Practical experience with quality improvement in small companies
Henning Neerland SINTEF Industrial Management, Trondheim, Norway Thor Kvalfors SINTEF Industrial Management, Trondheim, Norway
Keywords
Kaizen, Problem solving, Process management, Quality management, Small firms
Abstract
Over the past few years, SINTEF Industrial Management has carried out several network projects on quality improvement for small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). The projects have been conducted according to the standardised SINTEF Quality Improvement Programme (QIP). The main activities of the programme are initial education, planning and organisation of company projects, the reactive problem solving process, company-wide work unit analysis and initiation of a continuous improvement process. This paper focuses on the improvement section of the programme, especially the activities related to the Reactive Problem Solving Conference (RPSC). The article gives an argument for using RSPC and problem solving as early as possible in the programme to increase interest in and understanding of the quality improvement process. An example of a problem-solving process in a SME is described, showing how relatively simple activities are used to improve the production process.
Integrated Manufacturing Systems 11/3 [2000] 156±164 # MCB University Press [ISSN 0957-6061]
[ 156 ]
Introduction This article is based on the experiences with a structured quality improvement programme developed at SINTEF Industrial Management. SINTEF Industrial Management has, over a period of five years, carried out six network projects for small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). The projects have been conducted according to the standardised SINTEF Quality Improvement Programme (QIP). We will concentrate on describing the improvement section of the programme, especially the Reactive Problem Solving Conference activities. We have also chosen to include a detailed description on programme objectives, success criteria and the importance of education, organisation, management and documentation of the programme. Activities such as Work Unit Analysis and preparation for Continuous Improvement are briefly described. Education and activities to develop procedures and a documented quality assurance system fall outside the scope of the present paper. Our experience and results of evaluations are included.
The programme in view of the kaizen theory The first quality implementation programme we developed 20 years ago focused on building a formal and documented quality system according to the ISO 9000 standard. Over the years, with the growing recognition of the insufficient parts of the standard, the scope of the programme has shifted from quality system development to continuous improvement. The methodology of the present programme is based on the Japanese theories of continuous improvement as The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emerald-library.com
described in Kaizen (Imai, 1986). The methodology is described in Kvalfors (1998). The order of the main activities of the programme is: . Initial education of management and employees combined with planning and organisation of each company project. . Reactive problem-solving process involving as many as possible of the employees. . Company-wide work unit analysis and initiation of a continuous improvement process. Imai (1986) defines kaizen as ``ongoing improvement involving everyone (in the company)''. As shown in Figure 1, he initially defines the improvement activities of a company as either innovation or maintenance and then places kaizen between them. Figure 1 also illustrates how Imai (1986) defines the roles of the different personnel categories in the improvement process. The most striking observation from Figure 1 is the relatively small role left to the workers or operators in both innovation and improvement. This is different in the SINTEF QIP. The programme was designed for quality development in smaller companies. Many of these companies have limited experience with organised quality improvement work. The quality work already done usually involves the development of some kind of written instructions. Therefore, when our programme starts, it is organised as a part of the system maintenance effort of each individual company, if we define system maintenance as planned actions to prevent the designed production system from deterioration. Placed in the theoretical picture of improvement, our programme would look like Figure 2, with a higher degree of participation of the workers in the quality improvement process. The Work Unit Analysis of the SINTEF QIP aims to regulate and formalise the quality
Henning Neerland and Thor Kvalfors Practical experience with quality improvement in small companies Integrated Manufacturing Systems 11/3 [2000] 156±164
assurance activities of the company, and should therefore be understood as a part of the company's system maintenance.
Our programme and Norwegian industrial participatory development The Norwegian tradition of participatory development is said to have developed from the formal representation of workers in company processes. The start was the agreements that gave union representatives a chair in company boards (Emery and Thorsrud, 1969). Another aspect was Thorsrud's theories on self-governed production groups which to a degree was implemented in some companies (Emery and Thorsrud, 1969; Gustavsen and Hunnius, 1981). Most of these companies later reduced their effort on self-governed groups, but the ideas on participatory development basically remained in the industry. Later, around 1960, the Norwegian Federation of Trade Unions and their counterpart, the Confederation of Norwegian Business and Industry, launched a programme named Industrial Development (ID). Since then, the ID-initiative has fostered projects with co-operative participation of management and the workforce in numerous Norwegian companies. Our programme has not been a part of the ID-initiative, but we have derived an advantage from the companies' experience in conducting cooperative projects aimed at improving productivity and work conditions of the
Figure 1 Japanese perceptions of job functions (Imai, 1986)
Figure 2 Job functions in the SINTEF quality improvement programme
company. Very often, we experience that it is the trade union of the company that finally ratifies or justifies the company's quality improvement effort to the employees, and we often co-operate with local trade union representatives when developing company projects.
The network projects A total of 36 companies participated in our latest network projects. Two of the projects were for sawmills. The other projects included companies from a wide variety of branches. Typical service enterprises were also represented, and, on one occasion, five kindergartens. The projects were carried out in co-operation with regional and branchrelated consultants, who, with support from SINTEF Industrial Management, did most of the instructor activities in the companies. Thus, as a by-result, new competence was transferred to local consultants in the regions involved.
Project objectives
The main objective of the quality improvement projects is to establish a durable quality development process and culture in which the management and the workforce actively participate and cooperate. The main objective is achieved through three sub-objectives: 1 Develop new knowledge about and new attitudes to quality in the entire company (i.e. including both the management and the workforce). 2 Establish and accomplish new work processes for improvement and change. 3 Develop and implement a new and company-adjusted quality system. The objectives are ambitious and difficult to achieve during the two-year project period. It is our experience that if the company does not continue the quality development immediately after the first project is ended, the new knowledge and work procedures will deteriorate rapidly. Another problem is that the long-term objectives tend to be overshadowed by the achievement of the short-term results of the first quality campaign.
Success criteria
Concerning the possibilities to succeed with a quality improvement programme, it is our experience that SMEs have both advantages and disadvantages compared to larger companies. It is an advantage that the SMEs have quite transparent organisations and that communication across the hierarchy is
[ 157 ]
Henning Neerland and Thor Kvalfors Practical experience with quality improvement in small companies Integrated Manufacturing Systems 11/3 [2000] 156±164
[ 158 ]
simple, with well-known routes of internal dissemination. The company culture is usually consistent, for instance, on areas like ``common language''. The usually limited availability of resources is a disadvantage. One of the reasons that it is difficult to establish a development of the company according to more general development trends and changing requirements, is that many SMEs have a very marginal organisational structure, where managers and administrative personnel have a wide variety of work tasks and responsibilities. They usually also have less knowledge on management, control and systematisation than their colleagues in larger companies. Management motivation and commitment are, of course, a major factor to succeed in our programme, as they are in any change programme. The evaluation of the six network programmes we have conducted so far, has given us a list of other factors or criteria for success: . An SME must have an external instructor or guide if the company does not have the knowledge, internal resources or time to do the work on their own. An extremely important task for the instructor is that of motivator and supervisor. . Especially management, but also operators and other employees must go through a thorough initial education and training programme on quality in general, quality improvement and problem solving. . Company management (especially ``the boss'') must participate in the entire programme, in order to create confidence (to project objectives) within the workforce. If not, the workforce easily develops attitudes like: ``Why bother if the boss doesn't?''. . The internal project co-ordinator or instructor must be given enough time to co-ordinate. A typical situation is that the appointed internal instructor is not relieved of his (or her) day-to-day work tasks. The work as a project co-ordinator will typically occupy 20 per cent to 30 per cent of the available work hours. Consequently, resources must be made available to take over some of the usual workload of the co-ordinator. . Plans must be made and followed! . The company must ensure continuity of the quality improvement programme, also after the initial project. Other projects (for instance, the installation of new equipment) appearing towards the end of the quality project tended to automatically occupy resources and
.
.
attention. This is a very difficult situation for which we do not have good solutions, but it would help if the companies at the start of the improvement project are aware of, and discuss, disturbances that are bound to appear. Training documentation and manuals must be available to all employees at the beginning of the project. In retrospective, we should generally have taken more time for instructing management and internal instructors in the use and updating of the routines of the training manual. It is equally important that the companies follow the progression of the manual and use it actively, so that the methods and tools can be tried out in a guided and controlled way. The company must develop its ability to utilise the new knowledge and new work methodology. This is the most important success criterion, and the most difficult one to achieve; there is no single recipe for success. What is most important is that the management shows durable and sustaining attitudes towards improvement and change, and that they allow training on new work procedures and new improvement techniques. Training opens up new thoughts that may lead to further development of techniques, work methods and procedures.
Organisation, management and documentation
Each company project is organised around a management group (quality management team). The size of the group must be related to the size of the company and its organisational structure. The executive manager of the company should be the leader of the management group. The middle management of the company, responsible for conducting the internal project, are also natural members of the management group. In addition, one or more persons representing the ``workers'' should be included. In Norway, it is natural to include the elected trade union representatives in the project management group. In addition to a management group, a programme co-ordinator must be appointed, who should act as the connection between the management group and the project activities in the company. The co-ordinator should also be a member of the group. The management group has an important role in the project, and they should start with defining a project mandate indicating work tasks. The work tasks of the management group usually include:
Henning Neerland and Thor Kvalfors Practical experience with quality improvement in small companies
.
Integrated Manufacturing Systems 11/3 [2000] 156±164
.
. .
. . . .
. .
Development of project objectives and project milestones. Making a priority list of activities. Planning. Appoint and start work teams. Control activity proceedings. Assist work teams when necessary. Control of results and milestones. Connection between the project and external instructor. Control of the need for resources. Making necessary resources available.
The corresponding responsibilities of the co-ordinator should be: . Assist the management group in concretising work tasks. . Make sure that results of teamwork are documented, systematised and assist teams in making results known throughout the company. . Participate in planning of the internal activities together with the external instructor. . Ensure that meetings are held and assist in making minutes of the meetings. It is very important that the co-ordinator, within the project, does not assume the natural responsibilities of the management group and the company manager, even if the manager would find this convenient. It is an important signal to employees that the manager demonstrates participation and responsibilities in the project. It is likewise very important that everyone in the management group participates actively in project meetings. This is usually a principle that the members of the management group agree on at the start of the project, but experience shows that production objectives and other relatively short-term objectives often overrule the well-intended initial principles. Once absenteeism from meetings appears, it tends to become a habit. Such a habit is quickly sensed by the rest of the team members, and the result may well be that personnel in work teams follow the example of their leaders and lose interest in project activities and objectives. Another weak point for the participating companies is commitment to plans. As mentioned before, SMEs very often have a bad attitude towards formalised planning. Of course, some companies have well-developed planning routines, but most companies have an extremely informal attitude towards planning on other matters than the usual sales and production planning. They need training in and acceptance of the following basic planning principles: . What has to be done? . Who is going to do it?
. . . .
When shall it be done? Where are we today? What have we achieved? Were our achievements according to plans?
Most SMEs do not need large and complex planning systems, but the work tasks are often unusual, especially as regards requirements for documentation of actions and results. Consequently, some planning is necessary. Our experience with the planning process is summarised in the following points: . The companies that make a master plan, usually follow it, and meet the main milestones. . The production and use of detailed plans vary heavily from company to company. Some companies are able to develop and use detailed plans, while others do not find such plans useful. Usually, the latter are not organised in their planning. . Some companies are organised in providing work teams with all available information, both documents and plans, while others are not. . Companies that neglect preparations and the formal part of the project work do not seem to be able to achieve the same benefit of the development process as the companies that are consequent both on preparation and project management. . An obvious reason for neglecting formal project management is the fact that both the project manager and the co-ordinator are under constant pressure from day-to-day activities of production and sales. Quote: ``We have a company to run''. . Active involvement of an external instructor often eases the time pressure on company management, but external help is costly and often above the budget of many small companies!
Theoretical reflection on the quality improvement process Our improvement process is based on a set of activities generally accepted as important. The perception of the importance of these activities has not changed much over the years. According to Harrington (1987), the following list of important activities represents the joint experiences of US companies such as AT&T, Avon, Corning Glass, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Polaroid and 3M: 1 Obtain top-management commitment. 2 Establish an improvement steering council. 3 Obtain total management participation.
[ 159 ]
Henning Neerland and Thor Kvalfors Practical experience with quality improvement in small companies Integrated Manufacturing Systems 11/3 [2000] 156±164
4 5 6 7 8
Obtain individual involvement. Establish system improvement teams. Develop supplier involvement activities. Establish a quality assurance activity. Develop and implement short-range improvement plans and a long-range improvement strategy. 9 Establish a recognition system. The list also shows the usual succession of the activities. We will not discuss the three first points of the list. In our programme they are achieved through the initial planning process of our programme described in previous sections on success criteria and organisation, management and documentation. The rest of the points in the US list do, on the other hand, differ from the SINTEF QIP. A similar list shows the following successive main activities in our programme: 1 Reactive problem solving conferences (RPSC). 2 Work unit analysis (WUA). 3 Implementation of quality improvement activities. 4 Registration and systemisation of improvement possibilities. 5 Organising for continuous quality improvement. The RPSC-activity is related to the activities ``obtain individual involvement'', ``establish system improvement teams'' and ``establish a recognition system'' in the USA. The WUAactivity is related to the activity ``Establish a quality assurance activity''. The three last activities of the SINTEF QIP are related to the activity ``develop and implement shortrange improvement plans and a long-range improvement strategy''. Consequently, one might argue that the SINTEF QIP covers most parts of a US conception of best practice in an improvement programme. The interesting part of this comparison is, however, the differences in the succession of the activities. In earlier versions of our programme, we had placed WUA just after the initial planning and education of the programme. The objective of the WUA is to straighten out and streamline the interface between work units, thereby providing a foundation for the documentation of the formal quality assurance system of the company. However, the WUA and the consequent documentation work are demanding and time-consuming tasks. We learned from experience that the activity ``taxed'' the energy and motivation of the company considerably. Aune (1996) stresses the importance of quality awareness and motivation, naming, among others, visualisation of non-quality costs, quality
[ 160 ]
campaigns, and recognition of efforts, as possible activities for increasing awareness. Our solution was to create a motivation and quality awareness activity, the RPSC, as the first improvement activity of the programme and to combine that with a training in problem solving. The chosen methodology is basically the same as the quality circle approach, where groups of workers are encouraged to solve self-defined problems in their own workplace. The RPSC have been a success in all companies participating in our example project, also in those companies that did not entirely reach their objectives within the project. It provided us with good examples of low-cost improvements that were obtained relatively easily. The drawback of the approach might be that the participants obtained a considerable number of improvements too easily and too fast. This, perhaps at first sight, counter-intuitive conclusion (to regard improvements as a drawback) will be discussed in more detail in a subsequent section.
The activities in QIP The RPSC are the first concrete improvement activity in the programme. The main objective of the RPSCs is to start the learning process among employees by focusing on problem areas that are well-known by and familiar to participants. Another objective is to give participants training and experience in working together in teams. Simple problem-solving methods are included in the training. The philosophy is that systematic, team-based problem solving is best learned through working with own-experienced and well-known day-to-day problems of the actual company. WUA are started first after the conclusion of a number of qualityimprovement activities initiated by the RPSCs. WUA is a continuation and further training in teamwork and problem solving. RPSCs are based on training and problem solving within a work unit, while WUA goes a step further and focuses on interaction and co-operation between work units. The WUA leads to new improvement proposals, and eventually new quality-improvement activities. Each company conducts many improvement activities during the project, but there are always improvement possibilities that do not require immediate action. It is therefore important that these suggestions are registered, systemised and given a priority. Simultaneously, in order to establish the possibility to do improvement
Henning Neerland and Thor Kvalfors Practical experience with quality improvement in small companies
work, also, after the project period, the company must define the organisational means for a continuous improvement process.
Integrated Manufacturing Systems 11/3 [2000] 156±164
Reactive problem-solving conferences
RPSCs are the first of the improvement activities. A main objective is to establish trust in the fact that it is possible to do something with deviations or problems. A major way to achieving that is by uncovering small or larger deviations or ``disturbing conditions'' within a work unit, and then to deal with them successively. Disturbing conditions are often deviations not caused by the fact that someone has done something wrong, but rather conditions that are there and have grown to become part of the daily life so that no one any longer regards them as deviations. The RPSC-activities start with dividing the company into a suitable number of work units. A work unit is a group of employees within a certain process, a process step or a business function. In an SME, one usually ends up with five to ten work units. The number of people in a work unit might vary from two to six. With more than six persons in a work unit, one should consider splitting the unit into two equal groups. In SMEs it is not unusual to consider the administration as one work unit, although the work tasks within the unit are widely spread and cover several processes. Two or three people usually do all the tasks. The number of work units in larger manufacturing companies will typically be up to 25 units. Larger service companies tend to have even more units. Each RPSC is accomplished in two meetings. The duration of each meeting is approximately three hours. An RSPC should include a limited number of related work units. The external instructor of the programme must conduct the first RPSC, in order to give a practical demonstration of the proceedings to the internal instructors. The internal instructors conduct the rest of the RPSCs. The method of giving a demonstration in the beginning, and then letting the other groups try on their own, has proven successful. The feedback from participants says that it gives confidence to try on their own (with a bit of success). Some disturbances usually occur. The most common is insufficient documentation of proceedings and decisions. The agenda of the first meeting of the RPSC is usually: 1 Collection of improvement possibilities (or problems). 2 Arrange the possibilities (by importance). 3 Choose one or two problems for further analysis during the next meeting.
4 Make a plan of future actions according to a provided draft document. Good planning of the meetings is most important. It is not uncommon that valuable time is lost because the meeting room is not reserved, the room lacks flip-over sheets and pens, etc. During the first meeting, brainstorming is usually used to bring forth the improvement suggestions. During the brainstorming process, the instructor must give intensive attention to the important rules of the process: no criticism and no evaluating of suggestions during the process. Rules should be repeated at intervals. If not, the process tends to end in fruitless discussions or loose talk. After the brainstorming sequence, the suggestions are evaluated and are given a priority by the use of nominal group technique (NGT). NGT is a technique similar to brainstorming. The difference is only that the generation of ideas is done individually and by written suggestions. The procedure of NGT is: 1 Written idea generation. No discussions. 2 Registration of the ideas one after another. 3 Elimination of ideas equal to earlier proposals. Discussion. 4 Individual ranking of ideas. 5 Ranking by the group. 6 Discussion and choice of ideas. In our experience, the great advantage of NGT is that the suggestions are made individually and confidently, so that individuals with position, power or verbal gifts are not able to dominate the idea-generation process. We have also experienced good results by dividing the process into four to six main areas and then conduct a brainstorming process on each area successively. The participants find this an easier way to come up with improvement possibilities. During the first meeting and in the beginning of the improvement process it is wise to try focusing on problems that are not too complex and improvement suggestions that do not include large investments. This is a learning process for the company, and one should not let large investments stop the process. Example. As an example of the process, we will use a RPSC in a production group of a small sawmill. The group was organised as a work unit, and it was their responsibility to describe problems, choose a problem, find and implement a solution. The focus was improvement of the process of sawing and dividing lumber into planks. The objective of the first meeting was to describe problems and make a priority list of the same. Table I
[ 161 ]
Henning Neerland and Thor Kvalfors Practical experience with quality improvement in small companies Integrated Manufacturing Systems 11/3 [2000] 156±164
shows that the opinion of the work unit was that bad climate/bad air was their most important process problem, i.e. their largest problem was bad working conditions owing to high temperature and saw dust floating in the air. It was the opinion of the work unit that bad working conditions led to quality problems. The objective of the second meeting of the RPSC was to do cause-action analysis of the improvement possibility with the highest priority from the first meeting. The group chose to use the NGT for the analysis also in the second meeting. They might have decided to use other problem-solving techniques, but they chose NGT, perhaps because they had grown familiar with the technique! Bad ventilation in the production hall scored highest in the analysis (Table II), and they suggested to solve the problem by installing improved air suction from selected places in the production hall (Table III). As a result of the problem-solving process, a group consisting of two people from the work unit and one from maintenance were given the responsibility to implement the chosen solution. They installed a new fan with a number of suction points, and the result was a substantial improvement of the air quality in the production hall. Annual savings as a result of reduction of production system down time owing to minor faults were calculated to be approximately £30,000. In addition, the problem with priority two on
Table I Result of the first meeting of the RPSC Operation
Problem/improvement possibility
Points
Priority
Sawing and dividing
1 Bent boards 2 Bad root reduction 3 Bad vision ± do not see the top 4 Saw blade problem 5 Knots/damages 6 Bent timber 7 Bad climate/bad air 8 Bad edging of small timber
20 10
2 3
2 24 3
1
Table II Result of the probable cause analysis Probable cause
[ 162 ]
Points Priority
1 Bad air ventilation 2 Bad ventilation in the grinding room 3 Evaporation from saws
14 8 8
8 Evaporation from hydraulic system 9 Heat from compressor 10 Evaporation from timber sorting
11 12 5
1
2
Table III Action priorities Actions 1 Air suction from grinding operation 2 Air suction from saws 3 Air suction from hydraulic system 4 Air suction from the roof 5 Air suction from compressor 6 Fresh air blower in saw and grinding rooms
Points Priority 11 13 15 13 17
2 1
6
their list, bent board, more or less disappeared because better sight made it easier to guide long timber logs. In the 30 companies where we collected our statistics, the RPSCs documented some 150 improvement suggestions per company. During the project period, each company actually implemented on average approximately 50 of those suggestions. The average time used on RPSCs was 300 work hours per company, while an average of 350 work hours was spent on the implementation of the two first improvement possibilities. The 30 companies had 40 employees on average.
Work unit analysis We will just briefly comment on the WUA. In the QIP approach, the company is divided into a number of work units before the first RPSC is started. A work unit has internal suppliers and customers. Work units require that products are delivered according to certain rules or requirements, and they are likewise met with certain rules or requirements from the internal customer represented by the next work unit in the production chain. This is the traditional internal supplier/customer analysis. The objective of the RPSCs is to find concrete problems or improvement possibilities. The focus of the WUA is to establish rules and standards for the delivery of products and services between internal work units, after defining how these units should co-operate and interact. An important part of the analysis is to identify the ability, or the lack of it, to meet requirements or expectations among units. The identification of lack of ability leads to another list of improvement suggestions that must be implemented in order to create a smooth and undisturbed flow of products and services. One has to add here that there are usually more supplier/customer relationships than there are work units. The reason is that an internal customer may be a supplier to an
Henning Neerland and Thor Kvalfors Practical experience with quality improvement in small companies Integrated Manufacturing Systems 11/3 [2000] 156±164
earlier supplier. An example is a sales and order department that supplies the production department with production prognoses and production plans, while at the same time the production department supplies the sales and order department with products and basic figures for production prognoses. Some of the issues that are bound to come up during the analysis may be of a rather sensitive nature, especially when it comes to the ``supplier's'' fulfilment of ``customer'' expectations. This may boil down to how an individual does his or her day-today work. One might expect conflicts, and some conflicts have occurred, but the discussion in most companies has been good and strictly to the matter. As a rule, the different participants have shown a great understanding for both minor and large problems of their colleagues. This indicates that most SMEs have a good esprit de corps. There have been some trade-offs, of course, of a nature like: ``I'll do it your way if you'll allow me some slack in delivery times!''. As for results, the achievement of internal requirements takes time. The evaluation shows that 30 per cent of the requirements was achieved during the two-year project period.
Preparation for continuous improvement As mentioned before, the previous improvement activities resulted in a large amount of improvement suggestions in the different participating companies. Some of the improvement possibilities are quite simple with an easy and obvious solution. Normally one does not have to establish a formal improvement project when the task is to arrange better illumination on a workstation, or make a simple checklist for the cleaning of some machinery, etc. It is sufficient to assign the task to one or two people together with a time limit. It seems that approximately half of all the suggestions were of such a type. More work-intensive proposals, perhaps demanding investments, must be treated in a different way. It is important to ensure that all suggestions undergo a responsible treatment by the company management. This is the point where management shows that they are serious about the improvement process. More precisely, they must establish a system for continuous improvement. The system in our programme consists of the following elements: . Responsible treatment of improvement suggestions according to a procedure.
.
.
Suggestions should be accepted or rejected according to established criteria. When accepted, the key elements of the implementation procedure are organising and planning, developing a solution, accepting the solution and, finally, implementing and controlling it. Registration and categorisation of suggestions that have to wait in line for implementation. An important criteria for categorisation will usually be the amount of investments required. Establishment of an organisation to ensure that improvement is a regular activity also after the end of the improvement project. An SME might have as many as 100 improvement proposals that have not undergone any further action during the two-year project period. Most companies in our project seek to ensure continuity by establishing two to three improvement teams that work with improvements in parallel with their other activities.
Closing remarks We have placed the methodology of our programme within the theory of the kaizen approach and the Norwegian tradition of participatory development. We have also shown how our approach relates to leading US companies' perception of crucial activities in a QIP. Accordingly, it is the philosophy of our programme that all employees shall participate in the improvement process to learn new methods of working and interacting with colleagues, to the benefit of themselves and for their company. We have also aimed to give each participant a new way to experience the dayto-day work through focusing on education and stimulation of concrete actions where problems are defined and solved. In order to justify our sequence of activities, it is argued that it is important to include activities promoting quality awareness and motivation as early as possible in the development process. The major weaknesses of our approach are: . participants may be overwhelmed by the amount of improvement possibilities found initially; and . it may be relatively easy to find solutions to the problems they discover. The learning process may be damaged because many improvements can be implemented without use of a systematic approach, which may tempt participants to start improvement activities that are not thoroughly analysed. In some cases, more detailed analysis showed that some improvement suggestions were
[ 163 ]
Henning Neerland and Thor Kvalfors Practical experience with quality improvement in small companies Integrated Manufacturing Systems 11/3 [2000] 156±164
linked together and should have been solved together. In other words, experience confirms the importance of the systematic problemsolving process, whether the improvement problem seems trivial or not! It is praiseworthy that employees showed the initiative to solve problems that in many cases had bothered them for a long period of time.
References
Aune, A. (1996), Kvalitetsstyrte bedrifter (QualityManaged Companies), ad Notam Gyldendal, Oslo (in Norwegian).
[ 164 ]
Emery, E.F. and Thorsrud, E. (1969), Form and Content in Industrial Democracy, Van Gorcum, Assen. Gustavsen, B. and Hunnius, G. (1981), New Patterns of Work Reform, Norwegian University Press, Oslo. Harrington, H.J. (1987), The Improvement Process, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Imai, M. (1986), Kaizen, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Kvalfors, T. (1998), Kvalitetsutvikling i bedrifter (Quality Development in Enterprises), Cappelen Akademisk Forlag, Oslo (in Norwegian).
