Quality Teams as Improvement Support Systems (ISS)

Abstract

Remarkable improvements in results achieved during the past decade by some US manufacturing companies show the crucial role played in these companies by quality teams which we can call improvement support systems (ISS). The team infrastructure is modelled here in terms of a three‐stage sequential process with simple measures to evaluate the infrastructure elements. The approach is applied to study six Australian companies on their way to becoming continuous improvement systems. The findings expose different levels and patterns of team infrastructure. The enterprises differ in the context of their training models, the extent of autonomy of the teams as well as in the scope of the employees′ participation on teams. Considers the challenge for management finding the right extent to which monitoring and control should be applied to improvement teams as well as avoiding process stagnation. Suggests that the latter can be realized by extending active participation of employees, systematic generation of new improvement topics (eventually through splitting and continuation of old ones) as well as by continuous upgrading of training. A steady output flow of successfully finished projects can be considered evidence of an active (as opposed to a stagnant) improvement system.