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All who it is anticipated, will either Facilitate or Lead, Quality Circles, Quality Control Circles e-Quality Circles,  Gemba Kaizen and Kaizen activities. Those who are facilitators of any of these groups or whose career path may include this activity.

For those who are to be involved in the facilitation of such programmes as Six Sigma Green Belts and Black Belts and those concerned with such Lean Concepts as Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)and 5S/5C should consider the following course Facilitator Training Course .

• Brief history of Quality Circles, their success stories and advantages. Building and maintaining Quality Circles projects, management and reporting
• Develop and reinforce Quality Circles leaders’ skills.
• Roles and Responsibilities of Quality Circles Coordinators / Quality Circles Facilitators to make a Quality Circles a success.
• The role of top management and establishment of the Quality Circles Steering Committee.
• Strengthening and promoting a participative culture.
• Identifying problems and pitfalls regarding a Quality Circles project and guard against them.
• Training and development of Quality Circles Members.
• Understanding the Quality Circles leadership role.
• Group techniques – enhancing group dynamics and human relations.
• Improve Quality Circle leaders’ performance.
• Quality Circle Project selection 
• Use of statistical methods and Quality Circles tools including:
• Brainstorming (thought showering) 
• Project selection matrix
• The project process
• Project selection
• Organising for continuous improvement
• Project scope
• Goals 
• Introduction to Process mapping and Process Analysis
• Process mapping by teams
• Introduction to Cause and Effect Analysis
• Cause and Effect Analysis by teams
• Construction of Pareto diagrams
• Selection of primary causes
• Paired comparisons to rank suspected causes
• Histograms and frequency distribution curves
• basic statistical theory and methods
• Introduction to Data Gathering tools
• Use of Checks sheets to determine the distribution of data
• The PDCA Management control loop
• Remedial Journey
• Selection of possible solutions
• Identification of and Dealing with possible problems caused by solutions
• Overcoming resistance to new ideas
• Construction and use of Project StoryBoards
• Multiskilling skill mapping
• Remedial Journey continued - Foolproofing or Poke Yoke
• Introduction to Presentation skills
• Do's and dont's in presentation techniques
• Use of Visual Aids and -
• Use of graphical techniques for effective presentations
• Preparation of presentations by teams
• Presentations by teams
• Where do  we go from here?
• Final questions and answers,
• General discussion

In 2004 both Toyota and Honda announced that they have both set targets for 100% global participation of their workforce in QC Circle activities with huge incentives (non financial) to do so. 
Also in the Far East, Quality Circles are very popular in Schools which link through the ICSQCC movement initiated by the City Montessori School in Lucknow India.
The Quality Circles movement itself is co-ordinated through the annual ICQCC conventions which are held annually throughout the Far East.
The reason why the West has such a jaundiced view of Quality Cirlces is because it has never understood them in the first place and this as true today as it was 20 years ago. 
This course is to show why organisations which do not have Quality Circles or something very similar, will always underachieve against rivals which do. How to build Quality Circles programmes into an organisation and causing the minimum disruption to existing initiatives. Answers to the cynics, how to get started and how to develop and sustain the improved performance.

Note:
The term Kaizen (which literally means 'improvement'. Gemba Kaizen means 'Workshop Improvement') confuses people into believing that this must be in some way intrinsically different from Quality Circles but it is not. The two are identical in every way. The term was brought to the West by a very perceptive Japanese Professor in the mid 1980s who recognised a market opportunity resulting from the insatiable appetite for all things Japanese at that time. He was also lucky or planned his marketing to coincide with the then reduced popularity of the term Quality Circles in the West. Those organisations that had made unsuccessful attempts to introduce Quality Circles but wanted to make a fresh start eagerly accepted the new term in order to avoid the bad name they had created for Quality Circles.


Benefits of Quality Circles (Gemba Kaizen)

Approximately 80% of work related problems in terms of cost are management solvable which means that 20% are not. Unless the workforce becomes fully involved in the business improvement process it follows that the organisation will always be some 20% at least below optimum performance which could be life threatening. 

Quality Circle activities enable the ultimate benefit from: 

• Total Productive Maintenance - involvement of the workforce in process improvement. 
• Lean manufacture includes all of the following participative concepts -
  
  
• SMED (Single Minute Exchange of Dies) and set up time reduction
• 5S/5C or CANDO.
• Autonomation (JIDOKA) - using single part production methods and the Kanban approach.
• Root Cause Analysis.
• Poke Yoke (mistake proofing).
• Quality related Cost reduction.
• Flexible Work groups.
• Improved overall performance

Book now

Please click below for registration form which may be faxed, emailed or mailed to DHI