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7 QC

The document discusses the 7 QC tools, which were introduced by Kaoru Ishikawa in postwar Japan as a simplified set of quality control tools inspired by the weapons of a Japanese warrior monk. The 7 tools are check sheets, fishbone diagrams, histograms, Pareto charts, control charts, scatter diagrams, and stratification. Each tool is briefly described. The benefits of the 7 QC tools are that they are easy to understand and apply, can be implemented using software, and that 80% of quality issues can be addressed using 20% of the most common tools based on the Pareto principle.

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AMIT THAKKAR
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40 views5 pages

7 QC

The document discusses the 7 QC tools, which were introduced by Kaoru Ishikawa in postwar Japan as a simplified set of quality control tools inspired by the weapons of a Japanese warrior monk. The 7 tools are check sheets, fishbone diagrams, histograms, Pareto charts, control charts, scatter diagrams, and stratification. Each tool is briefly described. The benefits of the 7 QC tools are that they are easy to understand and apply, can be implemented using software, and that 80% of quality issues can be addressed using 20% of the most common tools based on the Pareto principle.

Uploaded by

AMIT THAKKAR
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Overview: What are the 7 QC tools?

It is believed that the 7 QC tools were introduced by Kaoru Ishikawa in postwar Japan, inspired
by the seven famous weapons of Benkei. Benkei was a Japanese warrior monk who armed
himself with seven weapons and was on a personal quest to take 1,000 swords from samurai
warriors who he believed were arrogant and unworthy.

Ishikawa was influenced by a series of lectures on statistical quality control given by Dr. W.
Edwards Deming in 1950 to a group of Japanese scientists and engineers. Unfortunately, the
complexity of the subject intimidated most workers, so Ishikawa focused primarily on a reduced
set of tools that would suffice for most quality-related issues.

The 7 QC tools are:

1. Check sheet 
2. Fishbone diagram (cause and effect diagram, or Ishikawa diagram)
3. Histogram
4. Pareto chart
5. Control chart
6. Scatter diagram
7. Stratification

Let’s explore each in a little more detail.

Check sheet: A form to collect and tally data for further analysis.

Fishbone diagram: Fishbone diagrams are used to drill down to find the root cause of a
problem. As the name implies, the diagram looks like the bones of a fish, where each main bone
represents a specific category of possible root cause, and the subsequent drilling down is shown
as smaller and smaller bones.
Histogram: This is a bar graph showing the frequency of a set of data, usually continuous data.
The histogram allows you to see the center of the data, the range of the data, and the distribution
of the data. It is a very useful snapshot. The downside is that you can’t see the sequence or order
of the data.

Pareto chart: This chart is based on the 80/20 principle that says 80% of your effect is caused
by 20% of your causes. For example, 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your customers. Dr.
Joseph Juran, who developed this chart, often referred to this principle as the vital few and trivial
many. He later revised that to the vital few and useful many. The Pareto chart lists the causes in
descending order of frequency or magnitude. It is used to prioritize what you should look at first
to improve your process.
Control chart: A control chart is a statistical tool that looks at your process data over time for
the purpose of distinguishing between special cause and common cause variation.

Scatter diagram: These are also known as scatter plots. They’re used to show a graphical
correlation between a set of paired data on an X and Y axis. It is the graphical representation of
what you would use for regression analysis.
Stratification: This is a graph that shows data that has been stratified when the data comes from
different sources. It is useful to view the data by certain strata such as shift, gender, geographic
location, machines, or suppliers.

3 benefits of the 7 QC tools 

These seven tools are easy to understand and apply and will help you understand what is going
on in your process. 

1. Easy 
These 7 QC tools are easy to understand and implement yet powerful in identifying root causes,
in discriminating between types of variation, and as a visual description of your data. A picture is
truly worth 10,000 words (or statistical calculations). 

2. Software-driven 

Gone are the days when you had to draw all of your graphs by hand. There are many simple and
cost-effective software packages that will take your data and quickly produce graphs. 

3. 80/20 

The Pareto principle applies to the 7 QC tools as well. 80% of your quality issues can be
addressed by using 20% of the most common tools.

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