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What is a Quality Guru?

Summary
  • The Quality Gurus included in this document cover the historical period from World War II.

  • They divide into three periods:

  1. The early Americans who took the messages of quality to the Japanese (early 1950s)

  2. The Japanese response (late 1950s onwards)

  3. The new Western wave concentrating on Quality Awareness (1970s - 80s).

If quality is important, so are the people that propound it. It is human nature to deify great men and women who have contributed to the evolution of human thought and progress. In the conception and conduct of manufacturing there is great opportunity to contribute to industry's and society's common good. Improvements in productivity and reductions in cost in manufacturing can have such an impact that they overshadow technical advances. Quality also is motivational and increasingly concerns us all. This is partly a result of the impact of the Gurus, but also facilitates their very creation.

A guru, according to Roget, is a good man, a wise man and a teacher. A Quality Guru certainly should be all of these, and moreover a charismatic individual whose concept and approach to quality within business and, possibly life generally, has made a major and lasting impact.


The Gurus in this document include the ones that have made and are continuing to make the most major impact. Many possible candidates have been excluded for lack of space and for the clarity of the overall message of this document. Those that are included cover the historical period from World War II. Their emergence largely represents responses to changes in the American and Japanese markets and the need to adapt to survive. Their messages are relevant to UK industry, but need to be put into context. They cover both the development of philosophy and tools. These tools include technical tools to control industrial design and manufacturing such as contributions of Shingo, Ishikawa and Taguchi. They also include management tools to achieve quality, such as the Zero Defect approach of Philip Crosby, and the concepts of company wide and total quality associated with Ishikawa and Feigenbaum.

Three clear groups of Quality Gurus can be identified covering the period since World War II. These are:

  1. The early Americans who took the messages of quality to the Japanese.

  2. The Japanese who developed new concepts in response to the Americans' messages.

  3. The new Western wave of Gurus who, following Japanese industrial success, have given rise to increased quality awareness in the West.

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The early Americans

The Americans were themselves effectively responsible for making possible the miraculous turn-around of Japanese industry and for putting Japan on the road to Quality Leadership.

Much of this transformation was associated with the introduction of statistical quality control into Japan by the US Army over the period 1946 to 1950 and the visits by three key American Quality Gurus in the early 1950s. These were:

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The Japanese

The Japanese adopted, developed and adapted the methodologies that the Americans brought in and by the late 1950s had begun to develop clearly distinctive approaches suitable for their own culture. The Japanese Gurus emphasised mass education, the use of simple tools and teamwork and had a background in an educational role. The three Japanese Quality Gurus included in this document are:

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The new Western wave

Much of the increased awareness of the importance of quality in the West in recent years has been associated with a new wave of Gurus who have well publicised some of the quality issues, through the 1970s and 1980s. The three included in this document are:

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Last Revised: Fri Feb 13 11:58:34 1998