Quality Management Tools

Quality Management Tools

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a very powerful creative thinking and idea generating technique. It is a decision-making process used by groups to help generate a large number of ideas through an interactive process. The main goals of this technique are to help break out of habit-bound thinking and to produce a set of ideas where there is more than one choice when making a decision.

Guidelines

Brainstorming is useful for attacking specific rather than general problems and where a collection of good, fresh, new ideas, rather than judgment or decision analysis, are needed. (Harris, 2002) There are some basic guidelines that should be adhered to for the most successful results.

Brainstorming can take place either individually or in a group. Four to seven members in a group are thought to be ideal. After the group has been assembled, the leader should make sure that all members understand the objective of the brainstorming session. Once this has been established, encouragement for active participation from all members and development of a high-energy and enthusiastic environment should be the agenda. To keep the mental flow going, the group should not stop to discuss, criticize, or compliment the ideas as they are presented. Because this is a creative thinking technique, encouragement for far-fetched ideas and thinking "outside the box" should be an important goal. This also allows others in the group to expand and build on the ideas of the group members. It is crucial to record all of the ideas exactly as they are presented and generate as long of a list as possible.

With the free association phase of brainstorming, the ideas are usually generated very rapidly at first, but after a while, the ideas will begin to slow. The group should avoid stopping when ideas begin to slow. To help this from happening, there are two techniques that will help get the process going again. The first technique is lateral thinking, which is also known as random stimulation. Random stimulation is most useful if an individual or group are stuck and have not been able to progress on the brainstorming session. It is a way of jump-starting idea generation by making use of a random piece of information, such as a word taken from a dictionary or book. This word is used to act as a trigger to change the thought patterns and stimulate the flow of ideas when a mental block occurs.

The second technique is vertical thinking. With vertical thinking, the group will build on the ideas already generated. To do this, there is a checklist to aid in generating new ideas. The checklist for adding new ideas is as follows: adapt, modify, magnify, substitute, rearrange, and combine. (University of Michigan)

After all of the ideas have been presented, the group members should discuss the ideas to assure that there is mutual understanding. Duplicates should be eliminated at this time and from here, the group selects the ideas that best meets the objectives.

Check Sheet

A Check Sheet is a data-gathering and interpretation tool. Check sheets are used to distinguishing between fact and opinion. The gathering of the data will help you to determine how often a problem is occurring. The gathering of the data will also help to see how often the type of problem is occurring (Society for Health Systems, 2004).

There are steps you can take to create a check sheet. The first step is to clarify the measurements of the objectives. Find out what is the problem why should the data be collected and who will us the information that is being collected. The next step would be to create a form for collecting the data. Determine the specific things that will need to be measured and write them down. Put the information on the left side of the check sheet.

After that has been done then you will need to determine the time or place that is being measured and write this across the top of the columns created for the check sheet. Now collect the data from the items that are being measured. Record each occurrence directly on the check sheet as it has happened, then all that needs to be done is total up the data in the number of occurrence for each category being measured. There is your check sheet. Once that has been done you can take that information and make graphs to show how the data is measured.

ISO 9000 and 14000

ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 are among the most widely known international standards. The standards have been implemented by some 610,000 organizations in 160 countries. ISO 9000 is an international reference for quality management requirements while ISO 14000 is an international reference enabling organizations to meet their environmental challenges