W. Edwards Deming Quotes - Page 2

You must not run your Organization as a functional hierarchy. You must understand it as a System.

A goal without a method is nonsense.

We are being ruined by the best efforts of people who are doing the wrong thing.

If you wait for people to come to you, you'll only get small problems. You must go and find them. The big problems are where people don't realize they have one in the first place.

Stamping out fires is a lot of fun, but it is only putting things back the way they were.

Divide responsibility and nobody is responsible.

Nobody goes to work to do a bad job.

We know what we told him, but we don't know what he heard.

Just because you can measure everything doesn't mean that you should.

We should work on our process, not the outcome of our processes.

A bad system will beat a good person every time.

To optimize the whole, we must sub-optimize the parts

The most valuable "currency" of any organization is the initiative and creativity of its members. Every leader has the solemn moral responsibility to develop these to the maximum in all his people. This is the leader's highest priority.

Learning is not compulsory; it's voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory; it's voluntary. But to survive, we must learn.

If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.

Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers - a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars - and on up through the university. On the job people, teams, and divisions are ranked, reward for the top, punishment for the bottom. Management by Objectives, quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknowable.

Information is not knowledge. Let's not confuse the two.

I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to the proportions something like this: 94% belongs to the system responsibility of management 6% special

Defects are not free. Somebody makes them, and gets paid for making them.

What we need to do is learn to work in the system, by which I mean that everybody, every team, every platform, every division, every component is there not for individual competitive profit or recognition, but for contribution to the system as a whole on a win-win basis.

Understanding variation is the key to success in quality and business.

Scientific data are not taken for museum purposes; they are taken as a basis for doing something. If nothing is to be done with the data, then there is no use in collecting any. The ultimate purpose of taking data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation for action. The step intermediate between the collection of data and the action is prediction.

...a person and an organization must have goals, take actions to achieve those goals, gather evidence of achievement, study and reflect on the data and from that take actions again. Thus, they are in a continuous feedback spiral toward continuous improvement. This is what 'Kaizan' means.

Uncontrolled variation is the enemy of quality.

Quality is pride of workmanship.