W. EDWARDS DEMING:
THE MAN AND THE LEGEND
Yonatan Reshef
School of Business
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta
T6G 2R6 CANADA
On October 18, 2004, I received the following email from Mr. John
Dowd. Given its significance, I am including it verbatim.
____________________________________________
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 2:25 AM
To: yreshef@ualberta.ca
Subject: Deming
I had the opportunity to work closely with Deming for years and was
labeled by him to be a 'master' of his teachings. Naturally, when I see
things that are not quite right, I feel obliged to try to put them right.
I recently had occasion to read your 'biographical sketch' of
Deming. This sketch appears on the web page: http://www.bus.ualberta.ca/yreshef/orga432/demingobituary.html
There are a number of inaccuracies in the sketch. Statements that are just
not true. I do not know who Jerry Bowles is, but there have been a
number of people over the years who have tried to debunk the 'Deming helped
Japan' story (for reasons known only to them). These efforts have been
fueled by Juran's repeated claim that "... Deming is the man who taught SPC
to Japan" which is not only not true, but also vastly understates what Deming
actually did. Ishikawa (Kaoru) was (somewhat understandably) reluctant to
give Deming lot of credit for Japan's amazing come back. The fact is that the Japanese were aware of statistical
control chart theory and practice before the war and so-called modern quality
control techniques were used in the production of their Fighter aircraft. All of
this long before any Americans arrived on the scene. It is not widely known that Juran was invited to Japan at
Deming's suggestion to help in the management of the quality control
effort. But Juran never taught the Japanese the PDCA cycle or the Deming
cycle, or production viewed as a system, or the importance of the
internal supplier/customer relationship. Deming did that and all of
those features are still the backbone of Japanese competitive success.
All the best,
John Dowd
| Starting
in August 1950, Deming lectured on his statistical and management methods to the leading industrial companies in Japan.
Under the auspices of the Japanese Union of Scientists and
Engineers (JUSE), he brought together the top managers of these
companies before training the staff in his technical ideas. His
influence was so strong that by December 1950, JUSE had
instituted the Deming Prize, an annual prize for excellence in
quality. (Only two American companies have ever won the JUSE
Deming Prize: Florida Power & Light Company and AT&T
Microelectronics Power Systems.)
Deming saw that the top management of the Japanese companies was ready to
use his ideas, and he expressed his confidence that they would
come to dominate world markets inside five years. The managers
themselves did not believe this and wondered at the basis for
his confidence. As it turned out, the only erroneous part of
Deming's prophecy was the time scale; the American and European
economies are feeling the consequences to this day and surely
will continue to do so for many more years.
I encourage all of you to read the following
which is one
of the speeches Deming made in 1950. This document, made available
by Mr. Dowd, provides important "raw evidence" about
Deming's contribution to Japan in the years following the Second World
War, and about the early stages of his evolution from statistical
consultant to a philosopher of management (courtesy of Mr. Dowd, here is
the speech in MS Word format).
After 1950, Deming's management
philosophy was
centered on people and the dignity of work. He believed that
people should have joy in their work, that the system within
which they work should be designed to make this possible and to
enable workers to reach their full potential to contribute to
the enterprise, that the system is management's responsibility,
that 85% of all quality problems are management problems (that
is, symptoms of a malfunctioning system), and that organizations
and their suppliers need to work together to optimize results
for both. Deming's
statistical ideas had finally reached the point where he saw
they would do the most good: in advancing the welfare of the
country and society.
Broader management issues, rather than specific statistical topics, were
the focus of his publications in this period: Statistical Design
in Business Research (1960), Quality, Productivity, and
Competitive Position (1982), Out of the Crisis (1986), and The
New Economics (1993).
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