1) QUALITY CIRCLE

A quality circle is a volunteer group composed of workers (or even students),

usually under the leadership of their supervisor (but they can elect a team leader),
who are trained to identify, analyze and solve work-related problems and present
their solutions to management in order to improve the performance of the
organization, and motivate and enrich the work of employees.

Quality circles are an alternative to the dehumanizing concept of the division of

labour, where workers or individuals are treated like robots. They bring back the
concept of craftsmanship, which when operated on an individual basis is
uneconomic, but when used in group form (as is the case with quality circles), it can
be devastatingly powerful and enables the enrichment of the lives of the workers or
students and creates harmony and high performance in the workplace. Typical
topics are improving occupational safety and health, improving product design, and
improvement in the workplace and manufacturing processes.

The term quality circle derives from the concept of PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act)
circles developed by Dr. W. Edwards Deming.

Quality circles are not normally paid a share of the cost benefit of any
improvements but usually a proportion of the savings made is spent on
improvements to the work environment.

They are formal groups. They meet at least once a week on company time and are
trained by competent persons (usually designated as facilitators) who may be
personnel and industrial relations specialists trained in human factors and the basic
skills of problem identification, information gathering and analysis, basic statistics,
and solution generation. Quality circles are generally free to select any topic they
wish (other than those related to salary and terms and conditions of work, as there
are other channels through which these issues are usually considered). Quality
circles have the advantage of continuity; the circle remains intact from project to
project.

There are different quality circle tools, namely:

• The Ishikawa or fishbone diagram - which shows hierarchies of causes

contributing to a problem
• The Pareto Chart - which analyses different causes by frequency to illustrate
the vital cause,
• Process Mapping, Data gathering tools such as Check Sheets and graphical
tools such as histograms, frequency diagrams, spot charts and pie charts

2) BUSINESS PROCESS REENGENEERING :

 Definition: “The fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business
processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary
measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.

Process:

Activity #1: Prepare for Reengineering:

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Planning and Preparation are vital factors for
any activity or event to be successful and reengineering is no exception. Before
attempting reengineering, the question ‘Is BPR necessary?’ should be asked? There
should be a significant need for the process to be reengineered. The justification of
this need marks the beginning of the Preparation activity. This activity begins with
the development of executive consensus on the importance of reengineering and
the link between breakthrough business goals and reengineering projects. Another
important factor to be considered while establishing the strategic goals for the
reengineering effort is to make it your first priority to understand the expectations
of your customers and where your existing process falls short of meeting those
requirements.

Activity #2: Map and Analyze Existing Process:

Before the reengineering team can proceed to redesign the process, they should
understand the existing process. Although some BPR proponents argue against
analyzing the current enterprise, saying that it inhibits the creative process, that
might not always hold true. It varies from case to case. While some organizations
which are in dire straits might attempt a new process design while totally ignoring
the existing processes, most organizations need to map the existing processes first,
analyze and improve on it to design new processes.

Activity #3: Design To-Be process:

The objective of this phase is to produce one or more alternatives to the current
situation, which satisfy the strategic goals of the enterprise. The first step in this
phase is benchmarking. “Benchmarking is the comparing of both the performance
of the organization’s processes and the way those processes is conducted with
those relevant peer organizations to obtain ideas for improvement.” The peer
organizations need not be competitors or even from the same industry. Innovative
practices can be adopted from anywhere, no matter what their source.

Activity #4: Implement Reengineered Process:

The implementation stage is where reengineering efforts meet the most resistance
and hence it is by far the most difficult one. If we expect that the environment
would be conducive to the reengineering effort we are sadly mistaken. We could
expect to face all kinds of opposition all of them determined to kill the effort.
Training programs for the workers are initiated and the plan is executed in full
scale.

Activity #5: Improve Process Continuously:

A process cannot be reengineered overnight. A very vital part in the success of

every reengineering effort lies in improving the reengineered process continuously.
The first step in this activity is monitoring. Two things have to be monitored – the
progress of action and the results. The progress of action is measured by seeing
how much more informed the people feel, how much more commitment the
management shows and how well the change teams are accepted in the broader
perspective of the organization.