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Adventures in Quality: Part 2


W. Edwards Deming wrote just a handful of books in his lifetime, only two of which gained any sort of widespread recognition: Out Of The Crisis, his magnum opus, and The New Economics, a condensed version of Out Of The Crisis.

I set out on a Saturday afternoon to but a copy of Out Of The Crisis to study Deming's work in depth. I met up with a work colleague in Manchester to discuss my discovery of Deming over a drink, then set off to Waterstone's to buy the book.

I was, to say the least, surprised to find they had no books of Deming's at all in any of the bookstores we went to. Here's a guy who enabled Japan to become the foremost manufacturer in the world in the second half of the 20th century, and his books aren't stocked by retailers?

Amazon came up trumps though, and I ordered both of Deming's best known books.

Out Of The Crisis is not, it has to be said, an easy read. But to anyone who is seeking to create the best possible quality in whatever they do, it's safe to say that this is the best possible text on the subject - whatever effort you put into reading this book you will more than get out of it. The advice it contains forms a complete philosophy of management which can be applied to any business anywhere. The principles are quite simple, but applying them successfully takes much careful consideration and thought.

To briefly summarise the most important parts of this book; Deming advocated that all managers need to adopt what he called a System of Profound Knowledge, consisting of:

1. Appreciation of a system
2. Knowledge of variation
3. Theory of knowledge
4. Knowledge of psychology

This is the basis of his famous 14 points for management for transforming business effectiveness, which can be summarised as follows:

1. Create constancy of purpose for the improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive, stay in business, and provide jobs.
2. Adopt a new philosophy of cooperation (win-win) in which everybody wins and put it into practice by teaching it to employees, customers and suppliers.
3. Cease dependence on mass inspection to achieve quality. Instead, improve the process and build quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag alone. Instead, minimize total cost in the long run. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, based on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly, and forever, the system of production, service, planning, of any activity. This will improve quality and productivity and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training for skills.
7. Adopt and institute leadership for the management of people, recognizing their different abilities, capabilities, and aspiration. The aim of leadership should be to help people, machines, and gadgets do a better job. Leadership of management is in need of overhaul, as well as leadership of production workers.
8. Drive out fear and build trust so that everyone can work more effectively.
9. Break down barriers between departments. Abolish competition and build a win-win system of cooperation within the organization. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team to foresee problems of production and use that might be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets asking for zero defects or 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. Eliminate numerical goals, numerical quotas and management by objectives. Substitute leadership.
12. Remove barriers that rob people of joy in their work. This will mean abolishing the annual rating or merit system that ranks people and creates competition and conflict.
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.

In addition to the 14 points, Deming also defined what he called The Seven Deadly Diseases of management:

1. Lack of constancy of purpose.
2. Emphasis on short-term profits.
3. Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance.
4. Mobility of management.
5. Running a company on visible figures alone.
6. Excessive medical costs.
7. Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers who work for contingency fees.

In addition to The Seven Deadly Diseases, there is also A Lesser Category of Obstacles:

1. Neglect of long-range planning.
2. Relying on technology to solve problems.
3. Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions.
4. Excuses such as "Our problems are different".

To understand and use this knowledge takes a lot of careful thought and study, which is why so few managers use it in the West. I was determined to apply this to my own work, which meant buying several more books to help me in this goal - I'll review these in the next entry for anyone else who might wish to do the same.