How is Mr Kano connected to the PDCA cycle?
Noriaki Kano, professor emeritus at Tokyo University of Science, is known for
promoting the methods of Japanese total quality management and for developing the well-known Kano Model on product development and customer satisfaction.
He will become the 25th honorary member in ASQ’s history.
To honor him, I wanted to share how Mr Kano is curiously related to the PDCA cycle as we know it today.
The PDCA cycle (Plan Do Check Act) was initially developed by Dr Shewhart and broadly used by Dr Edwards Deming to teach leaders and employees how to continuously improve a process in his trips to Japan.
While studying Deming manuscripts, I found a letter in 1981 written by Mr Kano to Dr Deming. At that time Mr Kano was working for the university of Electro-Communications in Tokyo. He suggested subtle changes to the Deming theory that had been taught at Japan. Apparently before that time, the Deming cycle was called the Deming circle, and the steps were: Plan, Do, Check and Action.
Mr Kano mentioned that Cycle was more appropriate than circle to better understand that it represented a continuing and self corrective method. Regarding Action, all the other three words were verbs, so the last one could be Act, also a verb instead of action. Mr Deming replied that he agreed, and apparently he did updated the cycle.
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