The Quality Management Philosophy
of W. Edwards Deming

Updated on January 22, 2012

In 1981, when Ford Motor Company advertised that "Quality is Job One!", this sentence was part of a quality management statement that Deming helped them create. General Motors and Toyota have also used Deming's ideas. To build the fabulous 777 jet, Boeing used a number of Deming concepts in a new management philosophy called Working Together. Companies, hospitals, churches, and schools are all using Deming's Fourteen Points. The Department of the Navy has saved millions of dollars with the Deming approach!

( 1-22-2012 ) During the years that Deming helped companies, the expression "a Deming company" arose. THNC would be honored if, from the beginning of our operations, we would also become known as "a Deming company", even in the absence of his personal involvement.

You have to answer two questions: What are we doing? Why are we doing it? You must have a long-term aim, something that every member of the organization knows and can understand.

The old philosophy was to compete. The new philosophy is to cooperate in the organization so that everyone can win.

Inspection does not add quality. Inspections tell you if quality is there. It is or is not, and inspection cannot change it either way.

This one used to send purchasing agents into fits, but more and more companies are finding out it actually works.

This point is often misunderstood. You do get those leap-forward improvements using the Deming management system, but you also get the smaller improvements between the leaps.

Part of training is about how to do the job and another part is about why the job is being done. Unless everyone knows why they are doing a job, they cannot do it well.

Training for management must include training for leadership, an altogether different skill from what has normally been required, which is supervision.

To lead a company focused on improvements requires a whole different set of values and attitudes and relationships than leading an organization focused on control.

Build a system within your organization for win-win. This means cooperation. It means abolishment of competition.

How are you going to increase productivity? If the supplies are shoddy, the work force untrained and fearful, the machines out of control, and the management system chaotic, productivity is not going to be increased.

Deming told a story about the person with two job requirements... satisfying the calling customers and taking 25 calls each hour. You can do either; you cannot do both.

Abolish the annual rating or merit system which ranks people, creates competition, conflict.

Do not confuse education with training (point 6). Education has to do with anything whatever to keep people's minds developing.

Knowing all that you now know does you no good at all if you do not put it to use. You must develop a critical mass of associates who also believe it will work.

The W. Edwards Deming Institute ® is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1993 by noted consultant Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Books and videos of Deming seminars are available through the Institute.
http://deming.org/

Here's a book you might enjoy reading:
Thinking About Quality -- Progress, Wisdom, and the Deming Philosophy
by Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason,
Times Books, a division of Random House, Inc.: 1994
You can find this book at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=081292133X/3780-8353576-583190