I. Introduction
Quality control refers to the policies and procedures a company institutes in order to ensure that its products or services are the best possible available, comply with external and internal standards, government regulations, and to decrease or eliminate any problem, errors or issues that might occur in the production or enjoyment of the goods or service. Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa was one of the first persons to advocate for company-wide/total quality control, or the integration of quality control practices in every facet of the company’s business model. In addition, Dr. Ishikawa was the father of the Japanese quality control method. Over the course of his career, Dr. Ishikawa wrote over 30 books and 600 articles, mainly focused on quality control and its different elements. Moreover, two of his books, namely Introduction to Quality Control and What is Total Quality Control? The Japanese Way have been translated into a number of languages and are considered standard texts in a number of management programs in the United States and abroad.
II. Background
Ishikawa’s family had a long history of doing business. Ishikawa’s grandfather, Uichiro, was founder and manager of the Kanto Sanso (Acid and Soda) company (Watson, 2015). When Uichiro’s son, and Dr. Ishikawa’s father, Ichiro was of age, he enrolled in the prestigious Tokyo Imperial University. Upon graduation, he was appointed to a position as assistant professor in the university’s Department of Applied Chemistry (Watson, 2015). After a number of years, however, he moved on to take up a management position at Kanto Sanso. While managing the company, Ichiro remained quite active in the chemical engineering field. During World War II, Ichiro held positions as the president of Nissan Chemical Industries as well as the director of the Japanese Association for Chemical Industries. After the war, Ichiro served as the president of the extremely influential Japanese Federation of Economic Organizations (JFEO) (Watson 2015; Sashkin & Kiser, 1993). Ichiro would later go on to be the first chairman of the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) where he played an important early role in persuading Japanese companies to begin considering quality as an aspect of their business processes; most noticeably illustrated in his work in getting top Japanese executives to agree to meet with and listen to William Edwards Deming (Watson 2015; Sashkin & Kiser, 1993).
Dr. Ishikawa was born on July 13, 1915 just a few years before his grandfather’s death, accordingly, Ichiro grew up observing how business was done first-hand. Like his father, Dr. Ishikawa attended Tokyo Imperial University, graduated in 1939 with an engineering degree in applied chemistry. After serving in the Japanese military as a naval officer, Dr. Ishikawa’s first job was as an engineer with the Nissan Liquid Fuel Company. In 1947, however, Dr. Ishikawa left the private sector to take up a position, like his father, as a professor in the Department of Engineering of the University of Tokyo. Dr. Ishikawa would remain at University of Tokyo for the next thirty years, achieving the rank of full professor in 1960 and professor emeritus in 1976. In 1978, Dr. Ishikawa retired from the University of Tokyo. However, soon after his retirement he was invited to become the president of the Musashi Institute of Technology, an engineering school that was founded in 1929 that was renamed Tokyo City University in 2009. As president, Dr. Ishikawa was fundamentally to the increasing prestige of the school. On April 16, 1989, Dr. Ishikawa passed away.
III. Primary Work
While Dr. Ishikawa started out as a professor of chemical engineering, he quickly changed the focus of his research, teaching and writing on the ways in which Japanese companies could implement the quality controls into their business practices and why it would be important that they did. Like his father, as a young professor, Dr. Ishikawa grew to believe in and support the idea that Japanese industry should and must adopt and implement a practice of promoting quality management as a way in which it could and should develop itself into a competitive industrial power equal to if not better than Western companies and brands. While his father may have had an intuitive understanding of the power of quality control, Dr. Ishikawa worked to produces an evidence-based framework through to show that quality control was essentially to Japan’s post-war development.
Dr. Ishikawa got his formal start into quality control in 1949. At the time, Japan was looking for ways through which it could abandon the common idea around the world that Japan was only good for producing inexpensive but low-quality goods. That same year, Dr. Ishikawa joined JUSE as one of the founding members of JUSE’s quality control research group. Dr. Ishikawa met William Edward Deming during his speaking tours of Japan and as a guest of his fathers and was inspired by Deming’s approach and innovations in quality control. After studying Deming’s and fellow quality control expert Joseph M. Juran’s methods, DR. Ishikawa was instrumental in adapting their techniques to fit Japanese industries and executives (Watson, 2004).
In the subsequent years, expanding beyond simply teaching university students and went on to consult a number of Japanese and Western companies including, Nippon Telephone & Telegraph, Komatsu Manufacturing, Ford Motor Company, Bridgestone, and IBM Japan on ways in which they can implement or improve upon their quality control management. Dr. Ishikawa’s principles of quality control slowing became standard operating procedure in Japanese industries, and helped Japan become one of the leading nations in and of quality control management
IV. Significant Accomplishment
Over the course of his life and career, Dr. Ishikawa was able to achieve many significant accomplishments, especially in the area of quality control. Nonetheless, perhaps his three most significant accomplishments were the creation of: the Ishikawa of “fishbone” diagram, quality circles than the principle of company-wide or total quality management (Kondo, 1994). The fishbone diagram refers to a visualization tool used to facilitate the “brainstorming” of all the potential issues that are causing a problem so that users can discover the root cause of the problem (rather than its symptoms) and adjust or make corrections as necessary to eliminate the problem altogether. Quality circles, refers to the idea of bringing together workers of a department, team or project to discuss any and all issues that they have encountered in their work and think of solutions that could be implemented to resolve the identified issues. Once issues and resolutions are discussed, the results of the discussion are either implemented by the workers themselves or passed on to management to implement. The idea behind quality circles if that staff and employees who are given “ownership” of their work are more likely to voluntarily apply quality control standards. Lastly, company-wide or total quality control refers to the idea that quality control is not just one department’s responsibilities but rather is a concept the must be supported vertically, from the top-down and bottom-up; as well as horizontally, from the beginning to the end of the productions process.
V. Conclusion
References
Kondo, Y. Kaoru Ishikawa: What he thought and achieved: A basis for further research. Quality
Management Journal, 1994. 86-91.
Sashkin, M. & Kiser, K.J. (1993). Putting Total Quality Management to Work. San Francisco,
CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Watson, G. (2015, Sep.). Like father, like son: Looking back at the Ishikawa family’s
contribution to quality’s heritage. Retrieved from www.juse.or.jp/english/ishikawa/Like-Father-Like-Son_-Quality_Progress_-_Sept_2015_-_Watson.pdf
Watson, G. (2004). The legacy of Ishikawa. Retrieved from www.gregoryhwatson.eu/images/6-QP_Watson_-_April2004_-_Legacy_of_Ishikawa.pdf
