A Motivational Qc Technique Can Become a Powerful Tool to Enhance Productivity, Which Is Key to the Prosperity of Industry in Particular, and the Whole Nation in General.

Enhancing Productivity through People Involvement

-- A Quality Circle Approach at VSP – RINL

Author

Aloke Kumar Dutta

Guide

Dr. D Prabhakar Rao

Enhancing Productivity through People Involvement

-- A Quality Circle Approach at VSP - RINL

Quality Circle -- Genesis

Japan, consequent upon total devastation in Second World War, had requested American experts to help them put their shattered economic and industrial scenario back to rails. The then newly formed Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers was familiar with Dr. W.Edward Deming's work and invited him to Japan in 1950 to advise the Allied occupation government. Accepting JUSE's invitation, Deming addressed Japanese industry's top 50 executives expaining the importance and need of Statistical Quality Control and Quality Management in different organizations of Japan.Deming's ideas became very influential in Japan, and in 1951, JUSE established the annual corporate and individual Deming awards for achievements in quality improvement. A 1954 lecture series in Japan by American quality control expert Dr. J.M. Juran emphasized the participation of Management in implementation of Quality control and gave further impetus to the development of quality control circles. Japanese studied the lecturer’s recommendations and put them into practice on a large scale with an important modification of making even gross root level employees responsible for Quality instead of keeping it in the domain of Quality Control specialists only by involving workers to identify, analyze and solve their work related problems using their talent and creativity. With this intention, Dr Ishikawa, the father of Quality Circle(QC), started the first Quality Control Circle in Japan in 1962.At Toyota QC started in 1969 and had 760 circles by 1976 involving 4000 employees. Almost all of them were blue collar. The company won Deming Prize in 1970. Subsequently QC movement gained momentum and become a part of work life in all the...