Kaoru Ishikawa

Introduction:

Ishikawa is considered as Japan’s leading figure in the area of Total Quality Management. Ishikawa diagrams which are now used worldwide in continuous improvement to represent cause-effect analysis.

Contribution of Ishikawa:

Ishikawa is considered as Japan’s leading figure in the area of Total Quality Management. His inspiration came from the work of Deming and Juran and, to a lesser extends, Feingenbaum. He is well respected for the following contributions:

1 Quality Control Circles - he was the first to introduce this concept and to have put it into practice successfully;

2 He is the originator of Fishbone Diagrams or Ishikawa diagrams which are now used worldwide in continuous improvement to represent cause-effect analysis;

3 lshikawa has commented that Feingenbaum’s approach to Total Quality Control includes many non-specialists and therefore the input on quality problem solving may be limited. He argues that Company Wide Quality Control (CWQC) has to rely on the wide use of statistical techniques.

Ishikawa‘s statistical techniques to CWQC:

1 Elemental statistical technique:

Pareto analysis (vital few Venus trivial many)

Caw and Effect diagram (not a true statistical technique)

Stratification

Check list (tally sheet)

Histogram

Scatter and diagram

Graph and Shewart control chart (SPC chart)

2 Intermediate statistical method
Theory of sampling surveys
Statistical sampling techniques
various methods of statistical estimation and hypothesis testing
Methods of utilising sensory tests
Methods of experiment design

3 Advanced statistical method (using computers)

Advanced experimental design

Multivariate analysis

Operations research methods