CREATING AN EFFECTIVE QUALITY CIRCLE

Putting together a cross functional team to solve the problems created in the course of business is a very powerful tool that is often underplayed by business owners. Asides saving an organization the cost of engaging consultants to solve their problems, it also creates an avenue to nurture the learning opportunities in an organization.

Quality Circle (QC) was established in the early 60's in Japan. It is made up of volunteers that are trained to identify work related problems, analyze them and resolve. These individuals are drawn from different departments (though preferably doing similar work) within the organization thereby giving the team a powerful pool of experienced team as an organizational resource. Members can also come from related departments so that they can contribute more from their understanding of the problem.

A good example is having a team of volunteers made up of technicians from the Engineering department, Product Developers, IT analysts, Sales men, Accountants, Controllers and Business Analysts come together as a group that meets like once a week to resolve work related problems like a recurring error made in processing a customer order. The different options brought to bear from the varied expertise will also serve as a very effective tool to manage the problems.

There is no size limitation but it must not be large. The principles followed in establishing a QC are as below:

Ideas in setting up a QC

• Draw members from cross functional groups (preferably people doing similar work)
• Schedule meetings for once a week or once in two weeks at most
• Ensure membership is voluntary
• Make the meetings compulsory
• The QC members should be trained by an expert on the conduct of a QC and problem solving skills
• There should be a pool of problems to be resolved by the QC
• There should be a steering committee for the QC to report to 

In a QC meeting, the following occur:

• Identification of a problem to discuss
• Getting deeper information about the problem from the process owner so that members can understand
• Brainstorming and analyzing the problems using tools like Ishikawa Diagram, Affinity diagram and other brainstorming tools
• Agreeing and making recommendations for implementation
• Sending the recommendation to the relevant approving authority.

The benefits of a QC

• It is a very effective means of solving organization's problems
• It may be more cost effective than outsourcing
• It facilitates organizational learning from understanding the cause of problems and resolving them by staff or the organization.
• It aids the personal development of QC members
• It promotes team work
• It promotes satisfaction of volunteers
• It facilitates continuous improvement

Just to mention a few.

Sample list of pool of problems for a QC

• Reduction of material wastage in a process
• Reduction of processing time (TAT)
• Improvement in customer satisfaction
• Reduction in lead time of a project delivery date
• Resolution of a repetitive audit non conformance
• Resolution of a recurring problem in the production process
• Resolution of a recurring customer complaints

You don't have to wait to have big organization to establish one, you should start today to enjoy the potency of this powerful tool. I will be your collaborator in making this happen for your organization - mail me at titus@profficio.com 

HOW DO YOU HANDLE MISTAKES OF YOUR STAFF?

Above popular business management strategies like Six Sigma and Lean, the way mistakes is handled is an organization has been identified as one of the critical success factors of the organization. When staffs make mistakes, the way it is handled by the immediate boss, management of the organization and policies put in place will largely determines how creative the organization will grow to become.

In a theory advanced by Sutton R in 2001 (In Weird Rules for Creativity), mistakes can be handled in a number of distinct ways. Each of these dimensions has its resultant effect. The choice of an organization would depend on what culture/type of business environment it chooses to create.
The usual practices you will find in most organizations are:

(1) The rewarding of successes
(2) The punishment of failure

This traditional practice usually inhibits creativity.

Here are Sutton's considerations/alternatives which will encourage creativity and innovation.

(1) Reward Success
(2) Reward Failure
(3) Punish In-action.

If your organization desires Creativity and Innovation, it will be nice to pay attention to reviewing your MISTAKE HANDLING POLICY.

It may be the respite you & your organization have been longing for.

What do you think? How can this facilitate innovation/creativity in your organization mates?

R.I.P ELIYAHU GOLDRAT (1947-2011)

The father of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) passed away on June 12 at 67 years of age.

Eliyahu was the popular author of The Goal amongst many other books. TOC grew to become one of the important hinges of Lean principles.

In The Goal he practically narrated how he had to surmount an almost hopeless operational position of his factory when he was posted to turn around a factory in his home town where he spent his childhood. He was an ace performer where he was and the company felt he would rise to the occasion and revive the ailing factory. His discoveries, leanings, success and thought patterns are clearly narrated in a rare style in THE GOAL.

May his soul rest in peace.

If you have not read THE GOAL, please try and do so before the end of the year. You will not regret doing so - you'd be shocked that you rarely have come across his style of explaining concepts. Let me know your opinion when you do.

BEYOND COST REDUCTION

I came across this short piece by Steve Martin and I feel sharing it at this time of the year may just get some of us started. These points align very much to my year plan. I hope they do for you too; somehow.

These difficult economic times have caused many companies to layoff millions of employees, cut back strategic expenditures and do many other things that are probably not in the long-term best interest of their companies.

I have identified Five Generations of Corporate Intellectual Growth:
1. Work (work harder and faster)
2. Sell (increase revenues to support expenses)
3. Cut (reduce and manage expenses)
4. Buy (apply technology, merge & acquire)
5. Think (use strategic innovation - exceed the norm)

Even good companies have regressed into the "Cut" mode with short-term strategies that they felt were the best move to get through the recession. Only time will tell whether or not these were good moves. History tends to say that those companies that "Cut" as their primary strategy will not do as well as those companies that applied thinking strategies to not only

THE 8TH WASTE: UNDER UTILIZATION OF PEOPLE

Recently I did a post of 7 waste of Lean (Check Thread) in an attempt to jump start some Quality Improvement Program in your organization.

The 8th waste which is not originally included in the traditional 7 WASTES OF TPS by Taichi Ohno is equally an interesting one.

The 8th Waste is UNDER UTILIZATION OF PEOPLE: When employees potentials are not leveraged on by the organization, the opportunity cost becomes a direct waste to the bottom line. Other sample of this waste are as follows:

(1) Persons put on the wrong job
(2) Giving position without the requisite authority
(3) Not dealing with perpetual under performance.

e.t.c.

I am sure you can relate with one of those.
Do identify this waste in your business and make necessary corrections.

7 WASTES IN YOUR ORGANIZATION (For non-experts in improvement & Quality Mgt)

You know, it just occured to me that we often use all these quality jargons to scare interested people thinking Quality Management, Six Sigma, Lean and its cohorts (oops!) are all only about statistics and technical stuffs. No! - Truth is, at the core of Lean, SS etc is IMPROVEMENT.. Oh Yes! CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT - so you are definitely a Lean/SS person IF you seek to improve things (certifications dont matter - the key is having the interest backed up with some capability to improve things - oops! sorry my certified mates). So let me let you start from your organization. Very simple exercise: IDENTIFY THE 7 WASTES(muda) below IN YOUR ORGANIZATION, then select a small team of not more than 3-4 people from different departments (thats what is called cross functional team) to brainstorm (thats called Kaizen) on alternative better and cheaper ways of performing the affected processes - Vuala.

(1) OVERPROCESSING:

Adding value to a service/product more that a customer is willing to pay for. e.g. Too much toppings/value added to the customer

(2) TRANSPORTATION:

Unnecessary movement of materials, information or product. e.g. Moving mundane documents to the archive instead of outright destruction. e.g. Transporting materials to offsite warehouse for future use instead of implementing JIT/straight through processing.

(3) MOTION:

Needless movement of people e.g. situating a printer in an unreasonable place or floor warranting people to walk long distances to make copies. e.g. situating a key department in an off route location warranting movement of other departments to them for approvals, processsing etc

(4) WAITING:

Delays between the end of one process and the beginning of the next. e.g. delays in approval, e.g. understaffing/overstafing of functions leading to over efficiency and underperformance of cluster processes

(5) INVENTORY:

Keeping excess stocks or work in progress in excess of what is required. e.g. Keeping excess office consumables. e.g. E-Biz products

(6) DEFECTS:

Services not conforming to what customers request for. e.g. production errors, transactional mistakes

(7) OVERPRODUCTION:

Services/products over what is required for immediate use. e.g. Mass production of cards for customers without request leading to refusal/failure to pick up the cards. e.g.

Bring up issues and chalenges to the forum, make use of the brains we have in our group to improve your daily tasks at work. JOIN over 250 professional on SIX SIGMA NIGERIA on LinkedIn by clicking the blog topic or looking for the Six SIgma Nigeria button on the left pane.

Best of luck.

Your Friend
Titus

10 BUSINESS RESOLUTIONS FOR MEDIUM SCALE ORGANIZATIONS IN 2011

FOREWORD
As 2011 unveils, the lessons learnt in 2010 should be quickly ploughed back into the system to help business organizations optimize performance and recovery.
Mistakes and procrastinations made in the exited year should be out rightly avoided whilst solid plans are made to activate strategies that would ensure desired business stability and growth.
From my experience of the past year, the following resolutions may be found imperative for most medium scale business organizations; especially in Africa and other developing economies. Most organizations will find just a couple of points particularly useful to them. The point is to resolve to do that which is necessary to bring home the desired returns to all the stakeholders - from January to December 2011 and beyond. Yes it is January 2011 already, the sun is out! Let’s make the hays.

TOP 10 BUSINESS RESOLUTIONS

(1) Shift your business focus to the Customers - Any activity that will not benefit the customer may be a waste.

Get customer requirements as an input into developing products and services.
(2) Grow the Stars within your company - Identify them, support them, reward them and give them greater responsibilities
(3) Invest more in training your employees. - Explore: e-learning, self-study, departmental based hour-a-week team training by an employee.
(4) Establish a Quality Management department - to set standards, monitor and assess customer satisfaction. Also to ensure continuous improvement.
(5) Identify your business wastes and eliminate them - concentrate on quick wins (the obvious and easy)
(6) Start rewarding teams too - Encourage teamwork and teaming using positive reinforcements
(7) Employ a Six Sigma Green/Black Belter - to infuse the required level of knowledge and professionalism in preventing& resolving business problems. More importantly, to ensure organizational effectiveness and efficiency.
(8) Invest in Data Analytics; make your business decisions based on VOD (Voice of Data).
(9) Move your back-office to a cheaper location - Departments that do not attend to customer and not the corporate office do not have a business on the expensive high street (Like Victoria Island), explore networking, internet, clouding, VOIP etc. to link your corporate office to your back office located in cheaper/remote parts of the town.
(10) Ensure the 3 level of business strategies is developed for your business. - STRATEGIC, TACTICAL and FUNCTIONAL. Ensure employee KPIs are generated from them.