Biography on dr. kaoru ishikawa

Lecturer: Biography on Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa Introduction Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa was born in Tokyo, Japan on July 13, 1915 and passed away on April, 16 1989. He made significant contribution in fields of total quality process, total quality control and total quality improvement by developing the concepts of Quality Circles and the cause and effect diagram that is also referred as the Ishikawa diagram or the Fishbone diagram. Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa has influenced quality management practices throughout the world and his ideas on Quality Circles are applicable in many industries in the contemporary business environment (Bagad 17).
The paper will provide a short biography of Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa including personal life history and family life, and significant accomplishments in the field of quality control and improvement . The paper will highlight some ideas on his work, provide a brief review of books, articles and manuscripts and describe his personal achievements from his work.
Background
Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa was born on July 13, 1915 in Tokyo, Japan and lived until his death on April, 16, 1989 at the age of 73 years. He pursued and completed a degree in engineering in applied chemistry at University of Tokyo and went to work as a naval technical officer after his graduation at the onset of the Second World War. He later moved to work at the Nissan Liquid Fuel Company between 1941 and 1947 and later took his academic career as professor at the University of Tokyo. Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa joined Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE), a quality control research group that aimed at transforming Japanese industrial sector through shared quality improvement initiatives in order to counter the North American perception of Japanese poor quality cameras (Bagad 20).
Primary work and significant accomplishments
Ishikawa’s philosophy entailed transforming the workplace through enabling people take pride in their accomplishments through ensuring both quality and implementing continuous improvement initiatives and company-wide quality control. Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa extended the concept of quality control to the non-production activities such as after-sale services, management, quality of staff and company itself (Bagad 16).
Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa aimed at ensuring company-wide quality control through his work on Quality Circles that aimed at ensuring improvements in the company, enhancing job satisfaction and exploiting employee full potential. Ishikawa expanded Edward Deming’s Plan-Do-Check-Act model by developing a Japanese quality strategy that would ensure competitiveness of Japanese products through improving quality in the product life cycle and making quality control the foundation of business (Bagad 18).
Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa authored numerous books, articles and manuscripts such as General principles of QC Circle (1980), How to operate QC Circle activities (1985) and What is total quality control (1985) have aimed at identifying areas where the production process can improve quality, ensure company-wide control and motivate the employees towards the quality improvement activities. Global academicians in the fields of total quality management have studied the books widely across the world.
Ishikawa developed a Quality Circles concept that aims at ensuring quality improvement, enhancing the human relations and job satisfaction and enhancing employee productivity through company-wide efforts that focus on the product, service, management and company itself (Bagad 17). The fishbone diagram (Ishikawa diagram) is another problem-solving tool that he developed to help the management analyze their manufacturing process and cut down wastage and defects in the production process in order to improve quality and save money. The generic categories include machine, measurement, man, method and materials and the cause and effect process demonstrates how the aspects of the production process aim at improving quality and ensure standardized process that is associated with reduced costs, minimal wastage, reduced defects, improvement of techniques, improvement of staff skills, improvement of quality and associated quality activities (Bagad 19). The concept of Quality Circles is currently applicable in innovation, improving work relations, ensuring safety in production process and knowledge management in modern production processes (Bagad 18)
Dr. Ishikawa was recognized and awarded by various institutions such as American society of Quality’s Eugene L. Grant Award in 1972, Blue Ribbon medal by the Japanese government for his contribution in industrial production standardization, and Order of the Sacred Treasurers, Second Class by the Japanese government in 1988 (Bagad 58).
Work cited:
Bagad, V. S. Total quality management. New York: Technical Publications. 2008.