Quality Gurus and their Key Contributions - Part 2

 Quality Gurus and their Key Contributions 

 

Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa

 

Kaoru Ishikawa ( July 13, 1915 – April 16, 1989) was a Japanese organizational theorist and a professor in the engineering faculty at the University of Tokyo noted for his quality management innovations.

 He is considered a key figure in the development of quality initiatives in Japan, particularly the quality circle.[1] He is best known outside Japan for the Ishikawa or cause and effect diagram (also known as the fishbone diagram), often used in the analysis of industrial processes.

 

·        Known as father of Japanese quality control effort

·        Established concept of Company Wide Quality Control (CWQC) – participation from the top to the bottom of an organization and from the start to the finish of the product life cycle

·        Started Quality Circles – bottom up approach – members from within the department and solve problems on a continuous basis

·        The fishbone diagram is also called Ishikawa diagram in his honor

·        Introduced concept that the next process is your customer

 Dr. Joseph Juran

 Joseph Moses Juran (December 24, 1904 – February 28, 2008) was a Romanian-born American engineer and management consultant. He was an evangelist for quality and quality management, having written several books on those subjects.[1] He was the brother of Academy Award winner Nathan Juran.

 

 

Juran’s Quality Trilogy (compared to financial management):

·         Quality planning (financial budgeting) – create process that will enable one to meet the desired goals

·         Quality control (cost control) – monitor and adjust the process

·         Quality improvement (profit improvement) – move the process to a better and improved state of control through projects

 

Key points of Juran’s approach to quality improvement:

·        Create awareness of the need for quality improvement

·        Make quality improvement everyone’s job

·        Create infrastructure for quality improvement

·        Train the organization in quality improvement techniques

·        Review progress towards quality improvement regularly

·        Recognize winning teams

·        Institutionalize quality improvement by including quality

·        Concentration on both external and internal customers

 Dr. Walter Shewhart

 Walter Andrew Shewhart (pronounced like "shoe-heart", March 18, 1891 – March 11, 1967) was an American physicist, engineer and statistician, sometimes known as the father of statistical quality control and also related to the Shewhart cycle.

 

 

·        Shewhart’s control charts are widely used to monitor processes. Problems are framed in terms of special cause (assignable cause) and common cause (chance-cause).

·        The Shewhart Cycle – PDCA Problem Solving Process:

·        Plan – what changes are desirable? What data is needed?

·        Do – carry out the change or test decided upon

·        Check – observe the effects of the change or the test

·        Act – what we learned from the change should lead to improvement or activity

·        Referred to as the “Father of Statistical Quality Control”

 

 Dr. Genichi Taguchi

 Genichi Taguchi (January 1, 1924 – June 2, 2012) was an engineer and statistician. 

From the 1950s onwards, Taguchi developed a methodology for applying statistics to improve the quality of manufactured goods. 

 

 

 

·         The lack of quality should be measured as function of deviation from the nominal value of the quality characteristic. Thus, quality is best achieved by minimizing the deviation from target (minimizing variation).

·         Quality should be designed into the product and not inspected into it. The product should be so designed that it is immune to causes of variation.

Taguchi recommends a three-stage design process:

 System Design (Stage 1):

·         development of a basic functional prototype design

·         determination of materials, parts and assembly system

·         determination of the manufacturing process involved

Parameter Design (Stage 2):

·         selecting the nominals of the system by running statistically planned experiments (DFSS/DOE)

Tolerance Design (Stage 3):

·         deals with tightening tolerances and upgrading materials