QUALITY

CIRCLES

Genesis of Quality Circle

After the ravages of the Second World War, Japan
was frantic to put its industries back on their feet
Dr. Deming, of USA taught the Japanese Statistical
Quality Control Techniques and Dr. Juran, another
American Specialist, delivered a series of lectures on
management of Quality, to different organisations in
Japan
It was thus that in 1962, the first Quality Circle was
launched in Japan under the leadership of Prof.
Ishikawa

DEFINING
QUALITY CIRCLES
Quality Circle is a small informal group of 6 to 12
employees doing similar work who voluntarily meet
together on a regular basis to identify analyse and solve
quality, productivity, cost reduction, safety and other
problems in their work area, leading to improvement in
their performance and enrichment of their work life
It is "a way of capturing the creative and innovative
power that lies within the work force".

They are based on two ideas:

Employees can often make better
suggestions for improving work processes
than management
Employees are motivated by their
participation in making such
improvements.

CONCEPT

The concept of Quality Circle is primarily based upon

recognition of the value of the Employee as a human
being, as someone who willingly activities on his job,
his wisdom, intelligence, experience, attitude and
feelings. It is based upon the human resource
management considered as one of the key factors in
the improvement of product quality & productivity.
Quality Circle concept has three major attributes:

Quality Circle is a form of participation management.

Quality Circle is a problem solving technique.

Structure of
Quality Circles

Top Management
Top management are the
executives at the highest level who
extend all the necessary support to
the activities of Quality Circles and
through their personal presence at
the presentations and other major
activities of Quality Circles make
their support seen by all concerned.

QUALITY CIRCLE MEMBER

To participate actively in the circle meetings.
To contribute ideas for problem solving.
To assist the Leader in data gathering, recordkeeping, interacting with other areas, etc.
To catalyse generation of cohesive team working in
the work area.
To involve in the improvement of the total
performance of the organization.
To follow a code of conduct, criticizing ideas and
not persons, all the time learning positively from
each other and respecting the ideas.

Process of Operation of Quality Circles

PDCA CYCLE

Problem Solving
Techniques
Brain Storming/why-why technique/ 7QC Tools

Brain storming is a technique for generating the greatest

possible number of solutions to a problem for evaluation
and development. It is a group participation techniques.
Brain storming is frequently used by circle to:

Identify the problems

Select one on Priority basis

investigate the cause

To find the ideal and possible solution for its

implementation and presentation of the case study.
The two key aspects of brain storming to be
remembered are participation from all and incubation
period.

Asking questions to themselves based on five Ws and H

i.e. What, Why, When, Where, Who and How would help
flow of ideas.

FISHBONE DIAGRAM

Line graph
A Line Graph indicates the actual performance
over a period of time. On Y axis the figures of
measurement on the basis of data collected are
plotted

CHECK SHEETS

Bar graphs

Histograms

Decision trees

Than
ks