Quality Circles

SILVER BULLETS AND MARKSMANSHIP

In the mid-2000s, quality circles are almost universally consigned to the dustbin of management techniques. James Zimmerman and Jamie Weiss, writing in Quality, summed the matter up as follows: "Quality and productivity initiatives have come and gone during the past few decades. The list of 'already rans' includes quality circles, statistical process control, total quality management, Baldrige protocol diagnostics, enterprise wide resource planning and lean manufacturing. Most have been sound in theory but inconsistent in implementation, not always delivering on their promises over the long run."

Nilewide Marketing Review said the same thing in similar words: "Management fads should be the curse of the business world—as inevitably as night follows day, the next fad follows the last. Nothing more typifies the disastrous nature of this following so-called excellence than the example of quality circles. They rose to faddish heights in the late 80s presenting the so-called secret of Japanese companies and how American companies such as Lockheed used them to their advantage. Amid all the new consultancies and management articles, everyone ignored the fact Lockheed had abandoned them in 1978 and less than 12% of the original companies still used them."

Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley, writing in their book, Why The New Teams Don't Work, put it most bluntly: "Now, we know what happened to quality circles nationwide—they failed, because they had no power and no one listened to them." Robbins and Finley cite the case of Honeywell which formed 625 quality circles but then, within 18 months, had abandoned all but 620 of them.

Japanese industry obviously embraced and applied quality circles (the idea of an American thinker) and QC has contributed to Japanese current dominance in many sectors, notably in automobiles. If QC became a fad in the U.S. and failed to deliver, implementation was certainly one important reason—as Zimmerman and Weiss pointed out. U.S. adapters of QC may have seen the practice as a silver bullet and did not bother shooting straight. The reason why a succession of other no doubt sensible management techniques have also, seemingly, failed to get traction may be due to a tendency by modern management to embrace mechanical recipes for success without bothering to understand and to internalize them fully and to absorb their spirit.

REQUIREMENTS FOR SUCCESS

The problems of adaptation, which have caused quality circles to be abandoned, are made plain by a look at the conditions two experts think are necessary for the success of quality circles. Ron Basu and J. Nevan Wright, in their book Quality Beyond Six Sigma (another quality management technique) specified seven conditions for successful implementation of quality circles. These are summarized below:

1. Quality circles must be staffed entirely by volunteers.
2. Each participant should be representative of a different functional activity.
3. The problem to be addressed by the QC should be chosen by the circle, not by management, and the choice honored even if it does not visibly lead to a management goal.
4. Management must be supportive of the circle and fund it appropriately even when requests are trivial and the expenditure is difficult to envision as helping toward real solutions.
5. Circle members must receive appropriate training in problem solving.
6. The circle must choose its own leader from within its own members.
7. Management should appoint a manager as the mentor of the team, charged with helping members of the circle achieve their objectives; but this person must not manage the QC.

"Quality circles have been tried in the USA and Europe, often with poor results," Basu and Wright say. "From our combined first-hand experience of quality circles in Australasia, the UK and Europe, South America, Africa, Asia and India, we believe that quality circles will work if [these] rules are applied."

Any experienced manager, contemplating the rules shown above and the typical management environments in which he or she works or has worked in the past will be able to discern quite readily why QC has not taken a firm hold in the U.S. environment. As for the small business owner, he or she may actually be in a very good position to try this approach if it feels natural. An obviously important element of success, confirmed by Basu and Wright, is that QC must be practiced in an environment of trust and empowerment.