HIDA JOURNAL 2014 SPRING No.4

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No.4 SPRING 2014 15Left: Senior Managing Director, Takeda Right: Dr. IwasakiIn addition, the major international conference, the fourth International Conference on Quality Control of ICQC (current ICQ), was held in Japan in 1978. While there are very few international conferences in which Japan plays a leadership role, the first International Conference on Quality Control was held in Japan, and the fourth one was held in Japan again, after the second and third ones were held in the United States and Europe. This conference takes place in Japan every nine years. Given that it is quite rare for Japan to play a leadership role in international conferences, you can tell how much presence our country has in the field of quality control. Taking all these into account, it can be said that the timing was fortunate for QCTC, as the course was established and launched in 1979, the very year in which Japanese-style quality control gained the greatest momentum. In fact, despite the fact that it was quite a time-consuming course that lasted for as long as six weeks, it attracted a huge number of participants and has survived to this date.As you have just mentioned, India is one of the top three countries. Actually, proactive TQM efforts are being made in the country, mainly by large companies, and there are more than 20 Deming Prize winning companies there.Takeda: You have been in direct contact with participants from overseas for many years since the early days of QCTC. What changes do you see happening with the times in the attitudes and consciousness of participants towards quality control?Iwasaki: These past 35 years have seen many different changes in the QCTC curriculum. In the early days, the curriculum revolved around statistical analysis and was designed to “give participants solid statistical foundations” under the leadership of the late Dr. Ando. In the past, the course was instructed mainly by Mr. Katsuya Hosotani (President, Quality Control Research Institute, Inc.) and Mr. Ryoji Futami (Futami Professional Engineer Office). As there is a shift in the main interest of participating countries away from stabilizing manufacturing quality based on statistical analysis towards quality-centered management, in other words TQM, there is a growing demand to learn how to practice such quality-first management, which they recognize as the basis of the industrial growth of Japan.Takeda: The course was originally started as a six-week course, the curriculum of which featured statistical methods and plenty of exercises. However, given that it is now a shorter, two-week course, I guess it is difficult to set aside sufficient time for exercises designed to learn these statistical methods.Iwasaki: I think that when the course was launched the main aim was to “master statistical methods for effective on-site quality control” both in Japan and in other countries. Although effective use of statistical methods still remains the basis, quality control has been increasingly depending on management, like TQM, in recent years. However, even so, it is still important for a company to establish a management system that can be discussed based on data. In fact, I believe that this is the basis of quality control.Although I suppose that Japan is where the most drastic changes have taken place in people’s attitudes towards quality control, I see quite a bit of changes also in the attitudes of participants. The trend is that they are reluctant to deal with data, pay more attention to TQM and other managerial aspects and show particular interest in mechanisms and concepts.Takeda: Is the same trend observed also among forefront leaders?Iwasaki: Yes. The same trend is seen also in real-life working situations in Japan. Many participants are eager to learn what mechanisms and systems should be constructed to achieve the same manufacturing quality as in Japan. In fact, QCTC hardly deals with data today, except for QC game exercises in which participants collect numerical values and create histograms, scatter diagrams, control charts, and so on, by themselves, and consider the results. However, participants learn about quality control without handling data in the other lectures and exercises.Takeda: I hear that in the budding days of QCTC, participants used to collect data from respective companies before arriving in Japan to have discussions with fellow participants during lectures. However, today’s participants no longer do this.Iwasaki: The concept of “building quality into production processes” has been regarded as the basis of quality control since the late 1950s to this day. In my opinion, it is essential that each person should fulfill his or her role in each process, thereby building quality into the process, and designing mechanisms should only come after this. However, my impression is that it is the other way around these days. Particularly, developing countries appear to tend to place more emphasis on mechanisms than on data.Takeda: I feel that many Asian people do not collect much field data now and they are becoming less and less aware about what is really going on in the field.Iwasaki: I have learned about worksites in various countries in the course of evaluation for the Deming Prize and have realized that data is hardly visualized. I believe that more data should be collected and processed for effective sharing in some creative ways. However, too much focus seems to be put on managerial aspects. In other words, sufficient efforts are not being made to constantly accumulate data-based improvement activities. In this regard, I suppose that there is a need to send out a stronger message about how important it is to collect and analyze data from Japan.We make it a rule to ask participants whether they know about the “seven tools” and “new seven tools” in the questionnaire survey which we conduct on participants before they come to Japan. However, those who answer “yes” often turn out to be

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