In most of the cases improvement can be related to improvement in skills,
increasing awareness, developing new attitude and enhancing perceptions. In many other
cases career development becomes a source of motivation in improving the quality of
individual’s performance. This means that individual oriented Kaizen also focuses on
enhancement of individuals’ work capacity through up-gradation of existing and
development of new skills.
The above discourse leads to the accomplishment of the fact that any kind of
improvement within the organizational functions would immediately require planning for
HRD as its initial step.
Explaining the different stages of Concurrent Engineering Cartin(1998) comments
that once the organization decide to initiate the process of improvement then training and
development becomes imperative for achievement of a number of stages.
2.9.2. HRD interventions for quality improvement
- Orientation of the top managers about the key concepts and strategy of CE.
- Team development intervention of decision makers and specialists.
- Building capacity of teams in use of improvement techniques and principles.
- Training of working teams engaged in other development activities.
- When key suppliers are given representation in teams, their representatives will
also need to be trained in the main concepts and principles of improvement.
All the above listed activities show that a major portion of the CE process is based
on HRD activities, thus reflects upon the correlation between HRD and Quality
improvement.
Taking the discussion a step further, it is argued that the list of success factors
given by Cartin (1998), include Training and Development of the individuals and teams
as one of the crucial factors for achieving successful implementation of the improvement
strategy. According to Knowles HRD carries a much deeper meaning than simple
reference to a training or in-service education or management development or man power
development as it is commonly understood (1974). Altink in the review of Developing