The 3rd QC Circle Reporting Session was held on Friday, August 23rd.

QC Circles are also known as “small group improvement activities,” and involve dividing the workplace into small groups and continuously repeating small improvements with the participation of all employees.
Currently, QC Circle activities have been introduced and promoted in approximately 80 countries and regions, spreading and developing, and achieving results. Our company has also adopted this activity three years ago, and is now practicing it as an improvement activity for our recycling plant.

The other day, the members working at the recycling plant gave a presentation on their results.
During the presentation, the executives, including our CEO Noriko Ishizaka, visited the actual site to check the ideas and results of the improvement activities carried out by each team.

The staff who gave presentations said things like, “It was difficult to find waste in our everyday work, but discovering the small things each of us noticed has made us more conscious of our daily work,” and “From now on, we want to be even more conscious of early detection of problems.”

As he made his rounds at each site, Ishizaka spoke to the staff who had made improvements,
saying, “There are things you can only learn by being on site every day. It’s important not to leave what you notice as it is, but to have the mindset of ‘let’s change it.’ I hope you will continue to come up with more ideas yourselves.”

By participating in the QC circle, we were able to review our daily work and gain insights into areas for improvement.