Seven Basic Quality Tools

Seven Basic Quality Tools

"The Old Seven." <br /> <br />"The First Seven." <br /> <br />"The Basic Seven." <br /> <br />Quality pros have many names for these seven basic tools of quality, first emphasized by Kaoru Ishikawa, a professor of engineering at Tokyo University and the father of “quality circles.” <br /> <br />Start your quality journey by mastering these tools, and you'll have a name for them, too: "indispensable." <br /> <br />Included in this straightforward, how-to book is a description, when to use, procedure, and example for these seven indispensable quality tools: <br /> <br />1. Cause-and-effect diagram (also called Ishikawa or fishbone chart): Identifies many possible causes for an effect or problem and sorts ideas into useful categories. <br /> <br />2. Check sheet: A structured, prepared form for collecting and analyzing data; a generic tool that can be adapted for a wide variety of purposes. <br /> <br />3. Control charts: Graphs used to study how a process changes over time. <br /> <br />4. Histogram: The most commonly used graph for showing frequency distributions, or how often each different value in a set of data occurs. <br /> <br />5. Pareto chart: Shows on a bar graph which factors are more significant. <br /> <br />6. Scatter diagram: Graphs pairs of numerical data, one variable on each axis, to look for a relationship. <br /> <br />7. Stratification: A technique that separates data gathered from a variety of sources so that patterns can be seen (some lists replace "stratification" with "flowchart" or "run chart").