2007 Volume 15 Issue 2 Pages 88-122
In an article in the Nikkan Kogyo newspaper on March 22, 2002, Shigeru Tai reported the successful use of on-line quality engineering by Mazda in starting a new production process. The impact of this article on the spread of quality engineering was substantial. Quality engineehng also occupies a central position in the probability and statistics curriculum at the School of Science and Engineering at Tokyo Denki University. The above article was distributed to students taking this course, who were asked to write reports about it. The authors read the reports, distributed the results back to the students, and asked for a second report. What came out of this cyclic interchange were new discoveries that resulted from stimulating contact between a school, an enterprise, and a newspaper, three parties among which there would normally be no contact at all. By recording this process and studying its meaning, this study clarifies the social significance of the quality engineering paradigm shift. First, prerequisite material is presented; then the opinions exchanged among the three parties during the interaction process are presented, showing the reactions that took place over time. The conclusion is that exchanges between different fields hold the possibility of creating a new basis for the development of quality engineering.
