Raghunandan Reddy

Quality circles was introduced by Kaoru Ishikawa also known as “Father of Quality Circle”
 
Quality circle is where small group of employees that meet regularly to plan and carry out process changes to improve quality.
 
In other words, these Quality circles were empowering employees for open communication to identify, analyze and solve problems.
 
Recently, organizations have adopted various techniques to solve the business problems and we always hear that Lean Six Sigma has become outdated. However, we will have to be aware that Lean Six Sigma is still a successful approach and only thing we may experience the difference in the approach. May be not an end to end approach like DMAIC, DFSS rather we keep using the different tools wherever applicable in our projects
 
Similarly, Quality circles. In most of the organization Quality circles have fine tuned the approach to suit their needs.
 
Concept is practiced across industry, but we hear out with different program names.
 
Before we talk about relevance of the concept, Lets understand the characteristics of Quality circle:
 
The problem-solving groups who connect in the Quality circles often have authority to make and implement decisions that affect their area of work.
 
In general, Quality circles follow PDCA cycle for continuous improvement projects
PDCA: The Plan, Do, Check, Act process
 
These are good examples of large organizations using quality circles. Below are some examples on how a typical quality circles can provide benefits to the workplace.
Pointing Out Issues - Employees often know of lots of minor and major issues, but they assume that someone else is working on getting them fixed. When a quality circle meets, they can discuss these types of issues, and take ownership of them to move forward with a positive result. Collaborating on Solutions - One of the biggest examples of how a quality circle can help is that it is the actual employees who are working to come up with solutions to problems. Those who deal with the problems are typically the best people to fix it. Brainstorming Ideas – In a Quality circle meets, everyone will be familiar with the position so they can more easily propose their ideas to each other. Brainstorming ideas is a great technique to arrive at the best possible solution to a problem Quality circle tools:
Quality circle can us any type of the tools to improve their roles. Some of the tools are used to discover the root cause of the issues and how to fix them
Flowcharts Scatter Plots Run Charts Graphical Tools Process Mapping Tools Pareto Charts Fishbone Diagrams  
Example of alternative Quality circle approach:
We know that industry has adopted various quality methodologies and one among them is ACE (Achieving competitive Excellence) from UTC organizations. Where these Quality circles are named as Quality Clinics.
·       Quality clinics is to encourage groups for open communication around quality issues
·       Quality clinics analyze product and process nonconformance, determine root causes and ensure changes to the standard work is in place
·       Real time triage investigations performed
 
Overall Quality circle is used in every organizations but in a different means.
 
 

EMO Index:
EMO index is a tool to measure customer satisfaction like our traditional Net promoter scores (NPS). EMO uses neuroscience technique by analyzing customer experience on the products and services offered.
 
It is a tool which helps to gauge not only the customer satisfaction but also the intensity to which customer is satisfied or dissatisfied. In tradition tools like we NPS, Customer satisfaction score and surveys is used majorly to understand the likelihood that customer can promote the business or how happy the customer is with the product or services.
 
EMO index helps to understand the positive and negative emotions of the customers and the intensity of those emotions.
 
Methodology:
As the name states EMO Index, where “Index” refers to numerical scale to some reference number. In this case EMO uses scale of -100 to +100 to measure customer positive and negative emotions and their intensity which will impact the behavior of the customer to the business.
 
Example:
Lets assume that business is offering Holiday packages to the customers and want to research on the customer experience.
 
Since Holiday is so closely attached to the emotions of the customers and their memories. With the traditional approach we may just understand the customer if they would recommend or not
 
In EMO index, we can classify the customers into different categories which will gauge the intensity of their feelings towards the services offered
 
It can be categorized like;
 
Positive Emotions: Valued, Respected, Happy, Grateful & Appreciated
 
Negative Emotions: Frustrated, Disappointed & Annoyed
 
This would help to realize the real pulse of the customer with intensity of the feelings to the business