High Quality
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I 50 WorOr L
•WithRussAckoff’sdeath,theworldlostoneofthepioneersofsystemsthinking.•Ackoffembracedqualitativemethodsandopenedthedoortomoreeffectiveproblem-solvingtechniques.•Despitehiscontribu-tions,Ackoffrejectedthegurulabelandencouragedotherstoadapthisideasastheysawt.
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RussAckofftooksystemsthinking
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byGregoryH.Watson
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Ater World WAr II,
the U.S. War Production Board sought to preserve the scientic knowledge gained during the war support eorts. Majoradvances expanded theoretical knowledge, such as the development o thediscipline o operations research. Practical advances o knowledge resultedrom the intense manuacturing eorts, such as the application o statisticalmethods in a practice o control or production methods. But somehow, theoryand practice diverged—and today we are worse o because o it.That was the lietime message o Russ Acko, who died this past October.He was a man who had one oot rmly planted in mathematical-analyticaldisciplines and the other in humanistic-participatory teamwork. His lie storyis instructive or quality proessionals as it traces the development o systemsthinking during its 60-year migration.
March2010•QP 27
TribuTe
let PHoto: russ Ack (igh) wih cagus Ws Chuchman () an Jamshi Ghaajaghi.rIGHt PHoto: Ack in his fc a Inac, h cnsuing cmpany h hp sabish.
QP•www.qualityprogress.com28
tw pahs ivg, bu why?
The quality movement missed incorporating some im- portant ideas rom great thinkers who, in an indirectway, infuenced the movement. This happened becausewe didn’t view these people as quality proessionalsand didn’t consider their concepts part o the qualitybody o knowledge (BoK). In doing this, we limited our perspective.In the period ollowing World War II, many greatminds were ocused on the mathematical modeling o real-world problems. This was tightly coupled with theemerging quality movement.For example, George B. Danzig, the man who in- vented linear programming, was a colleague o EugeneL. Grant in the Stanord University industrial engineer-ing department. Today, Danzig’s methods or linear programming and queuing theory are gaining atten-tion or possible inclusion in the Six Sigma BoK, andGrant’s control-chart lessons rom the eight-day WorldWar II courses are the oundation o all training in sta-tistical process control. A signicant advancement o knowledge occurredin the New York-Philadelphia corridor during the mid-1950s. This was the Silicon Valley o the emerging ana-lytical age that was the precursor to the inormationage. George D. Edwards, Walter A. Shewhart, HaroldF. Dodge and Harry G. Romig all worked at WesternElectric; Albert Einstein and John W. Tukey taught atPrinceton University; Mason E. Wescott and Ellis R. Otttaught at Rutgers; and Peter F. Drucker, Joseph M. Juranand W. Edwards Deming were part o the aculty at theNew York University Graduate School o Business.The rst book on operations research was writtenby Philip M. Morse and George E. Kimball and wasbased on the work o the Antisubmarine Warare Op-erations Research Group in the United States.
1
Morsereturned to the Massachusetts Institute o Technologyater the war to begin the Operations Research Centerand apply these methods to society’s problems. Kim-ball returned to New York City and taught operationsresearch and chemistry at Colombia University.
Biging h gap
Meanwhile, in the Midwest, an infuential center o an-alytical thinking was created at Case Institute o Tech-nology (now named Case Western Reserve University)in Cleveland, where Acko in 1951 ounded one o therst academic departments o operations research. Acko is oten called the ather o operations re-search. He introduced the subject in a 1952 articlein
Industrial Quality Control
(the previous name o
Quality Progress
), which illustrates the high degree o crossover that occurred among these disciplines dur-ing their inancy.
2
While Acko began his academic career in opera-tions reseach, he gradually transitioned to ocus ondeveloping a purposeul approach to systems. Acko’s
Introduction to Operations Research
observed that problems arise i management responsibility is highlysegmented. I operations research is used to identiythe “best decisions relative to as large a portion o totalorganizations as possible,” then it can help resolve this problem.
3
O course, this is a core idea o systems thinking.Through the years, Acko gradually became disen-chanted with intense analytical models that were ap- plied on ever-reduced practical problems. Acko movedhis group to the University o Pennsylvania in 1963, andby the early 1970s, he became one o the chie critics o what he called a “techniques-dominated” approach tooperations research while becoming a leading advocateor a more participative systems approach. Acko straddled quantitative and qualitative disci- plines. His legacy endures as a pioneer o operationsresearch and systems thinking. He made a career tran-sition during the early 1970s, when he realized thatnumbers are not enough to describe reality and thatmeasures are part o a management system and shouldsupport how managers make decisions.This sentiment echoes Deming, who Acko agreedwith on many points. Deming—along with Druckerand Juran—also advocated a systems approach tosolving problems: “You can’t run a company based on visible gures alone—it is important to know what isbehind the gures.”
4
Acko greatly infuenced Drucker, and they werelong-time riends. Acko was amiliar with Deming’swork, having met him in the early 1950s during the pe-riod in which Deming was interested in operations re-search. Acko lectured about systems in “The DemingLibrary” videos produced by Clare Craword Mason in1993, and his systems thinking had a strong infuenceon Deming.
5
Acko identied himsel more with systems think-ing, claiming operations research had become too“narrow and inward-looking,” and was limited by an in-
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