ABSTRACT
Kaoru Ishikawa, who died in 1989, commenced his career as a Chemist, held a Doctorate in Engineering and was Emeritus Professor at Tokyo University. Bank (1992: 74) cites him as the ‘Father of Quality Circles’ and as a founder of the Japanese quality movement. He became involved in quality issues in 1949 through the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) and subsequently became a world-wide lecturer and consultant on quality. Gilbert (1992: 23) suggests that Ishikawa was the first guru to ‘recognise that quality improvement is too important to be left in the hands of specialists’. Ishikawa’s writings explaining his approach include theGuide toQualityControl (1986) andWhat Is TotalQuality Control? The Japanese Way (1985), which have both been translated into English. Ishikawa waswidely honoured for his work, receiving theDeming,NihonKeizai Press and Industrial Standardisation prizes and theGrant Award from theAmerican Society forQualityControl.
Ishikawa himself, cited by Goetsch and Davis (2014), says:
