Yoji Akao
Encyclopedia
is a Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese planning specialist recognized as the developer of Hoshin Kanri
Hoshin Kanri
Hoshin kanri - is a method devised to capture and cement strategic goals as well as flashes of insight about the future and develop the means to bring these into reality."...
(a strategic planning
Strategic planning
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. In order to determine the direction of the organization, it is necessary to understand its current position and the possible avenues...
methodology). With the late Shigeru Mizuno, he developed Quality Function Deployment
Quality function deployment
Quality function deployment is a “method to transform user demands into design quality, to deploy the functions forming quality, and to deploy methods for achieving the design quality into subsystems and component parts, and ultimately to specific elements of the manufacturing process.”, as...
(a group decision making
Decision making
Decision making can be regarded as the mental processes resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion of choice.- Overview :Human performance in decision terms...
technique). Akao and Mizuno also co-founded the Quality Function Deployment Institute: a non-profit organization dedicated to dissemination and advancement of QFD.
Akao received a Ph.D. in 1964 from the Tokyo Institute of Technology
Tokyo Institute of Technology
The Tokyo Institute of Technology is a public research university located in Greater Tokyo Area, Japan. Tokyo Tech is the largest institution for higher education in Japan dedicated to science and technology. Tokyo Tech enrolled 4,850 undergaraduates and 5006 graduate students for 2009-2010...
.http://www.productivitypress.com/contributorinfo.cfm?ContribID=124
Books
Akao authored or co-authored several books:- Quality Function Deployment: Integrating Customer Requirements Into Product Design (1991)
- Hoshin Kanri: Policy Deployment for Successful TQM (Corporate Leadership) (1990)
- QFD: The Customer Driven Approach to Quality Planning and Deployment (co-authored with Shigeru Mizuno) (1994)