Deming's ideas and procedures only have value when implemented. Many American businesses have mangers that are fad grabbers. They jump on the latest bandwagon, think they can "tweak" it to improve it and then spot another fad management tool and do it all over again. With 22years experience in major company management I can assure you my experience complies with this approach.

Thanks for reminding me of all those Toyota recalls. I studied TQM rather intently in the 1980's, but let it slip to the back of my mind since then. I have become convinced that corporate problems are leadership problems, no matter what 'system' is supposed to be in use.

I'm glad that I have people like you and khalling to teach me about people like Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman. I had this sterling image of Meg Whitman, because EBay is probably my favorite company.

The devil is always in the details. You are correct in identifying that there are substantial metaphysical attributes associate with Quality because it IS at its core a subjective term. Deming only sought out ways to objectively examine quality in a quantitative manner, the premise being that if you could establish what objectively could be described as a "satisfactory" level of Quality, it then became a straightforward comparison to evaluate one's products on this basis. If one significantly exceeded these benchmarks, one could verifiably claim "superior" quality.

I think that Rand would congratulate Deming in his efforts to objectify the inherently subjective!

When referring to Japanese or Korean companies, I believe the word is kairetsu...

I have to wonder when they gave up on it then. According to recalls, prior to the GM starter fiasco Toyota was head and shoulders above all other manufacturers in product recalls for vehicles since the early 90's. Maybe that corresponds to when Japan's economy began to stagnate. An interesting theory.

Thanks for the detail. I'll have to keep an eye on them.

I will say this: they certainly couldn't have done better by keeping the HP management philosophies pushed by Lou Platt, Carly Fiorina, or that schmuck who replaced her...

http://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i2/Instru...

"A substantial portion of growth in Agilent Technologies’ life sciences and diagnostics business came from the Dako diagnostics business it acquired in mid-2012. And Agilent continues to be excited about diagnostics and pharmaceuticals markets, as well as food and energy, CEO William P. Sullivan recently told analysts.

After growing through acquisition, Agilent is poised to get smaller again with a split in two planned for later this year. Keeping the Agilent name, one company will have the better-performing life sciences, diagnostics, and applied markets businesses. The other piece, to be called Keysight Technologies, will be made of Agilent’s electronic measurement business. It saw revenues decline in 2013, although it should see a boost from economic growth anticipated in the second half of 2014, Sullivan said."

I agree, but consistent with my other replies above I caution you that many in business look upon Deming's work as a "solved" problem and simply execute his approach by rote; they don't believe that the issues involved require any additional thought and this is far from the truth. I've worked for such companies and their focus is so much on quality that they stifle creativity and innovation from the ranks.

Agreed. Just like the AWG crowd, Deming's ideas are looked upon as "settled science" which assumes that no one need *thiink* about the subject anymore. Anything depending upon human psychology is far from "settled".

Hadn't heard that. Would like to hear more details, though.

For those not familiar, Agilent was the divestiture where HP's medical devices and measuring instruments were tasked. HP (or HP Invent as Carly put it) held on to the more consumer electronics end: printers, PC's, servers, storage (after that worthless merger with Compaq), etc.

Don't forget that these companies are in bed with government and their pictures on in the dictionary under the term "crapitalism" (crony capitalism)

This speaks to exceptionalism; as HP was never the same without Hewlett and Packard, Microsoft was never the same after Gates, and Apple not the same after Jobs. While these companies are still "alive" in one sense, they are declining rapidly because of the lack of vision now that their founders are gone. What is the motor without Galt? Nothing but wires and metal rusting in an abandoned factory. [Edit: phraseology and spelling]

Oh no....don't say Metaphysics aloud

The AR purists will run you out of town

Or as we used to put it....

There is never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.


Said with a cynical eyeroll after the warnings were ignored

I agree with woodlema: there is a significant difference between an invention and an improvement. Rand focused a lot on invention where Deming focused on improvement. I think the two are complementary much more than they are combative in nature. I wholeheartedly agree with the evolutionary vs revolutionary descriptions as being applicable: one involving incremental adjustments and the other invention or re-invention.

Do you really think that Hank Reardon would have scoffed at Deming when producing Reardon Metal? I wot not. I think Dagny Taggart would have loved to have been able to get her hands on the parts she needed that had been rigorously QC'd using Deming's methods so she wasn't constantly jury-rigging or cannabilizing things!

Deming was a statistician for Bell Labs. He advocated looking at manufacturing problems statistically and championed what we now call process control. The goal was to produce as few out of spec parts as possible.

That has NOTHING to do with thinking in or out of a box. It has nothing to do with radical innovation or invention. It has nothing to do with politics or epistemology except to advocate that our decisions be driven by data rather than intuition.

And what this all has to do with Common Core really escapes me.

To go right to the point, this sentence is absurd on many levels: "Deming is the man responsible for all the ridiculous attempts at Total Quality Management which has tied the hands of American business by putting engineers essentially in charge of the management of company resources so to hamper proper productivity." That could only be written by someone who never worked in manufacturing and who is unqualified to have any opinion whatsoever on the subject.

What does that sentence even mean? Industrial engineers have always been put in charge of company resources. Management teams have always included engineers or those with engineering backgrounds. Would it be better if they were all lawyers or salesmen? And since productivity has been steadily increasing (at least until the last few years) I don't see any basis for claiming that modern manufacturing methods have hampered anything.

An automobile is an extreme example. But when you have thousands and thousand of parts that have to come together properly for the final product to work, how do you suppose you do that? It is an amazing feat of modern industrial engineering that makes that possible. Deming's teachings are among the tools that engineers and managers use to make our panoply of products possible at an affordable price. Before Deming, many products had to be repaired at the end of the manufacturing line to replace defective parts or parts that didn't properly mate with other parts.

Yes, our country became an industrial giant without Deming. We did it without computers too. Does that make the computer an unnecessary tool? The fault of modern management is not Deming. It is, if anything, the notion that management is a general skill and doesn't have to be tied to a particular industry, that the guy who ran the phone company can just as easily run the chemical plant or the auto manufacturer. We have come to learn that industry specific experience should not be discounted.

But, please, to mark Deming as some kind of a Satan is simple minded. His work wouldn't be popular among those who are desperate to make a buck if it didn't help in some way.

I have a question. The only two models I'm aware of for manufacturing anything to a specification are:
1) To perform a 100% inspection of all units produced and reject those that fall outside the spec limits or
2) Try to eliminate defects before they occur by testing statistically
A) Whether the raw material can be manufactured within spec limits.
B) Whether the machinery can form the raw material into a finished product within spec limits
C) What effect the machines operator has on the finished product.

Is there a third way to manufacture anything? I've employed SPC successfully during my career. I'm afraid I don't understand the objections to it.