I remember the Quality Circle craze of the 1980's and 90's.  Management thought they could cherry-pick the idea of Quality Circles and things would get better.  They didn't.  Anyone who has studied the works for Deming and Juran will see right away that Quality Circles cannot make much of an impact on an organization's performance unless they are part of a bigger system of improvement.  Both Deming and Juran, earlier in their careers, said that 85% of all problems and variation was under the responsibility of MANAGEMENT, not the workforce.  In later years, this number was revised to as high as 94%.  Thus, Quality Circles could only work on 6-15% of the total problem!  As a result upper management did not see the results hitting the bottom line, and Quality Circles died a slow, painful death.  The use of Quality Circles was like painting the living room window sills while the back bedroom was burning down.  One of my favorite Deming quotes:  "The role of the workforce is to work within the system.  The role of management is continuous improvement of the system with the aid of an empowered workforce."  If only this profound statement was fully understood!

In addition to Steve's comments (which in my experience are spot on) I would add that Kaizen is not something that should take months.  Kaizen improvements are quick small continual improvements.  Properly empowered small teams of line operators can affect this type of change and it is valuable in the long run.  Most of these changes effect cycle time, non value add waste and errors.  I think the author has a good point that Kaizen can and should come from the line worker.  But the name "QC circle" has a bad reputation...let's just call it what it is:  Kaizen.  

Good article, but DMAIC brushed off as just an "acronym"???  Really?

I was part of the "total quality" movement in the early 1970's and I abandoned that line of work because it got such inconsistent results.  One company's implementation seemed to achieve some results, two others failed.  Then the "acronym" DMAIC came along and it put structure into the quality/process improvement process, and suddenly company after company was achieving success.  DMAIC is much more than just another acronym (and God knows we've had plenty of them in the quality movement!)  What DMAIC, and Six Sigma, did was nothing less than provide a recipe for success that almost anyone could follow.  And success engenders more success.  Sure, there's more to Six Sigma than DMAIC, and DMAIC isn't quite the simple recipe it first appears -- but the good news is, companies can follow DMAIC as if it were a simple recipe, have initial success, then begin to learn more of the subtleties as they grow their Six Sigma (and Lean) capabilities.

John Gunkler