Why did the United States fail to implement QCC, but Six Fit Horses was so popular?

Quality Circle (QCC) in Japan is a bottom-up quality improvement method. In the early days of implementing TQC in Japan, Ishikawa realized that the education and training of QCC principles should be extended to all employees of the company, not just managers and engineers. Therefore, grass-roots supervisors and employees must participate in QCC activities, because no one is as closely related to various business activities as they are, and they have all the facts and information that senior managers rely on for decision-making. Only by successfully mobilizing all employees to participate in QC activities can senior managers achieve effective management.

There is evidence that the United States began to apply the concept of Japanese QCC in the 1960s, but it was widely called 1973 in the United States. At that time, a group of managers from Lockheed's missile and aerospace department made a field trip to QCC in Japan and introduced the company. Since then, many other companies, such as Westinghouse Electric Company, General Electric Company, Ford Company, etc. , has carried out QCC or similar team problem-solving activities. However, after five or six years of implementation in the United States, QCC has been labeled as "following the fashion". Most of the disappointment with QCC is because American management doesn't know how to implement and manage them correctly. But as a starting point, it paved the way for the development of American project team model (six sigma).

"Spontaneity" is the core of QCC, which is very different from the improvement centered on project team in the west. TQM in the west, Six Sigma later, and "Quality First" (LTQ) promoted by Xerox are all top-down, because they are more in line with American culture. In QCC, people decide whether to participate voluntarily and are not forced by any upper management. The western method is directly linked with financial indicators, and the financial indicators of the company are decomposed into various functional departments to form improvement projects. QCC and Six Sigma have the following differences in quality improvement process:

1)QCC only cares about local problems, while six sigma solves control problems related to the whole organization.

2)QCC adopts the bottom-up method, while Six-country Hummer adopts the top-down and project-based management method.

3)QCC allows participants to freely choose where to improve the quality, and Six Sigma must start with specific projects arranged by superiors.

4)QCC can continue to exist with the continuation of the process, and the six Hummer projects will be dissolved once they are over.

5)QCC does not need to formally report to the senior manager, but Six Sigma must report to the superior regularly.

Among the quality personnel of American enterprises, there is an informal joke about Japanese QCC: a Japanese company has been engaged in QCC for many years, and the workshop staff really can't figure out what to do. A worker found that toilet paper was used quickly in the toilet, and every time he went to the toilet, he found it was used up. So I decided to do a QCC project on toilet paper. His research found that toilet paper was used quickly because it was taken away. It was taken away by others soon after it was replaced. So he put forward his own suggestion: change a small roll of movable toilet paper into a large roll, fix it with an iron shell outside and lock it with a lock. QCC project has been completed.

In fact, from this joke, we can see that many Americans disagree with QCC, and it is difficult for them to accept this model, so QCC is doomed to fail in the United States. Americans are more willing to believe in theoretical statistical tools, which are reliable and more convincing. Even the American quality community has raised objections to such tools as 5S, arguing that there is a lack of rigorous mathematical analysis.

On the contrary, in Japan, it is these small QCC projects that constitute a huge improvement movement in Japan. A trickle makes a river. All roads lead to Rome. Gandhi of India once said: Whether the method is effective depends on whether the final result proves the legitimacy of the means. It seems that don't stick to this method and that method, what is applicable is the best.

Source: Zhang Chi Management Consulting Company.