Deming Quality Management

The Fourteen Point System

W. Edwards Deming created a 14-point philosophy to be used by business, schools, hospitals — any organization in which people work together to accomplish a task.  The fourteen points comprise a complete system.  They are meant to be used together, because all are equally important.  When Deming was describing his system, he told people that they has a choice: dedicate themselves to implementing the complete system — or none of it.  There were no other possibilities.

Influence of the Deming Philosophy

Deming’s influence is all around us.  In 1981, when the Ford Motor Company advertised that “Quality Is Job One!”, this sentence was part of a quality management program that Deming helped Ford to create.  General Motors and Toyota have also used Deming’s ideas. To build the fabulous 777 jet, Boeing used a number of Deming concepts in a new management philosophy called Working Together. Companies, hospitals, churches, and schools are all using Deming’s Fourteen Points. The Department of the Navy has saved millions of dollars with the Deming approach!

During the years that Deming helped companies, the expression “a Deming company” arose. THNC would be honored if, from the beginning of our operations, we would also become known as “a Deming company”, even in the absence of his personal involvement.

The Fourteen Points

1. Create Constancy of Purpose

You have to answer two questions: What are we doing? Why are we doing it? You must have a long-term aim, something that every member of the organization knows and can understand.

2. Learn the New Philosophy

The old philosophy was to compete. The new philosophy is to cooperate in the organization so that everyone can win.

3. Cease Dependence on Mass Inspection

Inspection does not add quality. Inspections tell you if quality is there. It is or is not, and inspection cannot change it either way.

4. Don’t Buy on Price Tag Alone

This one used to send purchasing agents into fits, but more and more companies are finding out it actually works.

5. Improve Constantly Every Process

This point is often misunderstood. You do get those leap-forward improvements using the Deming management system, but you also get the smaller improvements between the leaps.

6. Institute Training for Skills

Part of training is about how to do the job and another part is about why the job is being done. Unless everyone knows why they are doing a job, they cannot do it well.

7. Institute Leadership for People

Training for management must include training for leadership, an altogether different skill from what has normally been required, which is supervision.

8. Drive Out Fear — Build Trust

To lead a company focused on improvements requires a whole different set of values and attitudes and relationships than leading an organization focused on control.

9. Break Down Barriers Between Staff Areas

Build a system within your organization for win-win. This means cooperation. It means abolishment of competition.

10. Eliminate Slogans, Exhortations, & Targets

How are you going to increase productivity? If the supplies are shoddy, the work force untrained and fearful, the machines out of control, and the management system chaotic, productivity is not going to be increased.

11. Eliminate Numerical Goals & Quotas

Deming told a story about the person with two job requirements… satisfying the calling customers and taking 25 calls each hour. You can do either; you cannot do both.

12. Remove Barriers that Rob People of Joy

Abolish the annual rating or merit system which ranks people, creates competition, conflict.

13. Program of Education & Self-Improvement

Do not confuse education with training (point 6). Education has to do with anything whatever to keep people’s minds developing.

14. Accomplish the Transformation

Knowing all that you now know does you no good at all if you do not put it to use. You must develop a critical mass of associates who also believe it will work.

Learn more about Deming’s work…

The W. Edwards Deming Institute ® is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1993 by noted consultant Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Books and videos of Deming seminars are available through the Institute. http://deming.org/

Here’s a book you might enjoy reading:

Thinking About Quality — Progress, Wisdom, and the Deming Philosophy by Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason, Times Books, a division of Random House, Inc.: 1994

You can find this book at  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=081292133X/3780-8353576-583190