Kaoru Ishikawa was one of the most representative figures in the administrative field in the last century, in a way his theories revolutionized the world of production and especially the business quality control like his compatriot Genichi Taguchi. You may never have heard his name but many of his theories may be familiar to you..
But we do not want to separate the theorist from his own work, so then we will tell you quickly who was Kaoru Ishikawa both in his personal sphere and in his professional development.
Born on July 13, 1915 in Tokyo, Ishikawa lived 73 years, dying of a brain hemorrhage on April 16, 1989 also in his native Japan..
This theorist is not only due to the academy since it can be said that the industry was in his blood, so we tell you how he became one of the most important figures in administrative theories.
As we mentioned earlier, Kaoru Ishikawa comes from a strong industrial and administrative tradition, therefore we can assume that he had an education not only academically guided to business but evidently experiential through his family lineage and his participation in family financial education.
At age 24 he achieved his title of Bachelor of Chemistry from Kumpao University in 1939. Knowledge that he began to put into practice first for the industry and later for the country.
From 1939 to 1947 he worked in different industrial companies and served in the army of his country. This period was quite important in his career since it was in these years that he was able to make most of the observations that would lead him to the development of his theories..
It is noteworthy that by 1949 the Second World War had ended, from which Japan, the country of origin of Kaoru Ishikawa, was really badly fought. Ishikawa was a fundamental piece in the postwar development for the economic reconstruction of the eastern nation.
Since 1949 he became one of the main theorists of quality control, becoming at the same time the most relevant consultant in Japanese industrial environments, mainly of those companies that believed in quality control as the first strategy for the economic reactivation of the country in postwar.
Kaoru was the Chairman of the Japanese Delegation in the ISO in 1977. But his participation in the ISO committees began in 1960. It should be noted that the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) has as its main objective to preserve international quality standards at their optimum point, which shows the affiliation of our theorist with the issue of quality.
Ishikawa graduated as an engineer from the University of Tokyo, the same university where he worked as a teacher for many years in the engineering career.
Within Kaoru Ishikawa's work there are many contributions to highlight, in fact was the first to draw attention to the impossibility of creating a quality control optimization standard, due to strong cultural differences between eastern countries (mainly Japan) and western countries.
It was the first time that factors external to the processes themselves were taken into account within the quality control analyzes, the theorist managed to demonstrate the strong influence of language, religion and culture on the productivity and quality of production lines.
It should be noted that the theories proposed by Ishikawa are self-generated and that although they bear a parallel with the Taylorian theories, they do not have a direct influence on them, and it is a paradigm that, although complementary, is quite far from the American paradigm..
According to Kaoru Ishikawa there is a method to do an efficient quality control avoiding any leakage point, He called this theory "Total Quality Control"
Total Quality Control is the practice of maintaining supervision and standardization of processes in each of the members of the productive community, that is, exercising said quality control in each of the links of the organization chart.
But total quality control is not limited to looking at the worker as a subject of constant observation, but rather uses each of them as the primary source of information for quality control..
In this sense, the quality process, if it is done under the premise of total control, must have the participation of all the members of the company, both as observers, analysts, and in their role as executors..
To achieve total control of an organization, the author proposes the use of different statistical methods that can account for both the status of the processes and their quality.
The Cause - Effect diagram was implemented by Kaoru Ishikawa in order to find, analyze, select and document which are the main variables that cause the variation in production..
This diagram is a key piece not only in the theory of total control, but in business management as such, since, through this diagram, not only the most obvious causes can be found but also those that tend to go unnoticed and that according to Pareto studies are the cause of most of the problems, since organizations usually focus on solving the big problems and let these small situations pass that ultimately end up hindering the process.
In this way, the theorist came to the conclusion that a very good statistical management through the diagrams and analysis of them accompanied by a management of total quality control are the essential elements to reach the approximate maximum point of production of any industry or organization.
These were some details of thelife and work of Kaoru Ishikawa one of the most prominent quality guru, and strong theoretician in the world of industry and administration.
As we discussed earlier, these are just some of his most important theories and references, but we invite you to go a little further if you want to know in detail the contributions of this character in Japanese history and the world..
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