100-Metodos-de-Qualidade-Total

IDEA GENERATION
Method 51
Brainstorming
Purpose
To generate as many ideas as possible without assessing their value.
When to use
In teams, when trying to identify possible root causes or when seeking
solutions to a problem. Brainstorming can also be used when deciding what
problem or improvement activity to work on, and when planning the steps
of a project.
How to use
,
Brainstorming seems very simple. It works best when the team meeting is
informal. To help this there are eight basic rules:
1 Keep the meeting relaxed.
2 Select a leader to write the ideas on a flip chart.
3 Involve the right people in the team.
4 Define the problem clearly. You will need to check that everyone
present has the same understanding of the problem. This can be
difficult to achieve in practice. A useful first stage of any brainstorm
could involve a brief discussion of the problem before a definition is
agreed.
5 Generate as many ideas as possible without discussion or evaluation.
This comes later. There are two main ways of doing this. The first is
simply to invite people to contribute and write the ideas down as they
are suggested. This is called the 'free wheeling' method. The second is
to go round the room asking each person in turn for his or her
contribution. This is called the 'round robin' method.
6 Encourage everyone to contribute. This is best done by beginning the
session with a trivial example, such as 'uses of a paper cup', to get
everyone started before moving on to the question in hand.
7 Write down every idea. There should be no censorship and there is no
such thing as a bad idea. Sometimes strange ideas open up a new area
of thought.
8 Following the brainstorm, a technique such as list reduction (Method
59) should be used to reduce the brainstormed list to manageable
proportions.