W. EDWARDS DEMING: THE MAN AND THE LEGEND

In every field of endeavor there are people who are famous for being unknown. W. Edwards Deming was the ultimate manifestation of this peculiar art. From the moment of his "discovery" by American management in an NBC television documentary in 1980 until his death last month on December 20, Deming never lost his carefully cultivated image of an "outsider," the "prophet who was ignored in his own country," an "antiestablishmentarian," who liked nothing better than telling chief executives (and fellow members of the quality establishment) what they were doing wrong. In truth, he was the most famous quality guru in the world, a man welcome in any boardroom or factory floor, deeply admired by even those whose feathers he ruffled, which was pretty much everybody.

He blamed management for most of America's ills but perhaps his most revolutionary message to the managerial classes was his fundamental belief in the competence of the average worker and his or her willingness to work hard and work well, given an environment in which the worker was permitted to think and exercise control over quality. With "empowerment" now the rage (if not necessarily the reality), that message has gained widespread acceptance.

William Edwards Deming was born in Sioux City, Iowa, on October 14, 1900. His father, a not-very-successful rural attorney, was from Woodbury County, his mother from around Perry. When he was 4, the family moved to a 300-acre farm near Polk City owned by his grandfather. Two years later, the family moved to Powell, Wyoming. Although his family was poor, Deming worked hard and received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Wyoming and earned a master of science degree in physics from the University of Colorado in 1924. He taught physics at CU before and the Colorado School of Mines before going to earn a Ph.D. in physics from Yale in 1927.

The early hardscrabble days left a deep impression on Deming. Although he earned millions in fees in his later years, he never lost his aversion to waste. He drove a 1969 Lincoln Continental and took the bus or subway until he began needing a wheelchair two or three years ago. He worked out of his modest Washington, D.C., home in a basement office around the corner from a washer and dryer. He had one full-time assistant, Cecilia "Ceil" Kilian, who was with him for 39 years. When his health permitted, he worked six days a week, usually 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. He used a felt tip pen to date the eggs in his refrigerator to ensure the oldest were used first and no egg ever went bad.

In 1992, the University of Colorado announced the establishment of a Deming chair. It was attributed to an anonymous donor, but Richard Seebass, CU engineering dean, said Deming endowed the $500,000 chair himself. "He didn't want to be pestered for money," Seebass said. Deming in Japan I encourage to visit this site and read an alternative view about Deming's contribution to Japan, as well as one of the speeches he made in Japan in 1950.

Deming is generally credited with the post-war introduction of quality concepts to Japan, although the reality is much more complicated and there is considerable evidence that he learned as much from Japanese thinkers like Kaoru Ishikawa and Taichi Ohno as he taught them.

Indeed, one of the great myths of the modern quality revolution is that it began with a series of eight lectures given in Japan in 1950 by Deming. Deming had first gone to Japan in 1947 to help the U.S. Occupation prepare for the 1951 Japanese census. While there, he met and socialized with a number of members of the Japan Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE), Japan's most important quality control organization, founded in 1946.

Deming biographers point in particular to a dinner at Tokyo's Industry Club on July 13, 1950, in which he told the presidents of 21 (in some interviews Deming says 45) leading manufacturers that if they would only use statistical analysis to build quality in their products, they could overcome their reputation for shoddy quality within five years.

One might reasonably wonder why so many senior business leaders turned up to hear an obscure Census Bureau statistician deliver a lecture on an esoteric, effectively untranslatable subject in a language that virtually none of them understood.

The answer is that both they, and Deming, had been invited by Ichiro Ishikawa, a wealthy industrialist who, in addition to being president of JUSE, had also served as the first president of Japan's Keidanren, the Federation of Economic Organizations (FEO). On the surface, FEO sounds like some sort of benign industry trade group. In fact, it is an organization with the power -- sometimes exercised -- to topple prime ministers and change the course of the nation.

Set up in August 1946 under the aegis of the government and the occupation, FEO is an all-inclusive, all-powerful organization composed of more than 750 large corporations and 100 major national trade associations. It is the supreme coordinating body of what Americans call "Japan, Inc.," and its main purpose is "to maintain close contact with all sectors of the business community for the purpose of adjusting and harmonizing conflicting views and interests of the various businesses and industries represented in its huge membership. It is the front office of the business community and is in effect a partner of the government."

In 1950, refusing an invitation from Ishikawa was about as sensible as refusing a request from Don Corleone. It is unlikely, however, that Ishikawa wanted the business leaders there to be introduced to the concept of statistical quality control, for the simple reason that statistical methods had been introduced four years earlier and were already being widely promoted in Japanese industry.

A more likely reason for Ichiro Ishikawa's Deming dinner is that he wanted Japan's new industrial leaders to hear, from this tall, loud, terrifying gaijin -- a slightly derogatory word used to connote anyone who isn't Japanese -- what has been Deming's central message for the past 60 years: that they -- management -- were the problem, and that nothing would get better until they took personal responsibility for change.

And on that score Deming delivered. In a speech in Tokyo in November 1985, Deming recalled the dinner: "I did not just talk about quality. I explained to management their responsibilities. Management of Japan went into action, knowing something about their responsibilities and learning more about their responsibilities."

But, according to Kaoru Ishikawa, Ichiro's son, who would become Japan's leading quality guru, the Japanese quality movement made limited progress in the years immediately following Deming's 1950 visit. And, despite his father's pivotal role in bringing Deming to Japan in the first place, the younger Ishikawa maintained a deliberate distance from Deming throughout his life.

In the Japanese edition of a book on Deming, Ishikawa noted that Deming had borrowed many of the ideas for his famous Fourteen Points (the first ten or so of which were written in the mid-1960s, not as is often assumed earlier) from Japanese Total Quality Control (TQC) and J. M. Juran. This heretical passage does not appear in the English translation.

In fact, when Deming made his dinner speech on statistical process control (SPC) before Tokyo's Industry Club in the summer of 1950, SPC was already being widely promoted in Japanese industry. It had been introduced as part of the post-war reconstruction effort.

Shortly after Japan's surrender, the Civil Communications Section (CCS) was established by the Allied Command to help rebuild the country's telecommunications infrastructure. General MacArthur urgently wanted Japan to mass-produce radios so that Occupation authorities could reach every Japanese village quickly. The section's small Industrial Division was assigned to work with Japanese manufacturers of communications equipment, whose products at the time were highly unreliable.

Except for Homer Sarasohn, who had worked as a radio product development engineer at the old Crosley Corp. (now part of Textron), the group's key engineers -- W. S. Magil, Frank Polkinghorn, Charles Protzman -- had all worked at Western Electric or Bell Labs, the birthplace of American quality control. Indeed, it is Magil -- not Deming -- who is the father of statistical quality control in Japan, having advocated its use in lectures in 1945 and 1946 and successfully applied its techniques to vacuum tube production at Nippon Electric Company in 1946.

From 1945 to 1949, the CCS engineers worked on a variety of projects, including establishing the Electrical Testing Laboratory to certify that quality standards were being met, advising Japanese business leaders on production management, and generally upgrading working environments. During 1949-50, Sarasohn and Protzman organized a series of eight-week courses on industrial management to which only top executives in the communications industry were invited.

Among the students were Matsushita Electric's Masaharu Matsushita; Mitsubishi Electric's Takeo Kato; Fujitsu's Hanzou Omi; Sumitomo Electric's Bunzaemon Inoue; Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka, the founders of what is now Sony Corp. The courses were so popular that they continued for another 24 years after the Allied command was disbanded.

Kaoru Ishikawa (the son of Ichiro, who had invited Deming to speak) was familiar with statistical methods through the Western Electric engineers' work at NEC and NTT and had been influential in helping JUSE launch a magazine called Statistical Quality Control, several months before Deming's visit. Deming's Real Contribution

This slightly revisionist history is unlikely to make Deming loyalists happy, but his greatest contribution to the quality revolution may well stem from two spectacular, and seemingly accidental, public relations coups.

First, there are the prizes that bear his name. Knowing Japan's poverty, Deming refused any payment for his 1950 lectures and JUSE used the proceeds from reprints to create the Deming Application Prize, a prestigious award given annually since 1951 to companies with outstanding total quality programs, following a rigorous audit of their operations, and the Deming Prize, an award given to outstanding individuals. The awards -- medals bearing Deming's likeness -- are given each year with great fanfare and attendant publicity.

Despite that measure of fame, Deming might well have remained relatively unknown in his own country had he not been "discovered" in 1980 by Claire Crawford-Mason, a veteran news reporter and TV producer, who was putting together a documentary on the decline of American competitiveness for NBC called "If Japan Can... Why Can't We?"

At the suggestion of a faculty member at American University in Washington, she looked up Deming in his basement office in American University Park. She was amazed to find a man who seemed to know the answer to the program's provocative question living and working about five miles from the White House. Best of all, from the viewpoint of a TV producer in search of an exclusive, virtually nobody outside the rather arcane world of quality control had ever heard of him.

"If Japan Can...Why Can't We?" aired on June 24, 1980. The final 15 minutes were devoted to Deming and his consulting work at Nashua Corporation, a New Hampshire manufacturer of carbonless paper. Among other things, Deming told the interviewer: "I think people here expect miracles. American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan. But they don't know what to copy."

The show was one of the most successful business documentaries ever, and it turned Deming into a celebrity literally overnight. The next day, his office was bombarded with phone calls. This was 1980, remember, and a lot of American companies were looking for something -- anything -- that might help them stem the tide of red ink.

Deming's message was a wake-up call for American industry. Across the nation, the best senior executives heard the alarm. Among the early callers was Ford, which credits Deming's philosophy with spearheading its amazing comeback in the 1980s. Besides Ford, notable Deming disciples include Kmart, Hospital Corp. of America, and Florida Power and Light, the utility that in 1989 became the first U.S. entrant to win the Deming Prize for Overseas Companies, an offshoot of the Japanese annual award.

While Deming clearly did not "discover" quality or "introduce quality to Japan," he did as much as anyone to introduce quality to America, at a time when it needed the message. He was the spiritual force behind the quality improvement revolution that swept through thousands of American manufacturing and service companies in the 1980s.

Someone once asked Deming how he would like to be remembered in his native land. "I probably won't even be remembered," he replied, adding after a moment's pause: "Well, maybe ... as someone who spent his life trying to keep America from committing suicide."

In retrospect, it seems obvious that Deming understood that he could get his message across best by remaining an outsider. The last time I saw him was two years ago on the 10:30 a.m. shuttle from Washington to New York. It was the morning the Baldrige Awards were being given out in Washington and, as usual, Mr. Deming was going in a different direction.

Create constancy of purpose for continual improvement of products and service to society, allocating resources to provide for long range needs rather than only short term profitability, with a plan to become competitive, to stay in business, and to provide jobs.

Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age, created in Japan. We can no longer live with commonly accepted levels of delays, mistakes, defective materials, and defective workmanship. Transformation of Western management style is necessary to halt the continued decline of business and industry.

Eliminate the need for mass inspection as the way of life to achieve quality by building quality into the product in the first place. Require statistical evidence of built in quality in both manufacturing and purchasing functions.

End the practice of awarding business solely on the basis of price tag. Instead require meaningful measures of quality along with price. Reduce the number of suppliers for the same item by eliminating those that do not qualify with statistical and other evidence of quality. The aim is to minimize total cost, not merely initial cost, by minimizing variation. This may be achieved by moving toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long term relationship of loyalty and trust. Purchasing managers have a new job, and must learn it.

Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production, and service. Search continually for problems in order to improve every activity in the company, to improve quality and productivity, and thus to constantly decrease costs. Institute innovation and constant improvement of product, service, and process. It is management's job to work continually on the system (design, incoming materials, maintenance, improvement of machines, supervision, training, retraining).

Institute modern methods of training on the job for all, including management, to make better use of every employee. New skills are required to keep up with changes in materials, methods, product and service design, machinery, techniques, and service.

Adopt and institute leadership aimed at helping people do a better job. The responsibility of managers and supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality. Improvement of quality will automatically improve productivity. Management must ensure that immediate action is taken on reports of inherited defects, maintenance requirements, poor tools, fuzzy operational definitions, and all conditions detrimental to quality.

Encourage effective two way communication and other means to drive out fear throughout the organization so that everybody may work effectively and more productively for the company.

Break down barriers between departments and staff areas. People in different areas, such as Leasing, Maintenance, Administration, must work in teams to tackle problems that may be encountered with products or service.

Eliminate the use of slogans, posters and exhortations for the work force, demanding Zero Defects and new levels of productivity, without providing methods. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships; 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.

Eliminate work standards that prescribe quotas for the work force and numerical goals for people in management. Substitute aids and helpful leadership in order to achieve continual improvement of quality and productivity.

Remove the barriers that rob hourly workers, and people in management, of their right to pride of workmanship. This implies, among other things, abolition of the annual merit rating (appraisal of performance) and of Management by Objective. Again, the responsibility of managers, supervisors, foremen must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.

Institute a vigorous program of education, and encourage self improvement for everyone. What an organization needs is not just good people; it needs people that are improving with education. Advances in competitive position will have their roots in knowledge.

Clearly define top management's permanent commitment to ever improving quality and productivity, and their obligation to implement all of these principles. Indeed, it is not enough that top management commit themselves for life to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to—that is, what they must do. Create a structure in top management that will push every day on the preceding 13 Points, and take action in order to accomplish the transformation. Support is not enough: action is required!

Deming didn't say anything that hadn't been said before. He just got a developing nation to listen. His efforts to break down the "us against them" attitudes between management and workers and between departments within an organization were right on target.

He was quite a self-promoter as well. Fred Herzberg and Abe Maslow got there first.

Business has a new fad or two every year. They come in cycles and just get a different name each time. The worst thing in the world is a manager who reads the latest business trends books.

If I have to do one more "group building exercise," I think I'll puke.

This page ties into a couple previous, that I referenced; one depicting GE jet engines, and the other, about the unions. All are central to part of a previous life, where and when I sounded like the man.

Big thinkers dwelled and delved into the math, while I admired the fact, that he sounded like my grandfather and my father and no doubt their fathers before them.

That Mr. Deming presented the case that I would expect from a good accountant.

Deliberative thinking, common sense, respect for lessons learned, knowing your product and your capacity.

What business, government, and military leaders very much need but are short on, because it is not considered de rigeur of the "new [power grid] deal" inside the Beltway or on Wall Street.

I am forever amused by the endless chain of companies that brag to all that will listen to their commercials and other PR instruments, how totally committed they are to quality and their employees. However, the rubber still meets the road with numerical objectives and management's fear of relinquishing any control to workers because of their own accountability to shareholders for numbers.

I personally estimate that the U.S. annual expense budget could be cut by more than half if Deming's methods were used. Anyone seriously interested in reforming government would embrace Deming's methods for use in government. Since no one does, obviously no one is really serious about reforming government.

I was sent to a quality software course that mentioned Deming. So, I bought his book 'Out of the Crisis'. I liked it a lot.

Early in the book, he lays out the 14 points you should follow. On the next page (or so) he lays out the 14 (or so) points you should NOT do.

Guess which ones could be seen in action in my company ...

Things made a lot more sense after I figured out to use the second list to analyze what management was saying & doing.

I would recommend reading "The Myth of Japanese Quality" before hopping aboard the Deming train. While he had many good points to a more productive industrial complex, he had a tendency to ignore outliers or data that didn't fit his model in his statistical analyses...sort of like our global warming crowd.

I think the best way to look at the Deming effect in Japan is to look in the ordinary Japanese home. Is it full of quality appliances? Even looking at Japanese vehicles one will find that the quality trumpeted by the masses may be a case of self-supporting logic, i.e. I like quality vehicles...I think the Japanese vehicles are quality...I bought a Japanese vehicle...therefore, it must be high quality.

The quality of Japanese vehicles has undoubtedly risen over the last decade. However, back when the quality push was huge when comparing Japanese vs. American, no one took a hard look at the quality after 50,000 miles. If you were to look at vehicles with 100,000+ miles, the American cars won hands down. But, that didn't support the argument that Japanese cars were better, so no one blew that horn.

That said, I do think that the Japanese vs. American did give our manufacturers a kick in the behind to improve processes and quality. So, in the end, we benefited...

"If you were to look at vehicles with 100,000+ miles, the American cars"

In my experience, American made cars with 100,000+ miles are outliers

Americans still don't know how to(or won't) build quality vehicles.

Won't is more like it. If you have a 7 year old car where all you have to do is put oil in it (sound familiar?) you're useless to American management. You're not on the monthly payment treadmill like the rest of the slaves. Car makers are just as much banks as car makers and there's no profit in you enjoying your car payment free. Make that car so it starts falling apart the instant you make your 48th (!) payment.

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