Title: Financial accounting of quality circles in an Indian chemical manufacturing company and performance analysis using executive support system

Authors: R. Suresh Premil Kumar, C. Sudhahar, John F. Dickson, V. Senthil, S.R. Devadasan

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Noorul Islam College of Engineering, Kumaracoil, Tamil Nadu State, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Noorul Islam College of Engineering, Kumaracoil, Tamil Nadu State, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Noorul Islam College of Engineering, Kumaracoil, Tamil Nadu State, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu State, India. ' Department of Production Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Caimbatore, Tamil Nadu State, India

Abstract: Quality Circles (QCs) have been aiding organisations to achieve continuous quality improvement through employee participation in problem solving tasks. Despite being popular and powerful till 1980s, QCs have not been widely practiced in modern organisations. This is due to a main reason that, there has been no effort to measure the performance of QCs using the language of money. In this context, this paper reports an implementation study in which the practical feasibility of the financial accounting system of QCs was examined in an Indian Chemical Manufacturing Company. This implementation study revealed that the task of developing financial accounting statements for numerous QCs and drawing inference from them would be cumbersome and tiring. These troubles would diminish the interest of the chief executive officer and executives in using the QC financial accounting system. Hence an Executive Support System (ESS) has been developed for this purpose whose functionality is briefly explained.

Keywords: quality circles; QCs; financial accounting; performance measurement; profit and loss account; balance sheets; executive support systems; ESS; India; chemical manufacturing; continuous improvement; quality management; quality improvement.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2007.011964

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2007 Vol.2 No.2, pp.230 - 259

Published online: 05 Jan 2007 *

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