Edwards Deming - Statistician and Management Guru - Essay Example

Edwards Deming: Statistician and Management Guru Dr. William Edwards Deming (1900-1993), has become a byword for management wisdom in the last century. Many titans of the corporate world, including Toyota, Ford, Proctor and Gamble, Ritz-Carlton and Harley Davidson, acknowledge the contributions of Deming’s principles to the success of their organizations. Several strategies for success in business, such as Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing and Loyalty/Net Promoter and the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM) are based on his teachings. This statistician is recognized as one of the prime architects of Japan’s economic revolution after World War 11 and is a national hero in Japan (ManagementWisdom.com Web site). Deming was born on 14 October, 1900 to William Albert Deming and Pluma Irene Edwards, in Sioux City, Iowa. In 1904, the family moved to the Edward’s chicken farm in Polk City and then, in 1907, settled in Powell, Wyoming, on forty acres of poor land allotted by the U.S. Government. The family, living in a ‘tar paper shack,’ endured poverty and hunger. However, the children were encouraged to study. Edwards Deming attended school in Powell, holding odd jobs to support the family. He went on to graduate from the University of Wyoming at Laramie in 1921, with a B.S. in electrical engineering. This was followed by an M.S. from the University of Colorado in 1925 and a Ph.D. from Yale in 1928, both in Mathematics and Mathematical Physics. Dr. Deming was an accomplished flautist and drummer and composed several choral compositions and an arrangement of the Star Spangled Banner (The W. Edwards Deming Institute. Web site). Dr. Deming worked as a mathematical physicist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (1927-1939) and was a statistical advisor to the U.S. Census Bureau (1939-1945). In 1927, Deming met Walter A. Shewhart of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, who was to exert a profound influence on Deming’s application of statistical methods to industrial production and management. Deming pioneered the sampling techniques used in the 1940 U.S. Census. He was a member of the Emergency Technical Committee of World War 11 and of the team which compiled the American War Standards in 1942. He participated in the 1951 Japanese Census, after which he was invited by the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) to teach statistical control process and the concept of quality. Japanese application of Deming’s principles in manufacturing resulted in unprecedented quality and productivity. He taught statistics and business management at New York University (1946-1993) and Columbia University (1988-1993) and also served as a private business consultant. He was an international consultant in statistics in Germany, Turkey, Taiwan and the United Nations and a lecturer at the London School of Economics. Dr. Deming published his seminal work, Out of the Crisis in 1982, followed by The New Economics for Industry, Government and Education in 1993. He founded the W. Edwards Deming Institute in Washington D.C. in 1993, to advance the application of his principles in the cause of peace and prosperity (Wikipedia). Edwards Deming was the recipient of several prestigious awards in recognition of his seminal contribution to statistics and business management, including the National Medal of Technology in 1987. In 1951, JUSE instituted the Deming Prize (for individuals) and the Deming’s Application Prize (for companies) for contributions to statistical theory and advances in quality improvement. This prize is considered the ‘Nobel’ of quality awards. He received the Second Order Medal of the Sacred Treasures from the Emperor of Japan in 1960. He was inducted into the Science and Technology Hall of Fame, Dayton in 1986 (The W. Edwards Deming Institute web site). Edwards Deming is credited with the introduction of the concept of TQM, which revolutionized the manufacturing industry. Although Deming did not coin the actual term, TQM is based on the principles enunciated by him in Out of the Crisis. Deming advocated certain principles, by the application of which organizations can improve quality and customer loyalty and simultaneously reduce costs (waste, rework, staff attrition and litigation). The crucial innovation he proposed was to consider manufacturing as an overall system, not as bits and pieces. Deming differentiated between common and specific causes of variation. The former are intrinsic to the process and can be reduced only by improving the process itself, while the latter are unique and can be immediately addressed - such as a machine which consistently produces defective parts (Dharma Haven web site). Deming proposed that the transformation necessary for the optimization of a system required the understanding of a ‘System of Profound Knowledge,’ which consists of four parts: (1) Appreciation of the system (2) Knowledge about variation (3) Theory of knowledge (4) Psychology. An individual who grasps this system will set a good example, be a good listener, continually teach other people and help others adopt the new philosophy. The main principles advocated by Deming’s are condensed into ‘Deming’s 14 Points for Management.’ (1) Create constancy of purpose towards improvement. Long-term planning, centered round the improvement of products and services, will enable the company to remain competitive and stay the course. (2) Adopt the new philosophy. The traditional system of management must be transformed. Management must understand the causes of variation and combine this with the knowledge of the psychology of the individual and the group. (3) Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Improvement in the process itself will reduce variation and achieve quality, without the need for mass inspection and the scrapping or reworking of defects, which is expensive. (4) End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Establishing a single supplier for any one item will reduce variation and build a long-term relationship of trust. (5) Improve constantly and forever. The improvement of quality and productivity must be an ongoing process, which will result in reduced variation and cost. (6) Institute training on the job. The workers must be supported by the managers and receive training in process improvement and other necessary skills and helped to understand the new philosophy. (7) Drive out fear. Management through fear will be counterproductive, as it leads to the suppression of bad news and the adoption of wrong figures, often leading to misleading feedback. (8) Institute leadership. Mere supervision, which centers round quotas and targets, must be replaced by a management which is focused on the improvement of the total system. Leadership involves supporting workers to improve quality. (9) Break down barriers between departments. The various departments, such as research and production, must work as a team, sharing outputs, so as to optimize the system. (10)Eliminate slogans. The workers should not be harassed with targets and quotas. The management should instead concentrate on improving the work process, which will automatically improve results. (11) Eliminate management by objective. Rigid production targets, which emphasize quantity, will encourage the delivery of poor quality products. (12) Remove barriers to pride of workmanship. Ranking workers according to certain arbitrary criteria, such as quotas, must be abolished, as this undermines intrinsic motivation and destroys joy in work. (13) Institute education and self-improvement. Such programmes, for management and workers, will enhance the skills and potential of both and lead to improved quality. (14) The transformation is everyone’s job. Everyone in the company is equally responsible for improving the system. This attitude will replace competition with cooperation. (Cohen, HCI Web site). Deming listed ‘Seven Deadly Diseases’: (1) Lack of constancy of purpose (2) Emphasis on short-term profits (3) Mobility of management (4) Evaluation by performance, merit rating or annual review (5) Running a company on visible figures alone (6) Excessive medical costs (7) Excessive litigation costs. He also pointed out several obstacles, including neglecting long-term planning, relying on technology to solve problems, seeking examples to follow, rather than developing solutions and using excuses, which are to be avoided (Wikipedia). The ‘systems thinking’ pioneered by Deming is, “simply put, quality first and then follow through with the honest practice of developing quality products and quality people” (Shoichiro Toyoda, Former President, Toyota. ManagementWisdom.com). Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s teachings continue to remain relevant in today’s world of globalization. Works Cited. Cohen, Phil. Deming’s 14 Points. Accessed on 15 September 2007. < http://www.hci.com.au/hcisite2/articles/deming.htm > Halwes, Terry. Dr. Deming’s Management Training. Accessed on 15 September 2007. < http://www.dharma-haven.org/five-havens/deming.htm > “W. Edwards Deming.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed on 15 September 2007. < http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=w._Edwards_Deming&oldid=157643591 > “W. Edwards Deming.” The W. Edwards Deming Institute web site. Accessed on 15 September 2007. < http://www.deming.org/theman/biography.html > “What Deming Taught Toyota.” ManagementWisdom web site. 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