How to Conduct a Quality Circle Activity
Quality circle activities delve into problems affecting quality control. Volunteer teams formulate solutions to problems by gathering data, investigating, analyzing, creating an action plan, implementing it, and evaluating the results of that plan. Once the team members map out and complete the activity, their suggestions are given to management for rechecking and re-evaluation against management goals, priorities, and ISO standards for quality. Quality circles are usually found in Japanese-managed companies where consensus drives project management forward. A quality circle works best with a facilitator such as a senior employee who coordinates the work.
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Instructions
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Poster board helps you remember. List the project name, goal, reasons for the project, a group name, and a volunteer member listing so that all members are on the same page regarding the project's requirements. Use a poster board and calendar to hang the project particulars in plain view so that members may refer to it often. Make sure that all members have their own notebooks for note-taking and reference.
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Create an activity schedule. This can be in text form, but preferably in calendar format. One-month intervals work best, although weekly calendars are acceptable if the quality circle will be meeting more than once each week. Sections should include a listing of who is volunteering for each section of the project. Hunter-gatherers research and compile data, while another facet of the team analyzes and investigates the data. The entire team will compose an action plan, deem how to implement it, and then evaluate the results. Title the sections as research, compilation, analysis, investigation, action plan, implementation and evaluation, with relevant volunteer names and notes written under each section.
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Assess this simplified sample problem to help you conduct a quality circle activity for your issue: The quality circle is investigating how to best reduce scrap at a ball bearing factory. The team gathers initially to research data on the amount of scrap produced from the manufacturing process. The quality circle team works with management to decide on specific goals against which to measure the data. This will let both groups ascertain where the factory needs to adjust its manufacturing processes to reduce scrap. The team gathers data and assesses it against the goals of the project. Depending on the data assessment and how it meshes with the project goals, the team will decide how to further investigate a reduction in scrap, then analyze the results again against project goals so that the company can prevent future excess scrap and its consequent monetary loss.
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Develop a quality circle action plan based on the team's analysis and work with management to implement it. A company-wide issue is often an interdepartmental issue.
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Work with management to evaluate the quality circle activity, standardizing it to meet ISO criteria if required. Note future subjects that may arise from the solutions the quality circle suggests.
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Tips & Warnings
Meet often if possible, depending on the goals and guidelines of the project.
Choose volunteers from the floor of the factory if the quality circle is in a factory. They are the eyes and the ears of what is going on in the trenches and often have greater insight than management.
Quality circles suggest action plans to prevent further problems, because it is much easier and less expensive to prevent than to fix a problem.
Don't fill in for slacking volunteers. Either find a way to engage them or find new volunteers.
Don't segregate the quality circle from management. Use what you have and whom you know to find the necessary information to make educated suggestions viable.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit stamp with -quality- word image by air from Fotolia.com daily chores reminder poster image by robert mobley from Fotolia.com
