Gopal Kanji

Citation

Douglas, A. (2010), "Gopal Kanji", The TQM Journal, Vol. 22 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/tqm.2010.10622eaa.001

Gopal Kanji

Article Type: In memoriam From: The TQM Journal, Volume 22, Issue 5

Everyone associated with The TQM Journal was saddened to learn of the death of Gopal Kanji who died on the 28 May after a fight against lung cancer. He was the founding Editor of The Journal of Applied Statistics and Total Quality Management, which later became Total Quality Management and Business Excellence. He authored or co-authored 15 books and published almost 100 research papers during a career that lasted nearly 40 years.

He was a Fellow of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and was Vice Chair of the International Chapter of ASQ for Europe and the Middle East. He was an Academician of the International Academy of Quality (IAQ). He was a Fellow of the Institute of Statisticians, the Royal Statistical Society and a member of the International Statistical Institute. He was Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics at Sheffield Hallam University.

However, he will probably be best remembered as the founding chairman of the World Congress for Total Quality Management, which he started at Sheffield Hallam University in 1995. I was fortunate to attend the 2nd World Congress as a PhD student and met Gopal there for the first time. It was to be a long association. He was later to examine my PhD thesis. The World Congress was based at Sheffield Hallam until 2001, when it moved to the Stockholm School of Economics in St Petersburg (Russia). It subsequently was held in Verona (Italy), Dubai, Abu Dhabi (UAE), New Zealand, Edinburgh (Scotland), Vancouver (Canada) and Houston (USA).

My abiding personal memory of Gopal is of him on the Taylor & Francis publishing stand at the ASQ Annual Congress Exhibition Hall promoting his journals. He was there every May. At the end of the Congress he would allow me to take my pick of the journals to take home with me. I think his act of generosity was tinged by the knowledge that the more journals I took away the fewer he would have to pack up to take away with him. This scenario was repeated year after year. It was at ASQ that Gopal introduced me to his great friend, Hans Bajaria, another icon of the quality profession, sadly, also no longer with us.

I am sure all of us who have met Gopal will have an abiding memory of the man who made such an impact on the quality profession. However, at this time our thoughts and prayers are with Gopal’s family and all of us at The TQM Journal offer our deepest sympathies and condolences for their great loss.

Alex DouglasEditor