Question

The Start of the Japanese Quality Movement When the U.S. forces occupied Japan at the end of World War II to set up the occupation government, they found the Japanese tele- phone system to be poor in quality and unreliable. General MacAr- thur's people knew this would be a major problem for them and for Japan in trying to get the country on its feet again. Bell Laborato- ries' people were brought in to assist the Japanese telecommunica- tions industry, and starting in May 1946 they taught their Japanese counterparts the principles of modern quality control based on Dr. Shewhart's work. While the Bell Labs people were in Japan, a copy of Shewhart's book The Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product was given to the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE). One of its members (the organization had only 12 at the time) was so taken with Shewhart's ideas that he stenciled by hand a copy of the book onto mimeograph masters, so that it could be reproduced and circulated. These two events were the start of the quality move- ment in Japan. Sources: Kaoru Ishikawa, What Is Total Quality Control? The Japanese Way (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1985), 15; Mary Walton, The Deming Management Method (New York: Putnam, 1986), 12. Discussion Questions 1. What was Shewhart's source for the data required for his statis- tical process control?

Answer 1

Schewart's source for the data of SPC came from his observation of manufacturing processes which regularly exhibited process variations. He carefully studied the variations and concluded that there is bound to be some variation in the processes which was termed as "natural". However, he also came across the variations, which were unusual in nature and could be assigned to a cause. These data prompted him to develop control charts which is the basis of the modern day quality control systems.