Predicting the trajectory of manufacturing quality with work team implementation

Abstract

Despite the widespread introduction of work teams in plants to improve manufacturing quality, the academic and practitioner literature offers little guidance to predict the trajectory of quality improvement. This paper documents the development of a framework to predict the magnitude and timing of quality improvement with work team implementation on production lines. From the standpoint of practice, the framework has the potential to inform the management of the work team implementation process so that the quality impact of teams can be increased and realized faster.