Quality Circle - History

History

Quality circles were first established in Japan in 1962; Kaoru Ishikawa has been credited with their creation. The movement in Japan was coordinated by the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE). The first circles were established at the Nippon Wireless and Telegraph Company but then spread to more than 35 other companies in the first year. By 1978 it was claimed that there were more than one million quality circles involving some 10 million Japanese workers. They are now in most East Asian countries; it was recently claimed that there were more than 20 million quality circles in China.

Quality circles have been implemented even in educational sectors in India, and QCFI (Quality Circle Forum of India) is promoting such activities. However this was not successful in the United States, as it (was not properly understood and) turned out to be a fault-finding exercise although some circles do still exist. ref Don Dewar who together with Wayne Ryker and Jeff Beardsley first established them in 1972 at the Lockheed Space Missile Factory in California.

In a structures-fabrication and assembly plant in the south-eastern US, some quality circles (QCs)were established by the management (management-initiated); whereas others were formed based on requests of employees (self-initiated). Based on 47 QCs over a three-year period, research showed that management-initiated QCs have fewer members, solve more work-related QC problems, and solve their problems much faster than self-initiated QCS. However, the effect of QC initiation (management- vs. self-initiated) on problem-solving performance disappears after controlling QC size. A high attendance of QC meetings is related to lower number of projects completed and slow speed of performance in management-initiated QCS QCs with high upper-management support (high attendance of QC meetings) solve significantly more problems than those without. Active QCs had lower rate of problem-solving failure, higher attendance rate at QC meetings, and higher net savings of QC projects than inactive QCs. QC membership tends to decrease over the three-year period. Larger QCs have a better chance of survival than smaller QCs. A significant drop in QC membership is a precursor of QC failure. The sudden decline in QC membership represents the final and irreversible stage of the QC's demise. Attributions of quality circles' problem-solving failure vary across participants of QCs: Management, supporting staff, and QC members.

There are different quality circle tools, namely:

• The Ishikawa or fishbone diagram - which shows hierarchies of causes contributing to a problem
• The Pareto Chart - which analyses different causes by frequency to illustrate the vital cause,
• Process Mapping, Data gathering tools such as Check Sheets and graphical tools such as histograms, frequency diagrams, spot charts and pie charts