Better companies track their return on innovation. Depending on the industry they look at the amount of revenue from recently introduced product (the length of "recent" depending on the industry/product) as a proportion of the overall revenue. They also look at profit level using the same discriminators.

However, I disagree that companies don't make money on manufacturing. That has been my work for the past 15+ years. Finding ways to improve efficiency and throughput so as to be the lowest cost producer. When you produce at a lower cost than your competition, you make money from manufacturing. It is a never ending quest, as competition is fierce and relentless and incremental improvements do not last long. Which is good for me, as it has tended to keep me in business.

Correct. Laid off from two different companies in the course of 3 years. The thinking was, you aren't making product so we don't need you.

1) You are correct, there is no box, but there are predilections on how people address problems. As a mech eng, I tend to look at a mech apparatus to solve a problem. It has taken years of working with electronics, magnetics, optics, etc. to broaden my perspectives.
2) My current employer was part of the original group at Moto. When they took ss to GE, the military type org there ate it up and implemented it without understanding where it is applicable and where it isn't. Luckily, it is more applicable than not, so they err on the good side.
3) The values you cite for being within the sigma levels should be (+/-), just to be precise.
4) The value you show for 6 sigma actually includes the mythical 1.5 sigma shift (which is a fallacy, by the way). The actual value for +/- 6 sigma is 0.999999998027
5) When looking at the GM recalls, there are many reasons for conducting a recall, not all of which are directly quality related. Even those that are driven by quality are often larger than absolutely necessary. That said, they clearly have had issues (not surprising from my previous interaction with them).
6) AR would not have batted an eyelash at the demise of GM, as you say, and would decry the moocher bailouts.
7) This entire discussion started with Dr. Deming. From what he wanted to do, I liken him to Hugh Akston, and believe that she would hold him in very high regard.

Amen.

Ah, but flawed quality can kill a product and even a company just as surely. The key is to have both (or actually all three - quality, cost, and innovation; it used to be the joke that you can have any two at one time, but not all three - there have been a few that have for a brief moment, HP, GE, Moto, etc. but even those lose it quickly).

Thank you. This isn't a foreign subject to me.

Overman you are so woefully uninformed on this topic as to make your essay a laughingstock.

I don't disagree that American business management is totally screwed up, but it has nothing to do with Deming or anything that he taught about quality management and improvement. If anything, it is a manifestation of finance and sales fields dominating management.

I defy you to find one American company lead by an engineer and following Deming principles that is producing poor products or not making profits.

GE and HP once were the pinnacle of their industries - under leaders that understood manufacturing, product development, and quality control. Once they lost that leadership they began to falter.

Deming was all about quality management and control - that is different from innovation. That said, there are ways to apply statistical methods in the design realm that aid and speed up innovation and product development.

Oh, in that case, I totally agree. Cronyism to the nth degree.

As are many. If applied properly, Deming's approach works wonders to bring a system into conformance and eventually to excellence. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of hard work. In companies where mgrs are promoted/laterally moved every 18 mo's this isn't enough time to really implement the fundamental type change required. The mgr either wants to make a big splash or just wants to ride things out. Either way, they are not willing to invest as is required for fundamental change. Deming taught the Japanese how to be patient and relentless in their drive for improvement. They were good students.

Ironically, the Koreans may be even better students. Dr. Deming never taught the Koreans directly, but they read his books and have internalized his teaching. Companies like Hyundai and Kia are starting to eat even Toyota's lunch. The Koreans are who the Japanese are worried about - not America, not Europe, not China (at least not yet - heaven help us if the Chinese learn Deming's methods).

What you describe is antithetical to everything that Dr. Deming taught and believed was needed for a successful company. To denigrate his wisdom because some have bastardized it (and I absolutely agree that that has happened) is akin to saying that a beef filet is garbage because some moron ground it up, made it into hamburger and then grilled it well done. It might have started the same, but it's definitely not the same in the end.

Besides management not understanding anything other than counting beans, the other issue is acolytes of this philosophy or that for quality and continuous improvement. They develop their hammer and drive everything with it as if every problem were a nail. Not every problem is the same - some are merely waste and a simple Lean approach will be most effective, some are a function of excessive variation creating unacceptable losses where DMAIC six sigma is most appropriate, some require understanding where the real constraint is in the system and a TOC approach is required, and some just aren't capable of being satisfactory to the customer with the current offering and a DfSS approach is needed. As an engineer first, problem solver second (or really first as that's all an engineer really is), I'm not wedded to any particular approach, rather to whichever will solve the problem the best. Dr. Deming didn't teach much about developing something new, he was too appalled that organizations couldn't make what they already had developed in a cost effective/high quality manner and he focused on that. But, what he did focus on helps me every day to see that I need to understand the real customer requirement in quantifiable and verifiable terms, understand the processes that will be used to create those parameters that can be measured and capability assessed, and to ensure that my systems of measuring are proper and capable for the type of evaluation that I need to use to ensure that I can properly judge the quality.

Dr. Deming was a great and brilliant man. If Detroit had listened to him in the 50's he never would have gone to Japan. The American auto industry would be the beacon of manufacturing excellence and since it casts a very wide shadow, so would the rest of American industry. We would be competing today on quality and efficiency unmatched throughout the world. Instead, we have MBA bean counters chasing cheap labor around the world. What a waste.