With this worldwide simultaneous depression, the Japanese economy has also entered a new phase, moving from business expansion to a business recession all of a sudden. It is anticipated that the managerial environment throughout Japanese industry will become even more severe. In this context, we have to thoroughly prepare for situations surrounding QC Circle activities that will also become more severe than we have ever experienced. Tracing QC Circle activities, the current status and present assignment of QC Circle activities are set out orderly. Based upon closer examination of the above, how QC Circle activities have contributed to the improvement of competitiveness in Japanese industry, and what can be expected to develop activities further, are expressed as a part of my observation.

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"Syosyudan Process Kaizen (SPK)" like quality control circle activity, improvement activity by managers and staffs for top priority issues, and innovation activity by cross-function teams has been useful to solve the various problems that form from rapid changes in business environment. Non manufacturing departments like R/D and sales, however, have played big roles according to business globalization, and many enterprises and organizations worry how to promote SPK in these departments. This article shows the nine principles and supporting tools for promoting SPK in non-manufacturing workplaces, which has been developed by "Research Group on SPK in Non-manufacturing Workplaces", Japanese Society for Quality Control through deep discussion about success stories in various enterprises and organizations.

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Resent Environment of Business and employment has become severe and uncertain. Any QC circle should make a constant effort to adapt changes of their environment under correct understanding the essence of QC circle activities. The basic principles of QC circle activities imply the core essence. In this paper, first of all, universality of the principles are examined for resent changes of environment, and increasing importance are emphasized on the total permeation and effective implementing of the principles. Secondly, key factors of effective operations of QC circles activities are identified as follows: the autonomous activities should be activated through adoption of game elements from the perspective of holon property and the organizational learning should be done more actively from diverse excellent small group activities. And then fundamental requirements, for effectiveness and activation of QC circle activities are provided from the view point of the essence of QC circle and the motivation theory. Furthermore, the important roles of management are confirmed to the direction and support for realizing effective QC circle activities. Lastly, contributions and subjects are discussed on e-QCC.

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In an attempt to search QC Circle activities in overseas countries that may be a benchmark for Japanese companies, the articles appeared in overseas literatures were reviewed and those features of QC Circle activities in overseas countries are summarized in this article. The main findings are QC Circle activities in overseas countries are practiced in broader industries and institutions than Japan, and the broadly conceived quality circle concepts are beginning to be applied overseas. These movements could be benchmarks to future QC Circle activities in Japan.

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How have social sciences been discussing quality circles (QCs)? This paper reviews these discussions, thereby sharing them with the professionals and practitioners in QCs. Few of the professionals and practitioners know the literature in QCs written by social scientists. This paper summarizes the literature from the perspective of sociology of work and industry. Sociology turns our attention to how our consciousness and actions are embedded in social systems, everyday practice, and temporal situations. Sociology of work and industry reveals these facts experienced through our work and occupational careers. Social sciences explain how and why QCs have been widespread in Japanese firms. Some of the factors are the low occupational barrier to non-professionals participating in quality control, flexible division of labor in workplaces, relatively open opportunities in which blue-collar workers promote to supervisors. The network built to disseminate quality control nationwide is also an important factor. QCs changed "modern" styles of labor management, from blue-collar workers as manual workers, to those as intellectual workers. In spite of skeptical observations, QCs are recognized as having some effects on motivation and training of blue-collar workers, through continuous improvements. QCs are expected to contribute to raising occupational capacities of ordinary workers.

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The QC activities are the ones as a part of TQM and have significant meaning that they are to devote themselves to progress of organizations' vitality such as on-the-job power or at-work power and to be small working group activities in the front line to aim at contributing to human-resources nurturing and improvement and advancement of product quality. In this article, based on the history and experiences of myself involved in the QC activities at KYB Corporation, it refers to the future issues and opinions for vitalization of the QC activities, such as issues as regards "commitment by management", "operation of diversified QC circle activities", "building managements' networking" and "enhancement of the QC activities contributing to product quality management activities".

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There is no such system called "Japanese" quality management, however, there are concepts of quality as well as ways of motivating people and being motivated that are closely related to Japanese culture. The power of a group, among which people are cooperating with each other to take up workshop problems for solution, is of inestimable value rather than as a way to distinguish people who direct from those who are directed. QC Circle activities that have been married to this spirit and passed on, are the very origin of the current culture of making things, and have became the real power of the workshop. Tracing the record of my growth and life events marching together with QC Circle activities, my ideas about how you can find out a way to step further forward are noted.

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In Japan, the long-term care insurance system was instituted in April 2000. More than eight years have passed since this insurance system began, and much interest is now focused on the quality of elderly care. In this insurance system, elderly care is provided according to care plans that are designed by care managers. It is essential to establish a methodology for determining appropriate care plans in order to ensure the quality of elderly care. As a model for determining elderly care on ADL according to a person's status, the process model for determining elderly care on ADL was proposed. This model consists of both a detailed procedure and a database structure that is required for that procedure. And the validity of the model design has been confirmed. However, detailed knowledge contents are needed in order to make efficient use of this model. In this paper, therefore, we aim to develop detailed knowledge contents required for the process model for determining elderly care on ADL. We first identified the requirements for developing appropriate knowledge contents. Then we developed detailed knowledge contents required for the model by structuralizing technical knowledge based on those requirements. Further, we made a verification to assess the validity of the developed knowledge contents by applying it into actual cases.

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It is important for hospitals to tackle with malpractices in order to deliver safe medical services. Incident reports are collected to achieve its goal. Although, the number of accidents is not decreasing since hospitals deal with these accidents only by enhancement of checking or announcement of calling attention. Medication is administered under the fixed process. Therefore, it is effective to improve the process to prevent medical accidents by focusing on its work method. In this study, this concept is called "Process oriented thinking". This paper proposes an analysis method named POAM (Process Oriented Analysis Method for Medical Incidents) that medical staff can implement process oriented thinking. POAM utilizes the medication model and the viewpoint list. The medication model describes medication that "A nurse receives information, prepares objects and performs tasks." and it is used to grasp situations of incidents. The viewpoint list contains viewpoints to extract process factors that induce incidents. In addition, the analysis procedure with the analysis sheet and a format of incident reports are proposed. After the introduction of POAM to a hospital, medical staffs implement process oriented thinking and medical incidents are decreased.

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This paper discusses the testing of SN ratios for homogeneity based on experimental data to compare the performance of signal-response systems. When the (passively acquired) data in these systems is independent or dependent, this problem is known by testing the homogeneity of the SN ratios in the error distributions as normal distributions. In this paper we use the SN ratio (proposed as a dimensionless evaluation measure for positive-valued data) to derive the distribution of test statistics based on a certain hypothesis.

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It is important for a company to keep the high level profitability through investing on R & D projects. The global competitions are heating up and only the companies who invest on the right projects can survive. In such circumstances, they pay attention to the best usage of the precious financial resources credit. With the limited financial resources, the cost effectiveness is very important aspect, especially in the pharmaceutical industry. This research tried to find the critical factors of the cost management that contribute to the corporate profitability by multiple regression analysis, t-test and interviews to the excellent companies. It was found that the cost management maturity strongly correlated to the profitability. From the multiple regression analysis, it was found that the motivation supported by appropriate appraisal system directly affects to the corporate profitability, and the cost flexibility, IT system, strategy execution plan, and vision sharing are supporting the motivation. The comparison between the companies whose profitability were more than 20% and less than 10% showed that the cost flexibility was the most significant effort of the excellent companies. As a solution, this paper proposes the best practice of the cost management aimed to maximize the effectiveness of cost usage.

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