However, the authors only mention Dr. Ishikawa in passing. Just who is Kaoru Ish
ID: 410176 • Letter: H
Question
However, the authors only mention Dr. Ishikawa in passing. Just who is Kaoru Ishikawa? Your team will research Dr. Ishikawa’s life and work to determine the impacts that he has had in the world. You will define the quality leader’s significant contributions to modern quality practices in terms of major impacts in a specific organization. The paper will enable you to understand: Ishikawa's key ideas; how Ishikawa has influenced quality practices throughout the world; how his ideas fit into total quality management; and the implications of Ishikawa's ideas for the future of quality.
Explanation / Answer
Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa
Quality management refers to the process to the process by which a firm ensures the goods and services offered are in the right quality. The process entails the firm narrowing down to the components used in the manufacture of the goods and services in the firm. This mainly constitutes evaluating the main components in ensuring the quality of goods and services in the industry. These components include the quality planning, quality assurance among others. Firms in the industry have to be forced to adhere to the laid standards as well as the quality standards in the market. This has not started today as even in the past the firms had to be monitored as well as their products be checked to ensure they meet the quality standards before being released in the market. This led to emergence of experts who were entrusted with the responsibility of checking the quality of the goods and services offered by firms. One such quality expert was Dr. Kaoru Ishakawa.
Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa was a quality expert who was born in 1915 in Tokyo, Japan. Dr. Kaoru Ishakawa had seven brothers and was the oldest son to Ichiro Ishikawa (Vincent, Vliet, 2014). The prominent quality expert studied engineering and applied chemistry at the University of Tokyo and he graduated in 1939. It is during this time that Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa started his career as a professional quality expert. After graduating from the University, he secured and worked as a naval technical officer for some years. He later got another job with Nissan Liquid Fuel Company and worked with the company for seven. The onset of Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa`s career as a quality expert began in 1947 when he became an associate professor at the University of Tokyo. The next year, he took over the Musashi Institute of Technology where he was in charge of it.
The official profession of Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa began when he was 34 years old after joining Japan Union of Scientists and Engineers which is a quality oriented company (Vincent, Vliet, 2014). The company business operations entailed looking for what needed to be done as well as areas to be improved in order to boost the quality and this was done in a research group. This offered him with a good opportunity to advance his career as a quality expert since he was able to make a lot of discoveries through the researches in this field of quality. In addition, the country`s industrial sector had been affected adversely by the World War II which had just ended hence the country needed a lot of experts in the field of quality to boost production of goods and services. During this period, Dr. Kauro Ishikawa demonstrated very good leadership hence he was able to lead a huge number of people in a bid to achieve a common set goals and objectives. It was during this time that he wrote a variety of books as well as developing several quality principles. He also supported the works of the other quality experts as well as adding to their knowledge on quality in a bid to make their principles consistent with the nation`s quality system.
Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa became approved as a full professor in 1960 at the University of Tokyo in the Faculty of Engineering. In 1962, with the aid of his research group on control quality he invented the quality circles concept. The whole process had started as a mere experiment intended to determine impact of leaders having some quality knowledge on a firm. The quality expert encouraged integrations of the concepts of quality control across various levels of business and this later become an important aspect in total quality management system even though his concept faced some resistance at first.
Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa sunset came in 1989 leaving behind a vast knowledge and lessons to be learnt from him. At the time of his death, he was the director of quality control circle. He made a variety of contributions to the development of various quality control techniques. The major contributions of Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa in quality control field are as follows.
Company –wide quality control is one of the major contribution made by Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa. This is a quality initiative that he started back in 1950s after Deming and Juran`s coming. This concept of company- wide quality control was way beyond the quality of products in a frim but rather integrating the quality of the after sakes services of a business firm, company quality terms as well as quality management in a firm. The benefits of the company-wide quality control included the following; reducing mistakes, improving the quality in a business firm. Increased reliability on quality, reduction in both operational and production costs and finally enhancing development of appropriate guidelines on production (Ishikawa. K.,1985).
Quality circle is another concept that was invented by Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa in Japan. This concept got a worldwide acceptance as it was very beneficial and still useful in today’s management of a firm. This is because this concept encourages integration of quality control in various department and operations of a firm. This is because Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa encourage even the top management of a firm to adopt and support quality circle in their firm in order to perform well in the industry.
Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa also made significant contributions in the field of quality improvement and enhancement. This concept involved ensuring the quality of the goods produced were considered right from the time process of production starts in a firm throughout the production life cycle of the product rather than emphasizing on the quality of the products at its final stages of production. Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa believed that the quality of the goods did not only improve the performance of a business firm in the industry but also increased customer satisfaction in the market (Evans & Lindsay, 2008. This required that the firm maintain the quality of its goods in the industry.
Finally, Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa invented the fishbone diagram which is often referred as cause and effect diagram. This has helps a lot of firms in the industry to identify the root cause of their poor or good performance in the industry. This has enabled the firm to boost their performance significantly in the industry by incorporating this type of concept in their operations. The management adopts this strategy in a bid to determine the causes of poor performance of the firm in the industry.
Conclusion
Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa made the aspect of quality control to be well known and practiced in the management of a business firm in order to boost their competitiveness in the industry. Among his major contributions to the field of quality control and management include; He introduced total quality control system in business enterprise, he also invented quality circles, as well as company –wide quality improvement. These contributed have greatly boosted the performance of various firms across the world as the concepts of Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa gained worldwide acceptance are still practiced today.
References
Evans, J. R., & Lindsay, W. M. (2008). Managing for quality and performance excellence (7th ed.). Mason, OH: Thomson South-Western.
Ishikawa. K., (1985). What is Total Quality Control? Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Vincent, Vliet, (2014). Kaoru Ishikawa.
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