Abstract
The United States had emerged from the Second World War as the world's acknowledged leader politically, economically, and industrially, with unchallenged quality and productivity. Forty years later, the United States is at risk! Burdened with a $2 trillion national debt, the U.S. is becoming a debtor nation. America's "national productivity" (real gross domestic product per employed person increased only 0.3 percent from 1973 to 1983. The productivity dominance of this country has been outstripped by the Japanese who attribute their success to the quality of their products. The Japanese feel that reliability and quality are a byproduct of the work force and their participative management techniques--particularly, Quality Control Circles or simple quality circles. The quality circle is a small group of relatively autonomous workers from the same shop or work area who meet for an hour or so on a regular basis (usually weekly or biweekly) to attempt to resolve problems related to the work place. The quality circle concept has been so successful in Japan that organizations in the United States are implementing them in record numbers to "duplicate what works well in Japan." This research study is an analysis of a quality circle program that was implemented within a Service Industry in the United States approximately three years ago. The purpose of the analysis was to determine the relative success of quality circles in this country. The researcher used the Delphi Technique as his research tool to determine the long term effect of quality circles on the organization and the employee, particularly, their effect on product quality and the production process. The Delphi Technique is a process used for the controlled elicitation of group opinion by an iterative use of questionnaires with a selective feedback of earlier group responses as an informational input for later reference by group members. Under conditions of uncertainty, where past data is unavailable, expert opinion may be the best source upon which to base estimates of future requirements or to determine future events. The Delphi, however, like most forecasting methods, has limitations that need to be understood in order to produce bonafide results. To resolve these limitations, the researcher applied the results of the Delphi (the mean and interquartile range--that is, the interval containing the middle 50% of the responses), to a Cross-Impact Matrix to determine the interdependence of events brought about by the implementation of a QC program within the Service Industry. An analysis of the Cross-Impact Matrix produced the results which were supported by the research hypothesis.