Key Success Factors to SGA
The three factors that determine the success of the SGA are motivation, ability and a favorable working environment (Hirota and Veda). It is the responsibility of the management to institute these factors in the organizations. Of the three key elements as described in figure 3.9, motivation and ability are the employee's responsibility. Management holds the responsibility of creating such favorable working environment.
Management's first responsibility is to provide the necessary training to develop a highly capable and motivated workforce. Education enables employees to understand themselves by exploring areas such as human drives, motivation and group dynamics.
Management's second responsibility is to create a favorable work environment by eliminating psychological and physical obstacles. The creation of favorable psychological environment involves changing management style form authoritarian to participative management. Creating a physical environment involves creating a management system that supports the SGA. Examples of the physical environments are team display boards, meeting rooms and setting standards. All these would help to increase the level of enthusiasm of the SGA members because they feel that management is supporting their activities.
Benefits of SGA
Following are some of the major benefits of SGA (Nakajima):
- It created a team based organization comprising of many SGA working on quality improvement projects that is directly supporting the organizational goals and objectives.
- The SGA is empowered to set their own goals and objectives. This has become a motivational factor that helps to instill a strong sense of belonging and responsibility to the organization as well as the team. There was a great sense of achievement especially when they were given the opportunity to share their results with the management.
- Although the SGA worked independently, they liased a great deal with the relevant people from within or other departments whenever they need help to support their quality improvement projects.
- Responsibilities are equally shared between the team members. Practically every members of the team has a designated task. Roles and expectation of the task's champion were clearly defined and the results regularly updated
- Top-down and bottom-up and inter-departmental communications were significantly improved. Any abnormality detected such as defective parts, gross errors and low process yield were feedback immediately to the relevant people for corrective action.
- Morale and enthusiasm of the team members were generally high because SGA were recognized as an important element in the quality improvement activity by top management. High level of commitment and endless support given by the management was a great morale booster to keep the team moving forward.
- The SGA has created an opportunity for the employees to learn and acquire new knowledge and skills. It also allowed them to share their knowledge, skills and experiences with the rest of the member.
- Besides becoming a training and development avenue for the employees, SGA also provide the team members the opportunity to exhibit their hidden talent, creativity and innovative ideas. Many potential leaders, artist, presenters, and trainers were identified during SGA.
SGA has become a source of resources in quality improvement program. Even though the projects undertaken by the SGA resulted in small gains of quality improvement, in the long run it would bring about significant results. Without SGA, even these small projects would be left to the management.
Key Issues in a SGA
Following are some of the key issues faced by most quality improvement teams that need to be address by management (Schmidt, Kiemele and Berdine). Careful planning and a systematic execution of actions are essential to avoid any adverse impact that would affect the team progress and morale in strategic implementation of TPM.
Goals
Goals set must be directly related to customer satisfaction and organizational issues. Each quality improvement teams must know who their internal and external customers are. These teams have to ensure that the goals set satisfy the customer needs.
Total Involvement
The whole organization should be involved in the quality improvement team process. This involves all departments and employees in the organization. One of the main objectives the quality improvement teams is to identify opportunities and find ways to improve. Their performance measurements should be customer focused. They use appropriate tools to implement he improvement process.
Management Support
Following are some of the key ways that management can support the teams:
- Provide training in the use of tools and in the team improvement process
- Address all team recommendations appropriately
- Provide necessary resources
- Guide project selection by providing clear customer focused goals
- Participate on team project as active an member
- Do not interrupt the proceeding of team meetings
- Celebrate small victory
- Set timeline goals
- Coordinate team follow-ups
- Regular review of team or project status
Team size
An ideal size of the team is between five to eight members.
Team Make-up
Members of the team should make of those employees who are directly involved in the process such as the production operators, quality control inspectors and line technicians or more commonly called natural work group. Some organizations have also included employees who are not directly involved in the process such the buyer or planner. They found it very helpful.
