He was an American statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and consultant. Deming
is widely credited with improving production in the United States
during World War II, although he is perhaps best known for his work
in Japan. There, from 1950 onward he taught top management how to
improve design (and thus service), product quality, testing and sales
(the last through global markets) through various methods, including
the application of statistical methods.
Deming made a significant contribution to Japan's later-renown-for innovative highquality
products and its economic power. He is regarded as having had more impact
upon Japanese manufacturing and business than any other individual not of Japanese
heritage. Despite being considered something of a hero in Japan, he was only
beginning to win widespread recognition in the U.S. at the time of his death.
Deming philosophy synopsis:
The philosophy of W. Edwards Deming has been summarized as follows:
"Dr. W. Edwards Deming taught that by adopting appropriate principles of
management, organizations can increase quality and simultaneously reduce costs
(by reducing waste, rework, staff attrition and litigation while increasing
customer loyalty). The key is to practice continual improvement and think of
manufacturing as a system, not as bits and pieces."
In the 1970s, Dr. Deming's philosophy was summarized by some of his Japanese
proponents with the following 'a'-versus-'b' comparison:
(a) When people and organizations focus primarily on quality, defined by the
following ratio,
Quality = Results of work efforts
Quality tends to increase and costs fall over time.
(b) However, when people and organizations focus primarily on costs, costs tend to
rise and quality declines over time.
Deming's 14 points:
Deming offered fourteen key principles for management for transforming business
effectiveness. The points were first presented in his book Out of the Crisis.
1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with
the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western
management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities,
and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for
inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first
place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead,
minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a
long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to
improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease cost.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and
machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in
need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales,
and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in
use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero
defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create
adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low
productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work
force.
11. (a) Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute
leadership.
(b) Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers,
numerical goals. Substitute workmanship.
12. (a) Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of
workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer
numbers to quality.
(b) Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of
their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the
annual or merit rating and of management by objective.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everyone in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The
transformation is everyone's work. "Massive training is required to instill the
courage to break with tradition. Every activity and every job is a part of the
process."
