7 QC Tools Overview

What is Quality Control?

Per Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, Quality Control consists of developing, designing, producing, marketing, and
servicing products and services with optimum cost-effectiveness and usefulness, which customers will
purchase with satisfaction.

From this definition it’s clear that Dr. Ishikawa felt quality control was far more than visually
inspecting parts at the end of the assembly line. In fact, Dr. Ishikawa often spoke of Total Quality
Control or TQC which saw quality control spread to all facets of the organization including front
office tasks.

Benefits of Quality Control

First, when quality control becomes a way of life the number of
defective products will decrease and as such, over time, customer
satisfaction will increase leading to enhanced trust and loyalty.

And from an internal perspective consistent quality control lowers

costs for the company since people are not wasting time
reworking parts and waiting for good parts to be produced and, as
such, profits increase year over year.

So, you see, done correctly, quality control reaches all aspects of
your business which results in happy and loyal customers.

Introducing the 7 QC Tools

1. The first of the 7 QC tools is the graph. Now most of us have seen or used graphs at one
time or another. With graphs data are expressed to easily compare quantities or quantity
changes. They’re also used for arranging data, sharing information with others, and making
judgments.
2. The second QC tool is the check sheet which are tables used to arrange data by type. We
also use these simple, but powerful tools, for checking if jobs are completed without problems
or for preventing mistakes from happening. Check sheets are becoming particularly popular
in the healthcare field.
3. The third QC tool is the Pareto Chart. A Pareto Chart classifies problems and defects by
type in the order of quantities and shows the cumulative total. Pareto Charts are often used

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 for checking a problem or defect items to be highlighted for solution. In other words, Pareto
Charts often help us to identify where the problem is as we learned about in the Gemba
Academy Practical Problem Solving course.
4. The fourth tool, invented by the aforementioned Dr. Ishikawa is the Cause & Effect
diagram, sometimes called the fishbone. The cause and effect diagram systematically
arranges the results of effects and the factors that influence them. With this information
we’re able to clarify causes and their possible influence on the problem at hand.
5. The fifth QC tool is called the Scatter Diagram which is a graph used to examine the
correlation between variables by plotting corresponding data. In other words, scatter
diagrams help us examine the relationships between two variables and whether or not they
are correlated.
6. Next, we come to the Histogram which is a columnar section chart that’s created by
counting the frequency of data in each zone divided throughout the data area. With
histograms we’re able to learn many things including how much variation, or spread, a data set
contains.
7. And last but certainly not least, we come to the Control Chart which is a tool used for
judging the situation of quality values against control limits in order to check the stability of a
process. Control charts also help us to understand whether we’re dealing with common
cause or special cause variation which is extremely important information to know as we
work to control quality across all levels of the organization.

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