Quality circle certification

Courtesy: Quality circle certification

There are seven basic quality improvement tools that circles use:

• Cause-and-effect diagrams (sometimes called Ishikawa or “fishbone” diagrams)
• Pareto charts
• Process mapping, data gathering tools such as check sheets
• Graphical tools such as histograms, frequency diagrams, spot charts and pie charts
• Run charts and control charts
• Scatter plots and correlation analysis
• Flowcharts

Student quality circles

Student quality circles work on the original philosophy of total quality management. The idea of SQCs was presented by City Montessori School (CMS) Lucknow India at a conference in Hong Kong in October 1994. It was developed and mentored by two engineers of Indian Railways PC, Bihari and Swami Das, in association with Principal Dr. Kamran of CMS Lucknow India. They were inspired and facilitated by Jagdish Gandhi, who founded CMS after his visit to Japan, where he learned about Kaizen. CMS has continued to conduct international conventions on student quality circles every two years. After seeing its utility, educators from many countries started such circles. The World Council for Total Quality & Excellence in Education was established in 1999 with its Corporate Office in Lucknow and head office in Singapore. It monitors and facilitates student quality circle activities in its member countries, which number more than a dozen. SQC’s are considered to be a co-curricular activity. They have been established in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Mauritius, Iran, UK (Kingston University and started in University of Leicester), and USA. In Nepal, Prof. Dinesh P. Chapagain has been promoting the approach through QUEST-Nepal since 1999. He has written a book entitled A Guide Book on Students’ Quality Circle: An Approach to prepare Total Quality People, which is considered a standard guide to promote SQC’s in academia for students’ personality development.

The Quality Council of India (QCI) was set up as a public private partnership model on the model existing in Netherlands at the time, where although the NAB was not owned by the government, yet it was supported by it and was exceedingly used as a third party agency to improve quality in departments and industry. QCI thus, came to be organized as an independent autonomous body that worked towards assuring quality standards across all spheres of economic and social activities. Key industry associations, i.e. Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), Global Green Building Council (GGBC) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) became the promoters of the organizers and QCI got established under the Societies Registration Act in 1996 to provide accreditation services in various sectors for product, services and persons.

The Council is independent and works under the directions of its Governing Body (GB) having equal representation of government, industry and industry associations. It does not get funded by the government and is a self-sustaining non-profit organization with its own Memorandum of Association (MOA) and Rules. Its current Chairman is Mr. Jaxay Shah and the Executive Head (Secretary General) is Dr Ravi P Singh. Chairman of QCI is nominated by the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India and is a non-executive post.

Post liberalization, India embarked on a process of creating the quality infrastructure in the country which can help Indian products and services easy access to foreign markets in the new order under WTO regime. In the process, an organization was sought to be established which would function as the National Accreditation body (NAB). The responsibility to set up the organization was given to the then Department of Industries (now Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT)).

A committee of relevant ministries, governing bodies, and industry stakeholders was formulated in 1992 to propose suitable recommendations that can take form as an industry body. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion oversaw the process and the final recommendations were submitted to the Union Council of Ministers (Cabinet) in 1996.

Key recommendations included:

• need for establishing an organisation jointly run by the Government of India in conjuncture with relevant industries
• need for this organisation to be self-sustaining

Cabinet Committee accepted these and gave its approval to register a new autonomous body, Quality Council of India, under Societies Registration Act, 1860.