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PROFESSOR KAORU ISHIKAWA: A MAN IN SEARCH OF HARMONY
Marc Balbirnie B. Mus. M. Phil. (Music & Media Tech.) IASSC Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
marcbalbirnie@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Professor Kaoru Ishikawa (1915-1989) was one of the key
proponents of the quality control movement in Japan after
World War II. He is most well-known for inventing the Cause-
and-Effect diagram, also called the fishbone or Ishikawa
diagram, as well as developing the Japanese QC (quality
control) circle. His work in quality control was extremely
instrumental in supporting the development of the world-
renowned manufacturing approaches behind the automotive
and electronics industries in Japan in the latter part of the 20th
century. He lived the first half of his life during a period of
global unrest and also great tragedy for his homeland. He
believed that quality control had the potential to bring about
peace and happiness in the workplace, and possibly even to the
entire world.
Keywords: quality control, statistical process control, total
quality management, cause-and-effect, fishbone diagram,
quality control circle, ishikawa, process design, lean six sigma
Figure 1: Professor Kaoru Ishikawa (1915-1989)
1. INTRODUCTION
Professor Kaoru Ishikawa’s dedication to quality control was
more than a passion, but bordered on religious fervor as
described by him through the following excerpt found in the
introduction to the third edition of his book Introduction to
Quality Control, the first edition of which was published as
Hinshitsu Kanri Nyūman in Japan in 1954.
“If every nation plays its part in promoting quality control, the
world will find peace, and its people will be able to live together
harmoniously and happily.[1]” He reiterates a similar sentiment
again in another of his books, What is Total Quality Control?
The Japanese Way, which was originally published in 1981,
only 8 years before his death. He concludes the introductory
section with “I hope … companies can become instruments for
enhancing the quality of life not only of the Japanese but also
of all peoples, and in this way help bring about peace in the
world.[15]”
Although it is open to a considerable level of interpretation as
to exactly what he meant by these statements, and also how this
could be applied to a broader real world setting, it definitely
demonstrates the holistic importance that Professor Ishikawa
bestowed upon quality control both as a philosophy and a
human construct. In a much more direct and relevant way to
industry, he also provides us with the dire warning that “[a]ny
enterprise that does not practice quality control will not be
around for long.[1]”
As a highly regarded quality control guru, Ishikawa’s most
defining concepts are the cause-and-effect or fishbone diagram,
often referred to in his honor as the Ishikawa diagram, and also
the QC (quality control) circle. In this paper, we will consider
these two key components specific to Professor Ishikawa’s
quality control philosophy. We will also cast a critical eye over
the relevance of his concepts and techniques in the context of
the modern-day work place.

2. BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
Born in 1915, less than a year after his homeland entered World
War 1, Professor Ishikawa’s formative years were lived against
the backdrop of global instability, violent conflict and general
disharmony. He was only a young child during the ‘Great War’,
but he was 14 years old for the Wall Street Crash of 1929 which
had a serious impact on the Japanese economy, and he was 24
years of age when World War II commenced. By the conclusion
in 1945 of the deadliest military conflict in history, Ishikawa
would also have witnessed the loss of hundreds of thousands of
civilian lives through the U.S. nuclear bombing of the Japanese
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One cannot help but feel that
Ishikawa’s philosophy of global harmony through quality
control was in some way influenced by this chaotic period of
human history that he lived through.
Ishikawa initially studied applied chemistry at the University of
Tokyo and graduated from there in 1939. He then went to work
briefly in the area of coal liquefaction and in May 1939 was
commissioned as a naval technical officer working with
gunpowder. He studied and worked with the army for the
following two years until 1941 when he was put in charge of
constructing a factory with capacity for a six-hundred-person
workforce.
At the conclusion of World War II in 1945 the United States
entered Japan and set up the occupation government. The
Americans found Japanese telecommunications hardware and
support systems to be unreliable and of insufficient quality.
Staff from Bell Laboratories “were brought in to assist the
Japanese telecommunications industry, and starting in May
1946 they taught their Japanese counterparts the principles of
modern quality control based on Dr. Shewhart’s work.[3]” This
was the beginning of the modern quality control movement in
Japan.
In 1947, Ishikawa returned to the University of Tokyo to
continue his studies, but he did not become involved with
quality control straight away. In order to improve the quality of
analysis of his experimental studies, Ishikawa began to study
statistical methods in 1948. He approached the Union of
Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) looking for guidance
and general information on statistical methods in 1949, and was
effectively drafted in by Mr. Kenichi Koyanagi, senior
managing director of JUSE, as an academic advocate for quality
control and statistical methods. In response to this Ishikawa
took several steps including creating a mandatory module for
first-semester Engineering students at the University of Tokyo,
which he called “How to Use Experimental Data.” This was the
beginning of his foray into the quality control field and his work
in the area grew exponentially from there.
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3. A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF HIS APPROACH
Ishikawa’s quality control methodology includes a vast array of
statistical tools. These tools such as histograms, control charts,
Pareto diagrams, scatter diagrams, sampling and data collection
methodologies are all within what you would expect as a solid
core of any good quality control practice. These tools were
mostly inherited through his early interactions with the U.S.
quality approach via JUSE, and are described with great
attention to detail in his books. Upon translation into English
these books were republished in the United States, where they
became part of the canon of quality control literature.
Goetsch and Davis describe Ishikawa’s two major pillars of
quality as follows “(1) quality and customer satisfaction are the
same thing and (2) quality is a broad concept that goes beyond
just product quality to also include the quality of people,
processes, and every aspect of the organization.[3]” Ishikawa’s
general concept of quality is fundamentally customer focussed.
In his book Introduction to Quality Control, originally
published by JUSE in Japan in 1954, he covers a broad range of
topics ranging from “What is Quality?” to “Causes of
Abnormalities and Control Standards” and “What is Quality
Assurance?” to “Total Quality Control.” Throughout this book
we see detailed explanations of the standard set of statistical
process control tools and how and when best to apply them.
A later book of his, Guide to Quality Control, originally
published in Japan as Gemba no QC Shuho in April 1971,
“contains only the techniques and is not concerned with the
concept of QC, or the reasons behind it.[2]” In his book What
is Total Quality Control? The Japanese Way he talks about his
experiences of quality control from a semi-autobiographical
perspective in a much more personal voice. He was a very
prolific author, with some sources claiming he authored more
than thirty books and in excess of six hundred articles in his
lifetime[8].
4. THE CAUSE-AND-EFFECT DIAGRAM
The Cause-and-Effect, Fishbone or Ishikawa diagram is
regarded as one of the seven basic quality tools by Goetsch and
Davis in Quality Management for Organizational Excellence:
Introduction to Total Quality. This group also includes Pareto
charts, check sheets, histograms, scatter diagrams, control
charts/run charts and data stratification. However, what is
noteworthy about the Ishikawa diagram is that “[i]t is the only
one of the seven basic quality tools that is not based on
statistics.[3]” This is because it is about problem solving
through understanding of the causal interaction of multiple
inputs and contexts, as opposed to interpreting a problem and
its potential solutions purely through statistical data analysis. It
is for this reason that the Ishikawa diagram has such a broad
range of potential uses. While Statistical Process Control
charting tools such as Pareto charts, histograms and control

charts will do much to describe what the current process state
is, they will do little to explain why it is that way.
The Ishikawa diagram was designed in a practical context with
the focus on a deeper understanding of the why in the process.
“The first cause-and-effect diagram was developed by
Professor Ishikawa … in the summer of 1943, while he was
explaining to some engineers at a factory of the Kawasaki Steel
Works the fact that various factors can be sorted out and related
in such and such a way.[2]”
The diagram itself is ingeniously simple. A horizontal arrow
points to the right with the end effect or output described there.
Various arrows are then drawn diagonally from above or below
pointing in towards the central line. There will often be six of
these arrows (three above and three below), referred to as the 6
Ms, which are man, machine, materials, mother nature, methods
and measurement. ‘Man’ will often be described in more gender
neutral modern terms now as either ‘people’, ‘personnel’ or
‘operator’, and ‘mother nature’ will more usually be described
as ‘environment.’ Similarly, as per Figure 2, ‘machine’ can be
referred to as ‘equipment’ and ‘methods’ as ‘process’. Exactly
how they are named does not matter very much, once these core
areas are all represented in the diagram in some way. These
causal group arrows will then have smaller arrows pointing in
towards them. This is the classic layout for an Ishikawa diagram
for a manufacturing process problem analysis, but it can be
changed to accommodate any kind of analysis and context
desired. What makes it ingenious is that it is a fractal analysis
system. A fractal is a structure or design that has similar patterns
occurring at different scales of perspective. Theoretically, this
allows for the analysis to expand infinitely in any direction and
therefore respond to the requirements of the inquisitor, instead
of conforming to a restricted pattern or predetermined range of
questioning.
Figure 2: Cause & Effect, Fishbone or Ishikawa Diagram
The Ishikawa diagram can be used to effectively break down
any problem into a matrix of causal relationships. It is “[b]est
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used for cause identification once you have a focussed
definition of the problem[5]” in a team or quality control circle
setting where multiple individuals can provide suggestions and
opinions on the nature of the most influential causal factors
leading to the overall observed effect or problem. The Ishikawa
diagram should be used to consider all potential causes and not
just the usual headline few; e.g. if a component is found to be
overheating during assembly perhaps the issue is to do with the
environment or measurement techniques, as opposed to the
machinery or materials being used. However, “[i]t’s important
to note that [Cause-and-Effect] diagrams are structured brain-
storming tools … [and] … [t]he team still needs to collect data
to verify which potential causes are actual contributors.[6]”
5. THE QUALITY CONTROL CIRCLE
In the 1950s, Ishikawa was involved with training programmes
for shop foremen called “workshop QC study groups.” This
approach was renamed as “QC (quality control) circle”
activities in April 1962, and the method spread rapidly from
there, becoming one of the key quality control tools that aided
the development of the Japanese manufacturing industry in the
1960s and 1970s. Ishikawa in his work initially expounds the
belief that QC circles can only work in a Japanese context due
to the nature of the culture of the workforce, but later concludes
that in his opinion it is applicable in all contexts due to the
commonalities shared by all humanity. However, “[w]hen the
approach was actually tried in America in the 1970s the results
were disappointing. … This was no doubt due to the fact that
Japanese circles were integrated into decades-old, company-
wide process improvement activities, while American firms
typically implemented circles by themselves.[4]”
The concept of the QC circle is essentially quite simple. In his
book Introduction to Quality Control Professor Ishikawa
describes QC circles as “small groups of people from the same
workplace who carry out quality-control activities voluntarily.
These small groups carry out self-development and mutual
development as part of companywide quality control (TQC)
activities and use QC tools to control and improve their
workplaces continuously, with everybody taking part.[1]”
The voluntary participation of members is an important aspect
of QC circles that Ishikawa reiterates in his work. He also
outlines the philosophy as one with the capacity for creating
“cheerful workplaces that make life worthwhile and where
humanity is respected.[1]” This utopian sentiment takes us
beyond the simple idea that productivity and outputs should be
the only measures of an effective process or company, and asks
us to consider the human component of organisations.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs applied to organisational
management argues that employment engagement is central to
both individual and organisational development. Ishikawa
echoes this sentiment by considering the gemba, the Japanese
term for workplace, as a sociological structure. In the context

of quality control, Ishikawa’s theory conjects that happy and
engaged employees are also productive ones, but also as his
work would imply – is there not also inherent value in having a
content and harmonious workforce?
The QC circle by design intersects all quality areas including
the integration of quality assurance in new product
development. In this way the QC circle potentially represents
the majority of the dialogue points for applied Total Quality
Control (TQC) or Company-Wide Quality Control (CWQC).
In addition, “[t]he kaizen process [(an approach used to resolve
quality issues with a team in a relatively short project cycle
time)] is modelled after quality circles, [and] … utilized in the
Toyota Production System,[6]” amongst others.
6. CONCLUSIONS
It is difficult to find any particular weaknesses in Professor
Ishikawa’s quality control theory and methodologies. Some
statistical process control tools that he describes in his books
have developed since his day. In particular, graphical
representations of data are more user friendly and vibrant now
due to the development and ubiquity of powerful computers
from the 1980s onwards. However, the core defining tenants of
his approach, specifically the cause-and-effect diagram and the
quality control circle, have stood the test of time. These tools
have been enhanced, adapted, altered and augmented by other
quality practitioners and experts over the years, so that they
apply more specifically or completely to various situations or
contexts, but the essence of the tools have not changed. For
example, the “5 Whys” are often used after the Ishikawa
diagram has identified potential root causes, in order to dig
deeper into specific problem areas to potentially find further
root causes. The fractal nature of the cause-and-effect diagram
will always allow its users to evolve a line of problem-solving
interrogation in whatever way is most useful and relevant to
solving the specific problem at hand. Similarly, employee
engagement through QC circles is a timeless quality control
method where those who are most knowledgeable and familiar
with the nuances of a product or production process are
voluntarily positioned at the centre of the quality control
discussion.
Although Ishikawa’s work focussed on techniques for quality
control in manufacturing he encouraged the theory to be applied
to all levels of an organisation and management structure,
including non-manufacturing business activities also. This fed
into the broader conversation around Total Quality Control
(TQC), which in turn led to the current, more holistic, concept
of Total Quality Management (TQM).
He consistently highlights throughout his work that quality
starts and ends with the customer and that “quality assurance
consists of guaranteeing that a consumer can purchase a product
or service with confidence and enjoy its satisfactory use for a
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long period. Quality assurance represents a type of promise or
contract with the consumer regarding quality.[1]”
Ishikawa emphasises the importance of moving from a quality
control maintenance culture to a proactive and premeditative
quality assurance one where quality is considered right from the
start of the design phase of a new product cycle, and he states
that “[t]he essence of [Total Quality Control] is quality
assurance.[1]”
In many ways Ishikawa was ahead of his time by successfully
combining clinical methodologies from the statistical process
control side of quality management with the more human
focussed aspects of the QC circle and TQC approaches. He
encouraged wellbeing in the workplace as an integrated part of
his quality management initiatives many years before wellbeing
and mindfulness were developed as standalone Human
Resource led initiatives, or quasi-productivity tools. For this
reason I would argue that his approach is more complete than
his United States counterparts whose focus at the time was
purely on the advancement of the statistical analysis tools and
models available.
The American Society for Quality tells us that “Japan's …
quality achievements—and Ishikawa's in particular—go well
beyond the efficient application of imported ideas.[14]”
Ishikawa’s innovations advanced the U.S. quality control
approach, and after some initial reluctance from the West his
methods are now implemented globally. Professor Kaoru
Ishikawa’s work was prescient and has in many ways become
more relevant to the modern-day workplace over time, as
opposed to less. His vision of a workplace built on harmony
between worker happiness and company productivity is one
that we might all aspire to.
7. REFERENCES
[1] Ishikawa, Dr. Kaoru, “Introduction to Quality Control
(third edition)”, 3A Corporation, 1990
[2] Ishikawa, Dr. Kaoru, “Guide to Quality Control”, Asian
Productivity Organization, 1976
[3] Goetsch, David L. and Davis, Stanley, “Quality
Management for Organizational Excellence: Introduction to
Total Quality”, Pearson Education Limited, 2014
[4] Pyzdek, Thomas and Keller, Paul, “The Six Sigma
Handbook (fourth edition)”, McGraw-Hill, 2014
[5] George, Rowlands, Price and Maxey, “The Lean Six
Sigma Pocket Toolbook”, McGraw-Hill, 2005
[6] George, Michael L., “Lean Six Sigma: Combining Six
Sigma Quality with Lean Speed”, McGraw-Hill, 2002
[7] Turner, Dr. Suzanne, “Tools for Success: A Manager’s
Guide”, McGraw-Hill, 2002
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[8] Watson, Gregory H., “The Legacy of Ishikawa”, Quality [12] Watson, Gregory H., “What is Quality?”, Quality
Progress,www.asq.org (Apr., 2004), pp. 54-57 Progress,www.asq.org (July, 2001), pp. 53-62

[9] Bendell, Penson and Carr, “The quality gurus – their [13] http://www.juse.jp/ishikawa/e/man/
approaches described and considered”, Managing Service
Quality, Vol. 5, No. 6 (1995), MCB University Press, pp. 44- [14] http://www.asq.org/about-asq/who-we-
48 are/bio_ishikawa.html

[10] Zairi, Mohamed, “The TQM Legacy – Gurus’ [15] Ishikawa, Dr. Kaoru, “What is Total Quality Control?
contributions and theoretical impact”, The TQM Journal, Vol. The Japanese Way”, Prentice-Hall, 1985
25, No. 6 (2013), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 659-
676

[11] Reid, Dan R. and Sanders, Nada R., “Operations

Management: An Integrated Approach (fifth edition)”, Wiley,
2012