ABSTRACT
Kaoru Ishikawa, who died in 1989, commenced his career as a chemist, held a doctorate in engineering and was an emeritus professor at Tokyo University. Flood interprets Ishikawa’s approach as involving ‘vertical and horizontal co-operation’. It requires communication and cooperation between different levels of managers, supervisors and workers and with suppliers and customers. A ‘greater commercial awareness’ imposes two management responsibilities. First, to facilitate training and education such that all understand the commercial circumstances, second to provide accurate, meaningful and timely data about company and competitor performance. The emphasis on simplicity and using the language of the shop floor is considered as empowering, although it could be seen by some as patronising, and in many modern organisations the concept of a ‘shop floor’ is itself redundant. Company-wide quality control has already largely been addressed as the founding philosophy of Ishikawa’s approach and deals with organisational aspects.
