Preparing Quality Mindset

Who are quality people? Quality people are those possessing both smart and good characters. How do we implant these characters into human beings who are owners, managers, regulators or employees of a company? The answer has always been a challenge to personality developers, motivators, facilitators, trainers or educationists of any country. The original version of industrial quality circles needs to be slightly remodeled and applied among young students in academia. The approach then is called Students’ Quality Circles (or, SQC in short). By definition, the primary purpose of adopting QCC in an industry is for continuously solving problems in the process and products. And, the secondary purpose of QCC is for self and mutual development of the team members involved in QCC activities. SQC emphasizes more on the self and mutual development as its prime purpose. Problem solving is the secondary purpose in SQC. Industrial QCC is re-engineered as SQC to be adapted in schools among students for their personality development. Adapting Quality Circles approach for students may need some fine tuning in the original form of Quality Control Circles developed five decades back in Japan for employee empowerment and problem solving. The paper is presented by Prof. Dinesh Chapagain as a success story of the Japanese Quality Management in Nepal to the Association of Overseas Technical Scholarship, Japan in 2008.

During the Students’ Quality Circle (SQC) activities in academics, students identify, analyze and solve their problems at school and at home by applying various QC tools in a QC team using QC story of systematic problem solving approach. This paper highlights the content analysis of the secondary information compiled from the proceedings of the recent national and international conventions on students’ quality circles using KJ method. The result depicts that students have developed several characters deemed necessary to build leadership quality. Students participating in Students’ Quality Circle activities have developed eleven types of leadership traits, skills and habits like self confidence, self discipline, interpersonal relations, boarder vision, creativity, social responsibility, communication skills, scientific and analytical skills, time management skills, empathy, and working habits in a team. The experiment of integrating Students’ Quality Circles in the class room as co-curricular activities together with regular curriculum seems very successful. However, some constraints and challenges still exist in implementation of Students’ Quality Circle in a sustainable manner. The paper also tries to highlight cautionary notes which are derived from the lessons learnt while introducing quality circles among young students at educational institutes in Nepal. The paper was presented by Prof. Dinesh P. Chapagain in the11th International Convention on Students’ Quality Circle, Istanbul, Turkey, 2008.

Educational institutes are character building organizations and students are products of these organizations. It is an axiom that only quality people can produce quality products and deliver quality services. It is the responsibility of educational institutes to inculcate quality mindset among students by introducing innovative teaching learning processes. Students’ Quality Circle is one such innovative and successful process. Since last decade, some educational institutes of Asian countries- Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Turkey, are conducting experiments to introduce Students’ Quality Circle in class rooms with the intention of preparing total quality people. During the Students’ Quality Circle (QC) activities in schools, students identify, analyze and solve their problems at school and at home by applying various QC tools in a QC team using QC story of systematic problem solving approach. This paper highlights the content analysis of the secondary information compiled from the proceedings of the recent national and international conventions on students’ quality circles using KJ method. The result depict that students have developed several characters deemed necessary to build leadership quality. Students participating in Students’ Quality Circle activities have developed eleven types of leadership traits, skills and habits like self confidence, self discipline, interpersonal relations, boarder vision, creativity, social responsibility, communication skills, scientific and analytical skills, time management skills, empathy, and working habits in a team. The experiment of integrating Students’ Quality Circles in the class room as co-curricular activities together with regular curriculum seems very successful. However, some constraints and challenges still exist in implementation of Students’ Quality Circle in a sustainable manner. The paper also tries to highlight cautionary notes which are derived from the lessons learnt while introducing quality circles among young students at educational institutes in Nepal. The paper was prepared and presented by Prof. Dinesh P. Chapagain at 4th Asian Network for Quality Congress, Seoul, Korea, 2006.

Only with Quality people Quality products can be produced and quality services can be delivered. Quality people are those with good and smart characters. Educational institutes are character building organization and students are the real products of the organization. The paper tries to describe the new approach of introducing quality circles among young students to develop their leadership personality who can produce quality products and quality services when they grow and work in the future. Since last decade, some educational institutes of Asian countries are conducting experiments to introduce Students’ Quality Circles in class rooms with an intention of preparing total quality people. During the Students’ Quality Circle exercise in schools, young students identify, analyze and solve their problems happening at school and at home in a QC team applying QC story of systematic problem solving and using the QC tools. The Students’ Quality Circle exercise ultimately develops the personality of young students. The analysis of the secondary information compiled from the proceedings of the international conventions on students’ quality circles depicts that students have developed several characters that can be termed as good and smart. The result showed that students have developed characters and skills like self disciplined, self confidence, interpersonal and public relations, empathy, social responsibility, time management skills, scientific and analytical skills, communication skills, creativity and lateral thinking habits, working habits in a team, broader knowledge than bookish knowledge by practicing Students’ Quality Circles at their class rooms. This experiment seems very successful and if applied by all educational institutes, Quality people will be produced in the future who will work as entrepreneurs, managers, or workers to produce quality products and deliver quality services. The paper was prepared and presented by Prof. Dinesh P. Chapagain at 3rd Asian Network for Quality Congress, Singapore, 2006.

Total quality persons are those who has both the character attributes of Goodness and Smartness. Good and smart are not in the opposite continuum of characters but these two characters of a person are two sides of a coin, or one can say that they are complementary to each other. Ten smartness attributes and ten goodness attributes are identified for a person to be a quality person. These characters can be developed when students practice Students’ Quality Circle exercises at their respective schools. A research finding is presented to convince participating young students for practicing the SQC exercise at their classes. The paper was prepared by Dinesh P. Chapagain for the 8th International Convention on Students’ Quality Control Circles, Lucknow, India, 2005.

An experiment is carried out using Kano methodology of quality evaluation to identify the voices of stakeholders of schools to categorize their needs regarding personality traits of a person and identify the gaps in understanding of the required personality traits of the student they have to nurture or produce. In this study, Kano methodology which has been applied widely for products and services is used for the first time to identify the voice of customers on the personality factors. The Five Factor Personality Model is used to describe the traits of a person. Experiment results showed that most of the personality factors namely ‘honesty and reserve in learning’, ‘thoroughness and easy taking at work’, ‘outgoing and friendly personality’, and ‘rational and creative’ are found as the ‘one-dimensional’ or ‘more-is-better’ quality. And, the personality trait ‘aloof’ is found as the ‘indifference’ quality indicating that stakeholders do not care whether a person has this personality or not, whereas, the ‘shy’ is found as the ‘reversible’ quality, meaning, stakeholders do not prefer a person having this personality traits. In addition to this, it is also observed that compared to the guardians, teachers prefer the creative trait more than the rational and logical trait of a person. The paper was prepared on the basis of research conducted by Prof. Dinesh P. Chapagain and was presented the paper at the 6th International Conference of Quality Managers, Tehran, Iran, 2005.

This paper discusses on the question “Can the mindset of a person be changed?” How it can be changed? Does a person possess certain behavioral attribute by nature or can they be nurtured? Researchers have indicated that if proper intervention techniques are followed, the mindset of a person can be changed. Few quality mindsets are identified and presented in the paper like, Respect humanity, Priority Consciousness, Management by Fact, The PDCA Wheel, Recurrence Prevention, Customer Orientation and Next Process is the Customer, Process and Dispersion Control, Quality First. The importance of Students’ Quality Circles is also discussed in the paper. The paper has made humble request to Government of Nepal to promote Students Quality Circle as the most important pro-social interventions at educational institutions, to Educational institutes to implement the practice of Students Quality Circle as an essential extra-curricular activity along with other general programs such as sports, arts and talent programs, and to parents and guardians to motivate their wards to participate in Students Quality Circle activities at their respective schools. The discussion paper was prepared and presented by Prof. Dinesh P. Chapagain in the 3rd Regional Quality Convention at Kathmandu, Nepal in 2004.

TQM Is not a foreign Subject, it is universal and can be applied in all society and culture.TQM in Nepal has a Continuity Problem. It is understood that TQM is rather a psychosocial substance and need to change the attitudes and behavior of the workers. Deskilling the adult workers is really an arduous task. It is identified that scripting TQM values in human brain is necessary and scripting in an adult brain is more difficult. The sustainable TQM in any organization thus need total quality people with TQM values on their mindset. Students’ Quality Circle is an approach to script the TQM values and mindset on a child who has clean board on their brain when they are still young. This paper highlights how the arduous task of scripting on a clean board can be successful if Students’ Quality Circle implemented in schools. The paper was prepared and presented by Prof. Dinesh P. Chapagain at the 7th National Quality Convention, Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2002.