The Seven Basic Tools of Quality are a set of useful tools that can be used to solve many quality-related problems. They contain qualitative and quantitative techniques and are often used in the context of the PDCA cycle. There is still no unified agreement of which tools to include in the seven basic tools of quality. However, five of the seven tools are agreed upon by most of the authors: histograms, control charts, fishbone diagrams, Pareto charts and scatter diagrams. Tools that are not agreed upon may include: flowcharts, check sheets, run charts, stratification, trend charts and other types of analytical graphs.

The Seven Management and Planning Tools on the other hand are a set of tools that help organize and analyze facts and ideas when dealing with complex problems. They can be used by teams to make better decisions as part of the decision-making process. The seven commonly recognized management and planning tools include: affinity diagrams, tree diagrams, matrix diagrams, interrelationship diagrams, activity network diagrams, prioritization matrices and process decision program charts.

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