Alfred Chandler
W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993)
W. Edwards Deming has a unique place among management theorists. He had an impact on industrial history in a way others only dream of.
Trained as an electrical engineer, Deming then received a Ph.D. in mathematical physics from Yale.
Deming visited Japan after World War Two on the invitation of General MacArthur and played a key role in the rebuilding of Japanese industry. His impact was quickly recognized. He was awarded the Second Order of the Sacred Treasure and the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers instigated the annual Deming Prize in 1951.
During the 1950s, Deming and the other American standard bearer of quality, Joseph Juran, conducted seminars and courses throughout Japan.
Between 1950 and 1970 the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers taught statistical methods to 14,700 engineers and hundreds of others.
Deming, and Japanese management, were eventually ‘discovered’ by the West in the 1980s and then only when NBC featured a program on the emergence of Japan as an industrial power (‘If Japan can, why can’t we?’). Suddenly, Western managers were seeking out every morsel of information they could find – in October 1991 Business Week published a bonus issue devoted exclusively to quality which sold out in a matter of days and ran to two special printings of tens of thousands of copies.
Though an old man, Deming traveled the world preaching his gospel to increasingly receptive audiences.
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ut of the Crisis was published near to the end of W.
Edwards Deming’s life and exists as a rather pallid representation of his lifetime’s work. In Out of the Crisis, Deming distills quality down to a simple message. ‘Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your product and service, and that bring friends with them,’ he writes. While such beguiling home truths attracted a broader audience, they are only a shadow of Deming’s all encompassing concept of what quality entails.
‘The aim of this book is transformation of the style of American management,’ says Deming.
For Deming, quality was more than statistical control though this was important. ‘His work bridges the gap between science-based application and humanistic philosophy.
Statistical quality control is as and as it sounds. But results so spectacular as to be almost romantic flow from using these tools to improve processes in ways that minimize defects and eliminate the deadly trio of rejects, rework and recalls,’ stated the British management commentator, Robert Heller (1994).
The quality gospel of Out of the Crisis revolves around a number of basic precepts. First, if consistent quality is to be achieved senior managers must take charge of quality. Second, implementation requires a ‘cascade’ with training beginning at the top of the organization before moving downwards through the hierarchy. Third, the use of statistical methods of quality control is necessary so that, finally, business plans can be expanded to include clear quality goals.
As summarized in his famous Fourteen Points, quality is a way of living, the meaning of industrial life and, in particular, the meaning of management – ‘Management for quality’ was Deming’s constant refrain. Out of the Crisis presents a snappy version of Deming’s Fourteen Points:
1 Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service.
2 Adopt the new philosophy.
O
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3 Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
4 End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag alone. Instead, minimize total cost by working with a single supplier.
5 Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production and service.
6 Institute training on the job.
7 Adopt and institute leadership.
8 Drive out fear.
9 Break down barriers between staff areas.
10 Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.
11 Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management.
12 Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship. Eliminate the annual rating or merit system.
13 Institute a vigorous program of education and self- improvement for everyone.
14 Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation.
The simplicity of the Fourteen Points disguises the immensity of the challenge, particularly that facing management. Quality, in Deming’s eyes, is not the preserve of the few but the responsibility of all. In arguing this case Deming was anticipating the fashion for empowerment. ‘People all over the world think that it is the factory worker that causes problems.
He is not your problem,’ observed Deming in a 1983 lecture at Utah State University. ‘Ever since there has been anything such as industry, the factory worker has known that quality is what will protect his job. He knows that poor quality in the hands of the customer will lose the market and cost him his job. He knows it and lives with that fear very day. Yet he cannot do a good job. He is not allowed to do it because the management wants figures, more products, and never mind the quality.’
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To Deming, management is 90 percent of the problem, a problem caused in part by the Western enthusiasm for annual performance appraisals – Deming points out that Japanese managers receive feedback every day of their working lives.
‘The basic cause of sickness in American industry and resulting unemployment is failure of top management to manage. He that sells not can buy not,’ writes Deming.
Indeed, the Japanese culture was uniquely receptive to Deming’s message for a number of reasons. Its emphasis on group rather than individual achievement enables the Japanese to share ideas and responsibility, and promotes collective ownership in a way that the West often finds difficult to contemplate let alone understand.
Deming’s evangelical fervor has played a part in his work being narrowly interpreted. Managers feel ill at ease with his exhortations and broad philosophical goals. Even so, Deming’s ideas contain echoes of many current managerial preoccupations. In 1950, for example, Deming was anticipating reengineering with his call to arms: ‘Don’t just make it and try to sell it. But redesign it and then again bring the process under control . . . with ever-increasing quality . . . The consumer is the most important part of the production line.’
The longevity of Deming’s particular interpretation of quality remains open to debate. The popularity of quality as a generic ‘good thing’ has tended to dilute the profundity of the changes in thinking and action propounded by Deming. Amid a host of short-lived initiatives and ungainly acronyms, managers and their organizations can appear to have firmly embraced Deming’s theories. In practice this is not usually the case.
Even so, there is no questioning the enormous effect Deming’s thinking has had – both in Japan and now in the West. ‘The explosion of interest in quality in the 1980s, belated as it was, was principally stirred by Deming. ‘Deming didn’t invent “quality” . . . but his sermons had a uniquely powerful effect because of this first pulpit and congregation:
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Japan and Japanese managers. Had his fellow Americans responded with the same intense application, post-war industrial history would have differed enormously,’
commented Robert Heller (1994) after Deming’s death.