Yuzuru Ito was the founder of Achieving Competitive Excellence (ACE) and

Ito University Ito may refer to: Places * Ito Island, an island of Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea * Ito Airport, an airport in the Democratic Republic of the Congo * Ito District, Wakayama, a district located in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan * Itō, Shizuo ...

United Technologies United Technologies Corporation (UTC) was an American multinational conglomerate headquartered in Farmington, Connecticut. It researched, developed, and manufactured products in numerous areas, including aircraft engines, aerospace systems ...

Corporation (UTC) established Ito University as the tangible means to build a network of lean leadership philosophies to improve UTC's internal and external supply systems. When he was 64, a retiree from Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (MC), Ito moved to a

Hartford Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...

suburb to work on improving the productivity of UTC's businesses.

George David George Alfred Lawrence David (born April 7, 1942) is the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of United Technologies Corporation. David was elected UTC’s President in 1992 and Chief Executive Officer in 1994. He joined UTC’s Otis Elevat ...

first encountered Ito in 1989, after he was brought in by the unit's

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese joint venture partner, Matsushita Industrial, to try to figure out why

Otis Otis may refer to: Arts and entertainment Characters * Otis (Superman), in the films ''Superman'' and ''Superman II'' and related DC Comics media ** Otis Graves, in the TV series ''Supergirl'' * Otis (The Walking Dead), Otis (''The Walking Dead' ...

's newly designed, modern Elevonic 401 elevators were not performing in the field, including some that caught fire. Their callback rates (the number of times per year a building owner has to call mechanics for service) were as high as 40 per unit a year, vs. an average of 0.5 for rival

Mitsubishi Electric , established on 15 January 1921, is a Japanese multinational electronics and electrical equipment manufacturing company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the core companies of Mitsubishi. The products from MELCO include elevators an ...

. Otis dispatched a team of US engineers to get the machines working. Their Japanese partners got directly involved with the engineers who were tasked with analyzing the cause of the problem. Later, with Ito in charge, the work they did changed the fundamental design of the elevator line worldwide. After his death, Ito University was established by United Technologies Company (UTC) to educate and promote quality, Lean & philosophies across all UTC divisions worldwide.

Ito University Foundations

This internal "university" is a three-day course that teaches UTC managers the fundamentals of improving the quality of UTC products, services and

business process A business process, business method or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (serves a particular business goal) for a parti ...

es. Ito University Foundations is a living tribute to the late Yuzuru Ito, UTC's quality advisor, who led quality efforts for Japan's Matsushita Electric (known in the U.S. as

Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Osaka P ...

) for decades. He was one of the world's foremost experts on quality and UTC's quality advisor from the late 1980s until his death in 2000.

References

* The Unsung CEO - United Technologies' CEO George David runs a $31 billion company that outguns GE in shareholder return. Who is he—and how does he do it? . (2004).

Business Week ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...

(OCTOBER 25, 2004 ). https://web.archive.org/web/20090327144712/http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_43/b3905001_mz001.ht

m PDF https://web.archive.org/web/20110716162020/http://www.sullair.com/Files/Sullair-HQ/Global/US-en/corporate/George_David.pd

* Quality. (2009). Ito University Foundations. from https://web.archive.org/web/20090424202440/http://www.utc.com/utc/About_UTC/Our_Philosophy.htm

* Laing, J. R. (2006). George David, House of David. May 8, 2006. Retrieved April 5, 2009, 2009, from http://www.smartmoney.com/investing/economy/house-of-david-19440

* United Technologies Corporation YEAR IN REVIEW. (1998). UTC. * Gear, N. (2008). UTC Quality & Dr Ito. Gear Motions Gear Manufacturer Capabilities. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ito, Yuzuru 2000 deaths Businesspeople from Hartford, Connecticut Year of birth missing