Introduction
Ishikawa is ranked among the quality gurus. He played a significant role in introducing and improving quality controls in Japan’s industries immediately after World War II. He emphasized that customers were the core reason why businesses existed and should therefore be provided with quality products and follow up be done to ensure that they get satisfaction from those products (GURU GUIDE, 2010). He is also famed for coming up with the fish bone cause and effect diagram and the quality circle.
Background
Kaoru Ishikawa was born in 1915 in Tokyo as the oldest son in a household that had eight children. He graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1939 with a degree in Engineering in applied chemistry. He wrote 647 article and 31 books, two of which were translated into English (Watson, 2004). these two popular books are Introduction to Quality Control and What is Quality Control? The Japanese Way. His approach in quality control was in improving the performance of teams by identifying the root cause of the firm’s quality problems. He is credited for the creation of the Japanese Quality Movement in 1962, after he developed and delivered a course on quality control for the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) earlier on in 1949 (Watson, 2004). He played a very important role in the leadership of JUSE and also served as the president of the Japanese Society for Quality Control and Musashi Institute of Technology (GURU GUIDE, 2010).
Ishikawa still co-founded the International Academy for Quality in which he served as president. He was made an honorary member of ASQ and the International Academy of Quality upon retirement. On top of that, he was named Professor Emeritus of the University of Tokyo. ASQ’s Eugene Grant Award that he received in 1972 and Walter A. Shewhart Medal in 1988 are among the many awards and honors that he received in his lifetime. He died in 1989, but his works still live on. ASQ named one of its medals after him in 1993 in recognition of his contribution to the achievement of respect for humanity and quality (Watson, 2004).
Ishikawa’s ideas on quality management
Ishikawa believed that quality improvement was a continuous process and that there always is a room for improvement. He advocated for customer support services to ensure that the recipients of the services continued to get services from the company even after the product is delivered (Rex, 2013). He introduced the fishbone cause and effect diagram that allow the users to see all the possible causes of a result and increase their chance of identifying the root process imperfections.
The top management was urged by Ishikawa to take courses on quality, for in his opinion, any quality improvement attempts would fail unless they received support from the leadership of an organization. He also emphasized on quality improvement throughout a product’s life cycle, not just during production. Though a believer in creation of standards, he viewed standards as needing constant evaluation and improvement. The standards are not the source of improvement decisions but the customer requirements (Rex, 2013). He encouraged managers to be in pursuit of always meeting consumer needs.
Conclusion
Ishikawa made immense contribution to the development of quality controls. He did this not only for his home country, but globally. The several awards and institutions named after him are a testimony to that. He also worked closely with fellow quality gurus and even built on the theories of some such as Edwards Deming (Rex, 2013).
Reference
GURU GUIDE. (2010). Quality Progress, 43(11), 14-21.
Rex, R. (2013). Quality gurus and their contribution to tqm. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.slideshare.net/Ragulangul/tqm-assignment [Accessed: 23 Jan 2014].
Watson, G. (2004). The legacy of ishikawa. Quality Progress, 37(4), 54-57.
