Quality circles and kaizen teams
Business studies students often come across the concept of quality
circles, or "Kaizen". What does this mean and what are the practicalities
of using Kaizen in a quality management system?
We saw in our revision note on total quality management that a key principle
of quality management is that of "continuous improvement".
Continuous improvement means just what it says. It is a philosohy that encourages
all employees in an organisation so that they perform their tasks a little
better every day. It starts from the assumption that business processes (e.g.
production methods, purchasing, recruitment) canalwaysbe
improved.
So why the use of the...
