William Edwards Deming

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William Edwards Deming

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"Shewhart Cycle,"[2] which had evolved into Plan-Do-check-Act (PDCA)

Japan rose from the ashes of war on the road to becoming the second-largest economy in the world through processes partially influenced by the ideas Deming taught:[4]
Better design of products to improve service
Higher level of uniform product quality
Improvement of product testing in the workplace and in research centers
Greater sales through side [global] markets

System of Profound Knowledge
Appreciation of a system: understanding the overall processes involving suppliers, producers, and customers (or recipients) of goods and services (explained below);
Knowledge of variation: the range and causes of variation in quality, and use of statistical sampling in measurements;
Theory of knowledge: the concepts explaining knowledge and the limits of what can be known.
Knowledge of psychology: concepts of human nature.

Knowledge is
Predictive
Theory, only as good as its last example

Systems Thinking, Measurement Science, Epistemology, Psychology

Dr. W. Edwards Deming taught that by adopting appropriate principles of management, organizations can increase quality and simultaneously reduce costs (by reducing waste, rework, staff attrition and litigation while increasing customer loyalty). The key is to practice continual improvement and think of manufacturing as a system, not as bits and pieces."

"The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside.

14 Key Principles of Business Effectiveness

Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive, to stay in business and to provide jobs.
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.
Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for massive inspection by building quality into the product in the first place.
End the practice of awarding business on the basis of a price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
Institute training on the job.
Institute leadership (see Point 12 and Ch. 8 of Out of the Crisis). The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. (See Ch. 3 of Out of the Crisis)
Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and usage that may be encountered with the product or service.
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.
Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute with leadership.
Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers and numerical goals. Instead substitute with leadership.
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.
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 objectives (See Ch. 3 of Out of the Crisis).
Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.

Create a constant purpose toward improvement.
Plan for quality in the long term.
Resist reacting with short-term solutions.
Don't just do the same things better – find better things to do.
Predict and prepare for future challenges, and always have the goal of getting better.
Adopt the new philosophy.
Embrace quality throughout the organization.
Put your customers' needs first, rather than react to competitive pressure – and design products and services to meet those needs.
Be prepared for a major change in the way business is done. It's about leading, not simply managing.
Create your quality vision, and implement it.
Stop depending on inspections.
Inspections are costly and unreliable – and they don't improve quality, they merely find a lack of quality.
Build quality into the process from start to finish.
Don't just find what you did wrong – eliminate the "wrongs" altogether.
Use statistical control methods – not physical inspections alone – to prove that the process is working.
Use a single supplier for any one item.
Quality relies on consistency – the less variation you have in the input, the less variation you'll have in the output.
Look at suppliers as your partners in quality. Encourage them to spend time improving their own quality – they shouldn't compete for your business based on price alone.
Analyze the total cost to you, not just the initial cost of the product.
Use quality statistics to ensure that suppliers meet your quality standards.
Improve constantly and forever.
Continuously improve your systems and processes. Deming promoted the Plan-Do-Check-Act  approach to process analysis and improvement.
Emphasize training and education so everyone can do their jobs better.
Use kaizen as a model to reduce waste and to improve productivity, effectiveness, and safety.
Use training on the job.
Train for consistency to help reduce variation.
Build a foundation of common knowledge.
Allow workers to understand their roles in the "big picture."
Encourage staff to learn from one another, and provide a culture and environment for effective teamwork.
Implement leadership.
Expect your supervisors and managers to understand their workers and the processes they use.
Don't simply supervise – provide support and resources so that each staff member can do his or her best. Be a coach instead of a policeman.
Figure out what each person actually needs to do his or her best.
Emphasize the importance of participative management and transformational leadership.
Find ways to reach full potential, and don't just focus on meeting targets and quotas.
Eliminate fear.
Allow people to perform at their best by ensuring that they're not afraid to express ideas or concerns.
Let everyone know that the goal is to achieve high quality by doing more things right – and that you're not interested in blaming people when mistakes happen.
Make workers feel valued, and encourage them to look for better ways to do things.
Ensure that your leaders are approachable and that they work with teams to act in the company's best interests.
Use open and honest communication to remove fear from the organization.
Break down barriers between departments.
Build the "internal customer" concept – recognize that each department or function serves other departments that use their output.
Build a shared vision.
Use cross-functional teamwork to build understanding and reduce adversarial relationships.
Focus on collaboration and consensus instead of compromise.
Get rid of unclear slogans.
Let people know exactly what you want – don't make them guess. "Excellence in service" is short and memorable, but what does it mean? How is it achieved? The message is clearer in a slogan like "You can do better if you try."
Don't let words and nice-sounding phrases replace effective leadership. Outline your expectations, and then praise people face-to-face for doing good work.
Eliminate management by objectives.
Look at how the process is carried out, not just numerical targets. Deming said that production targets encourage high output and low quality.
Provide support and resources so that production levels and quality are high and achievable.
Measure the process rather than the people behind the process.
Remove barriers to pride of workmanship.
Allow everyone to take pride in their work without being rated or compared.
Treat workers the same, and don't make them compete with other workers for monetary or other rewards. Over time, the quality system will naturally raise the level of everyone's work to an equally high level.
Implement education and self-improvement.
Improve the current skills of workers.
Encourage people to learn new skills to prepare for future changes and challenges.
Build skills to make your workforce more adaptable to change, and better able to find and achieve improvements.
Make "transformation" everyone's job.
Improve your overall organization by having each person take a step toward quality.
Analyze each small step, and understand how it fits into the larger picture.
Use effective change management principles to introduce the new philosophy and ideas in Deming's 14 points.

What is statistical control methods? (ELI5)

Dr. Deming is a very smart man who came up with a way to make things better. He said that if we make a little chart and draw a line on it, we can see if something is working well or not. If the line goes up and down a lot, it means the thing we are making is not working well and we need to fix it. But if the line stays in the same place, it means the thing we are making is working well and we don't need to fix it. So, we can use this chart to make sure things are working well and make them better if they're not.

The "Seven Deadly Diseases" include:
Lack of constancy of purpose
Emphasis on short-term profits
Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance
Mobility of management
Running a company on visible figures alone
Excessive medical costs
Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers who work for contingency fees
"A Lesser Category of Obstacles" includes:
Neglecting long-range planning
Relying on technology to solve problems
Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions
Excuses, such as "our problems are different"
The mistaken belief that management skills can be taught in classes
Reliance on quality control departments rather than management, supervisors, managers of purchasing, and production workers
Placing blame on workforces who are responsible for only 15% of mistakes while the system designed by management is responsible for 85% of the unintended consequences
Relying on quality inspection rather than improving product quality

Plan - Establish objectives and processes required to deliver the desired results.

Do - The do phase allows the plan from the previous step to be done. Small changes are usually tested, and data is gathered to see how effective the change is.

Study - During the check phase, the data and results gathered from the do phase are evaluated. Data are compared to the expected outcomes to see any similarities and differences. The testing process is also evaluated to see if there were any changes from the original test created during the planning phase. If the data is placed in a chart it can make it easier to see any trends if the PDCA cycle is conducted multiple times. This helps to see what changes work better than others, and if said changes can be improved as well.

Act - Also called "Adjust", this act phase is where a process is improved. Records from the "do" and "check" phases help identify issues with the process. These issues may include problems, non-conformities, opportunities for improvement, inefficiencies and other issues that result in outcomes that are evidently less-than-optimal. Root causes of such issues are investigated, found and eliminated by modifying the process. Risk is re-evaluated. At the end of the actions in this phase, the process has better instructions, standards or goals. Planning for the next cycle can proceed with a better base-line. Work in the next do phase should not create recurrence of the identified issues; if it does, then the action was not effective.

“Experience by itself teaches nothing…Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence, without theory, there is no learning.”

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Let’s have a conversation about today so that I may start my day on the right foot. Let’s start with a single question and nothing more to help me reflect on the day ahead.

What's the most important system or process in your day that you could focus on improving, even if just by a small amount?

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Why is Risk/Reward is Important to Think About When Making Business Decisions

Focusing solely on potential rewards while ignoring risks is a recipe for poor business decisions. The entire system must be considered - the upside, the downside, and the probabilities of each outcome. Chasing short-term gains without assessing long-term consequences can lead an organization astray.

The key is to gather data, analyze variation, and use statistical methods to quantify risks and rewards. What does past experience tell us about the likelihood and magnitude of different scenarios? How might this decision impact other parts of the business system? Slogans like "go big or go home" sound bold but are meaningless without a fact-based understanding of what's truly at stake.

Management's role is to design a decision-making process that objectively weighs risks and rewards to continuously improve overall business performance. Arbitrary targets and pressuring people to "just make it happen" will only incentivize them to take unwise gambles or cover up potential issues. The emphasis should be on perfecting the system, guided by profound knowledge.

In the end, quality and customer satisfaction must be the ultimate judges. Will this decision enhance the value we deliver in the eyes of our customers? What are the quality risks and how can we mitigate them? Pursuing "growth at all costs" without this lens is foolhardy.

So in summary, considering risk/reward is critical for making sound business decisions that drive true continuous improvement. But it has to be done systematically, scientifically and holistically - not based on management whims or a myopic view of only upside potential. Does this align with how you currently approach key decisions? What changes might you make to better balance risk and reward?

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Why is it important to say no to requests from others in your organization?

Saying no to requests from others in your organization can be important in certain situations, but it should not be done arbitrarily or without good reason. The key is to evaluate each request through the lens of whether it aligns with and contributes to the overall goals and continuous improvement of the system and processes.

Some requests may represent short-term fixes or workarounds that undermine the long-term health and efficiency of the organization. These should be resisted in favor of changes that enhance the system itself. Other requests may be symptoms of underlying flaws in the process that need to be addressed at a root cause level.

However, many requests likely come from a genuine desire to collaborate and solve problems. These should be welcomed as opportunities to break down barriers, share knowledge, and work together to optimize the whole. The goal is not to reflexively say no, but to thoughtfully consider if the request moves the organization in a direction of ever-increasing quality and customer satisfaction.

When a request does need to be declined, it's crucial to explain the reasoning in terms of process and system improvement. How could the request be modified so that it does contribute to making things better? What data and theory support a different course of action? The discussion should unite people around the shared purpose of progress, not divide them.

Ultimately, the decision to say yes or no to a request should be guided by whether it serves the aims of constant, incremental refinement of the organization's products and processes. Does it help reduce variation, remove inefficiencies, and fulfill the potential of the people involved? That is the standard to judge it against.

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Why is it important to ask for things from others in your organization?

Asking for things from others in your organization can be important at times, but it should not be the primary focus. The key is to improve the system and processes so that people can do their best work without needing to constantly request resources or assistance.

When individuals frequently need to ask others for help or materials, it often indicates a flaw or inefficiency in the overall system. Perhaps there are communication barriers between departments, a lack of standardized procedures, or an uneven distribution of resources. These systemic issues lead to wasted time and effort as people scramble to get what they need.

The goal should be to optimize the organization so it functions as a smooth, integrated whole. Cross-functional collaboration and open information flow can help identify weak points and implement process improvements. If everyone understands their role and has access to necessary resources from the start, there is less need to make requests of others.

That said, completely eliminating the need to sometimes ask things of colleagues is likely impossible and perhaps even undesirable. Seeking input and collaborating with others can lead to valuable insights and innovations. The key is to have a culture and system that encourages teamwork and makes those interactions efficient.

So in summary, while occasionally requesting assistance is fine and even beneficial, an organization that requires constant asks to function has opportunities for improvement. Does this align with how your organization currently operates? What are some ways you could enhance processes and collaboration to reduce the need for ad hoc requests between individuals and teams?

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Why is it important to align intentions with others in your organization?

Aligning intentions across the organization is crucial because a company is a system, and the actions of each part impact the whole. If different departments or individuals are working towards conflicting goals, it creates waste, inefficiency and frustration.

Consider this: what happens when the sales team is incentivized to maximize revenue, while production focuses solely on cost reduction? Sales overpromises to win deals, putting strain on manufacturing to deliver. Quality suffers as corners are cut to meet arbitrary targets. The company's reputation takes a hit, as does employee morale. Is this really the optimal way to run an organization?

The alternative is to unite everyone behind a shared aim - providing maximum value to the customer. This requires breaking down silos between functions so they can collaborate to continuously improve the end-to-end process and system. Misalignment often stems from a myopic view - marketing, engineering and accounting each trying to perfect their piece in isolation. But how can you optimize the whole by focusing on the parts?

Lasting success comes from recognizing the interconnectedness of the system. It's management's job to ensure every person and activity is oriented towards a common purpose. This starts with a constancy of intention and clear communication of how each role fits into the bigger picture. Arbitrary targets and internal competition must give way to cooperation in service of the customer.

When intentions are aligned, the organization can work in harmony to systematically identify and eliminate the root causes of waste and defects. The result is ever-increasing quality, lower costs, higher profits and greater worker fulfillment. Isn't that an aim worth striving towards together?

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From your perspective, what are important conversations a person might have to have with their manager?

From the perspective of the provided worldview, there are several important conversations an employee should have with their manager to ensure they are working together to continuously improve the system and processes:

1. Discussing process improvement opportunities: The employee should bring forward any ideas they have for incrementally enhancing the quality and efficiency of their work processes. The focus should be on eliminating waste, reducing costs, and boosting customer satisfaction through scientific process changes, not quick fixes.

2. Analyzing problems in the system: If the employee is encountering issues or subpar results, they should engage their manager to objectively examine the process and system for root causes, distinguishing between common cause and special cause variation. The emphasis should be on fixing the system, not blaming individuals.

3. Breaking down barriers between departments: The employee should alert their manager to any departmental silos or communication breakdowns that are hindering the organization from working as a unified whole to deliver quality. Cross-functional collaboration is key.

4. Ensuring performance is measured properly: The employee should clarify with their manager that their performance will be evaluated based on the quality and consistency of the process outputs, not arbitrary personal standards, quotas or targets. The goal is pride in workmanship through process refinement.

5. Pursuing training and development: The employee should discuss with their manager opportunities to enhance their profound knowledge - appreciation for a system, knowledge about variation, theory of knowledge, and psychology. Continuous learning is essential for continuous improvement.

The overarching theme is that the employee-manager dialogue should center around taking a scientific, data-driven, systems-level view to make the ongoing process enhancements that will ultimately deliver the highest quality to the customer. Quality is the unifying principle.

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