. Mr. Howard obtained his B.A. in communications from the University of Baltimore County in 1983. He plans to begin coursework next year for his master s degree in business administration. 

Krause, G., Benzler, J., Reiprich, G., Gorgen, R. 2006. Improvement of a national public health surveillance system through use of a quality circle. Eurosurveillance. Available at http //www. Eurosurveillance.org/View Article.aspx ArticleId=659. 

Close liaison between QA and production will more efficiently blend the reliability of an independent QC operation with the higher initial manufacturing standards of the positively motivated manufacturing operator. This degree of motivation has proved achievable using the well-documented techniques of quality circles and company programmes of continuous improvement i.e. parts of total quality . 

The integrated systems facilitated a quality management philosophy based on quality circles, with direct feedback to production management on the outcome of a process, the quality status and the immediate handling of exceptions or deviations. 

Buch, K., and Raban, A. (1990), Quality Circles How Effective Are They in Improving Employee... 

Griffin, R. W. (1988), Consequences of Quality Circles in an Industrial Setting A Longitudinal Assessment, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 31, pp. 338-358. 

Ingle, S. (1982), How to Avoid Quality Circle Failure in Your Company, Training and Development Journal, Vol. 36, No. 6, pp. 54-59. 

Ledford, G. E., Lawler, E. E., and Mohrman, S. A. (1988), The Quality Circle and Its Variations, in Productivity in Organizations New Perspectives from Industrial and Organizational Psychology, J. P. Campbell and R. J. Campbell, Eds., Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. 

Marks, M. L., Mirvis, P. H., Hacked, E. J., and Grady, J. F. (1986), Employee Participation in a Quality Circle Program Impact on Quality of Work Life, Productivity, and Absenteeism, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 71, pp. 61-69. 

Mohrman, S. A., and NovelU, L. (1985), Beyond Testimonials Learning from a Quality Circles Programme, Journal of Occupational Behavior, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 93-110. 

Rafaeli, A. (1985), Quality Circles and Employee Attitudes, Personnel Psychology, Vol. 38, pp. 603-615. 

Tang, T. L., Tollison, P. S., and Whiteside, H. D. (1991), Managers Attendance and the Effectiveness of Small Work Groups The Case of Quality Circles, Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 131, pp. 335-344. 

Figures 20 and 21 were used at Bridgestone to reduce the variability of the viscosity of the splicing cement used in radial tires. Figure 21 shows the variability of the four operators before and after the quality circle studied the problem.

Figure 21 Distribution Curves for Viscosity Variance before and after Quality Circle Project. Reducing variance (noise) is an excellent quality-improvement technique because the effects of various changes are seen much more clearly for processes with little variability. (From R. Cole, Work, Mobility, and Participation A Comparative Study of American and Japanese Industry. Copyright 1979 The Regents of the University of California. By permission)...

Q, R) model, 1671 QC, see Quality circle QCD (quality, cost, and delivery), 552 QFD, see Quality function deployment QFP (quad flat pack), 424 Q1 teams, see Quality improvement teams Q-leaming, 1780 QLs (query languages), 119 QMS standards, see Quality management systems standards QoS, see Quality of service QR system, see Quick response system QS 9000 standard, 1973 Quad flat pack (QFP), 424 Quadratic programming problems (constrained optimization), 2555, 2562 Quality. See also Rehabihty in advanced planning and scheduling (APS), 2049... 

Unions are most effective where they are most centralized, but many concerns of the workforce are local and would tend to be ignored by a national or international body negotiating broad standards of wages and employment. The need for independent shop-level representation is universal and has been addressed by a variety of mechanisms, union-based (like the British combine, a local coalition of separate union locals), company-based (like quality circles), and independent. My main interest here is in the last option, in particular the works council now being considered for general adoption in the United States. 

Employee involvement programs, such as quality circles and... 

Much has been written recently about the failures of total quality management (TQM), as if it is just another management fad in decline, following in the grand tradition of quality of work life programs, quality circles, and the like. Many TQM efforts have not yielded the expected results [and] there are common causes for those failures [p. v]. 

Working group teams—these could be small groups of skilled workers who share tasks and responsibilities. These can be quality circles also. 

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