Ishikawa Research Paper

Ishikawa was a university professor and an innovator of quality management, is known as the Ishikawa diagram or cause-effect diagram or fishbone diagram, used in the analysis of industrial processes and whose charts grouped by categories all the causes of problems.
In 1939 Kaoru Ishikawa graduated from the University of Tokyo with an Engineering degree in Applied Chemistry. He was born in Tokyo in 1915, the oldest of eight children of Ichiro Ishikawa.
His first job was as a naval technical leader, and worked there until 1941, when transferred to the Nissan Liquid Fuel Company, where he worked until 1947 before becoming an associate professor at the University of Tokyo.
He received his doctorate in engineering from Tokyo University and was promoted to professor in 1960, taught at the engineering of the university. Ishikawa joined the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), an international association created to set standards for the various companies and products and that Japan had joined in 1952. Since 1977 was the chairman of the delegation of Japan. He was also chairman of the Musashi Institute of Technology in Japan.

One of Ishikawa's early achievements contributed to the success of quality circles (1962). The cause-and-effect diagram or more simplistic Fishbone Diagram and perhaps the achievement for which he is best known, has provided a powerful tool that can easily be used by non-specialists to analyze and solve problems. With the use of this diagram the user can see all the possible causes of any given result, and hopefully identity the root process of imperfections, thusly allowing quality improvement to be driven from the “bottom up”. The bottom-up approach is best exemplified by the quality circle.

As a member of the editorial board of Quality Control for the Foreman, as chief executive director of Quality Control Circle Headquarters at the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE), and as editor of JUSE's two books on quality circles (QC Circle Koryo and How to Operate QC Circle Activities), Ishikawa played a major role in the growth of quality circles.

Ishikawa wanted to change the way people think about work. He challenged managers who were content to improve a product’s quality, instead insisting that quality improvement can always go one step further. He promoted the concept of companywide quality control that called for continued customer service. This level of service would extend throughout the company, including all levels of management and indeed even reaching into the everyday lives of those involved. According to Ishikawa the process of continuous quality improvement can always be taken one step further. Ishikawa’s pursuit of taking quality improvement one step further guarantees his status as a guru of continuous quality improvement, his legacy will remain within the TQM of businesses across the globe for many years to come.
He has been awarded the Deming Prize and the Nihon Keizai Press Prize, the Industrial Standardization Prize for his writings on Quality Control. He also was the chairman of the editorial board of the monthly Statistical Quality Control. Ishikawa was involved in international standardization activities. Among his efforts to promote quality were, the Annual Quality Control Conference for Top Management.

He was involved to promote quality ideas throughout Japan, both in industry and among consumers. As chairman of the quality control National Conference committee for over 30 years, Ishikawa played a central role in the expanding scope of those conferences. Ishikawa was also active in other efforts to promote quality. For example, he wrote several books explaining statistics to the non-specialist. One of these, the Guide to Quality Control, was translated into English and became a staple in the quality training programs of corporations in the United States.
Perhaps Ishikawa's most important contribution has been his key role in the development of a specifically Japanese quality strategy. The hallmark of the Japanese approach is broad involvement in quality, not only top to bottom within the organization, but also start to finish in the product life cycle.
Throughout his career, Ishikawa worked on very practical matters, but always within a larger philosophical framework. In its broadest sense, Ishikawa's work was intended to produce what he called a "thought revolution" new ideas about quality that could revitalize industry. The wide acceptance of many of Ishikawa's ideas and the numerous honors he has received from around the world show how successful his revolution has been. The career of Kaoru Ishikawa in some ways parallels the economic history of contemporary Japan. Ishikawa, like Japan as a whole, learned the basics of statistical quality control developed by Americans. But just as Japan's economic accomplishments are not limited to imitating foreign products, so the country's quality achievements and Ishikawa's in particular go well beyond the efficient application of imported ideas. Kaoru Ishikawa Tokyo died in 1989. For him, quality was a constant process that could always be taken a step further.

References http://www.vectorstudy.com/management_gurus/kaoru_ishikawa.htm http://www.worldnew.info/celebrities/kaoru-ishikawa-biography/ http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.dti.gov.uk/mbp/bpgt/m9ja00001/m9ja0000110.html

http://asq.org/about-asq/who-we-are/bio_ishikawa.html
The Legacy Of Ishikawa, Greg Watson, Quality Progress, April, 2004, page 54- 57