Yoshio Kondo, Ph.D., a quality management leader who stressed the interrelationship between quality and people, died April 1, 2011, at the age of 87.

According to professor Samuel Ho and Christopher Fung, Ph.D., authors of the TQM Excellence Model, Kondo emphasised the interrelationship between quality and people and saw humanity as the essence of motivation. According to Kondo, human work should always include the following three components:
• Creativity—the joy of thinking
• Physical activity—the joy of working with sweat on the forehead
• Sociability—the joy of sharing pleasure and pain with colleagues

Among his many awards, Kondo received the Nikkei Quality Control Literature Prize in 1967, and the Deming Prize in 1971.

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