Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Deming A Pioneer in Quality Management

American Economist, William Edwards Deming quote ...

“If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing”


Much of the credit for Japan's flight to quality and the making of its world-class reputation goes to quality guru W. Edwards Deming. Deming urged companies to concentrate on constant improvements, improved efficiency and doing it right the first time.



Deming was a professor of statistics at New York University when he was invited to Japan in 1950 to run a seminar for business leaders. Since the 1930s, Deming was interested in using statistics as a tool to achieve better quality control. Essentially, his idea was to record the number of product defects, analyze why they happened, institute changes, then record how much quality improved, and to keep refining the process until it is done right.


Deming owes at least part of his legendary status in Japan to a professor named Genichi Taguchi, Japan's home-grown quality management expert, who credited many of the American's ideas for his so-called Taguchi method. Taguchi and others would go on to influence a generation of Japanese engineers who would become the backbone of the nation's growing manufacturing prowess.

Did you know Deming composed music, while his main focus was on liturgical pieces, he also wrote a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner using the same words with different music.

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