The Life and Legacy of William Edwards Deming 

William Edwards Deming (1900 – 1993) was an American educator and statistician who was most well known for his advocacy of quality control measures in industrial production. The quality control philosophy he created quickened Japan’s economic recovery following the second world war. 

Deming earned his B.S. in engineering at the University of Wyoming in 1921, an M.S. in mathematics and physics from the University of Colorado in 1924, and a Ph.D. in mathematical physics in 1928. After completing his education, he taught physics at multiple universities and worked as a statistical adviser for the U.S. Census Bureau up until 1945. During this time, he was exposed to the work of Walter Shewhart and his techniques for managing manufacturing processes and maintaining quality control. He became interested in using these techniques to achieve improvement and quality control in projects outside of manufacturing (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2019, para. 1-2).

Deming’s 14 points for management 

Shewhart pioneered the PDCA(plan-do-check-act) cycle, which he introduced to Deming. This is a cycle of four stages of addressing a problem and solving it. These stages are meant to be repeated in order to maintain continuous improvement. Deming promoted this idea in the 50s and it eventually became known as the Deming cycle. Building off of the PDCA cycle, Deming came up with 14 points to be used as a systematic approach to developing knowledge in order to manage long term business goals. The following list is from his book, Out of the Crisis (Hunter, 2013, para. 4):  

  1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to 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 toward 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 costs.
  6. Institute training on the job.
  7. Institute leadership (see Point 12 and Ch. 8). 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.
    1. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
    2. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
  11. 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.
  12. 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 (see Ch. 3).
  13.  Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
  14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.

Deming’s quality control methods basically consisted of tracking a product’s defects, identifying and analyzing their causes, making corrections, and tracking outcomes to determine how effectively the corrections improved product quality. Because of his effective ideas, Japanese business owners invited him to Japan so that he could teach his methods to engineers and executives. Deming’s quality control methods were quickly adopted which helped Japanese businesses get ahead in multiple product markets around the world. Some American businesses followed suit in the 1980s. 

While Deming lived in Japan, he joined the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers. He also lectured on a combination of quality control techniques known as total quality management (TQM). In the 1980s, he spoke at seminars about the need for the western style of management to be radically changed. In 1986, he published Out of the Crisis, in which he described the transformative practices that allowed the Japanese manufacturing industry to become a world economic power. In that same year, he was also appointed as a distinguished professor in management at Columbia University. 

Demming worked as a professor and consultant at New York University’s graduate school until 1993. Just before passing away that year, he founded the W. Edward Demings Institute and continued consulting corporations and governments around the world and has had a profound and lasting impact. His contribution to the success of Japan’s economy has been recognized by economists as one of the most important achievements of the 20th century. 

Sources

Hunter, J. (2014, January 28). Deming’s 14 Points for Management. Retrieved from https://blog.deming.org/2013/04/demings-14-points-for-management/

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2019, December 16). W. Edwards Deming. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/biography/W-Edwards-Deming

W Edwards Deming: Total Quality Management thinker. (2016, January 19). Retrieved from https://www.bl.uk/people/w-edwards-deming#

W. Edwards Deming’s 14 Points for Total Quality Management. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://asq.org/quality-resources/total-quality-management/deming-points