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 1950s
Circles were developed by Dr, Kaoru
Ishikawa in Japan in the 1960s
Circles were re-exported to the US
in the early 1970s

Summary of History and

Practices (continue)

1980s 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 (1950s)

Quality Control (1960s)

Total Quality (1980s)

Quality Assurance (1970s)

World Class
Zero Defect,
Customer Focus,
Quick Response (1990s)

2000s ?

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 problemsolving 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!

CUSTOMER FOCUSED /
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

CONTROL

CEO
SNR MGT
MANAGEMENT

OPERATORS
SUPERVISORS
MANAGEMENT

SUPERVISORS

SNR MGT

OPERATORS

CEO

MASS PRODUCTIVITY /
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT

COACH

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 ProblemSolving

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 problemsolving 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 Companywide 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/ed35300
8.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

Solutions Are More Global In Concept

optimised for corporate rather than departmental goals

Improved Communications

QIT process is part of team building and ownership of the

problem

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 problemsolving 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

u
o
Y
k
n
a
h
T