Ishikawa, K Quality Circles

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Ishikawa, KQuality Circles
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JUSEs book on Quality Circles(Japan Union of
Scientists and Engineers)

• Quality Circles
• a small group of employees
• who do similar work
• voluntarily meeting regularly
• on company time
• with their supervisor as their leader
• learning to identify and analyse work related
  problems
• recommending solutions to their management and,
  where possible, implementing their own solutions.

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The Personnel

• Facilitator
• Involve everyone
• Keep minutes
• Use notice board
• Hold meetings regularly
• Avoid satisficing
• Prepare meeting and activities
• Use seven tools.

• Training for the Quality Circle members
• Pareto analysis
• Cause and effect diagrams
• Stratification
• Check sheets
• Histograms
• Scatter diagrams
• Shewharts control charts and graphs.

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Typical QC Sequence

• Theme
• Planning
• Analysis
• Measures
• Confirmation
• Rules
• Presentation

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7 stages of QC

• Selection of the theme or problem
• Planning the approach
• Analysis
• Determination of the measures to avoid problem
  occurring
• Confirmation that measures were successful
• Determination of rules to be applied to avoid
  recurrence
• Presentation of the QC activities.

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QC

• Benefits
• Savings
• of time lost due to conflicting job instructions
• of time in locating precision tools
• on tin-plate finish problems
• by changing processes
• by changing handling and packaging methods
• lower product defects
• enhanced involvement
• Elimination of oil leaks contaminating materials
• Improved communications/ relationships.

• Failure of QCs
• Group mixed, ie, different disciplines
• Group not allowed to choose problem
• Group had to meet in own time
• Not all information had been collected and/or was
  inaccurate.