W. edwards deming quotes

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.

Nothing happens without personal transformation.

It is a mistake to assume that if everybody does his job, it will be all right. The whole system may be in trouble.

A committee appointed by the President of a company will report what the President wishes to hear. Would they dare report otherwise?.

The transformation will come from leadership.

Put a good person in a bad system and the bad system wins, no contest.

Judging people does not help them.

You can expect what you inspect.

Inspection with the aim of finding the bad ones and throwing them out is too late, ineffective, and costly. Quality comes not from inspection but from improvement of the process.

The source of innovation is freedom. All we have - new knowledge, invention - comes from freedom. Discoveries and new knowledge come from freedom. When somebody is responsible only to himself, [has] only himself to satisfy, then you'll have invention, new thought, now product, new design, new ideas.

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.

Don't expect smart people to listen to you without proof.

The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!

People need to know what their jobs are.

...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.

A goal without a method is nonsense.

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

Quality starts in the boardroom.

Competition should not be for a share of the market-but to expand the market.

Long-term commitment to new learning and new philosophy is required of any management that seeks transformation. The timid and the fainthearted, and the people that expect quick results, are doomed to disappointment.

You cannot inspect quality into the product; it is already there.

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.

Two basic rules of life are: 1) Change is inevitable. 2) Everybody resists change.

A man who knows not his limitations is of no use to anyone.

Sub-optimization is when everyone is for himself. Optimization is when everyone is working to help the company.

The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people. Put in a negative way, the aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure: to help people to do a better job with less effort.

The main difference between service and manufacturing is the service department doesn't know that they have a product.

Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force

Scrap doesn't come for free, we pay someone to make it.

A leader's job is to help his people.

Each system is perfectly designed to give you exactly what you are getting today.

Anyone that enjoys his work is a pleasure to work with.

The questions are more important than the answers.

3% of the problems have figures, 97% of the problems do not.

Without questions, there is no learning.

Knowledge is theory. We should be thankful if action of management is based on theory. Knowledge has temporal spread. Information is not knowledge. The world is drowning in information but is slow in acquisition of knowledge. There is no substitute for knowledge.

The biggest cost of poor quality is when your customer buys it from someone else because they didn't like yours.

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

Manage the cause, not the result.

A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without the aim, there is no system.

He that would run his company on visible figures alone will in time have neither company nor figures.

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.

All models are wrong; some models are useful.

We cannot rely on mass inspection to improve quality, though there are times when 100 percent inspection is necessary. As Harold S. Dodge said many years ago, 'You cannot inspect quality into a product.' The quality is there or it isn't by the time it's inspected.

Transformation is not automatic. It must be learned; it must be led.

Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure are deficiencies in the systems and process rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.

People work in the system. Management creates the system

Now, we learn that a system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system.

Quality begins with the intent, which is fixed by management.

Meeting specifications is not enough.

We should be guided by theory, not by numbers.

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

The system that people work in and the interaction with people may account for 90 or 95 percent of performance.

To copy is to invite disaster.

The greatest waste … is failure to use the abilities of people…to learn about their frustrations and about the contributions that they are eager to make.

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

You can not hear what you do not understand.

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

Management by results - like driving a car by looking in rear view mirror.

You do not find knowledge in a dictionary, only information.

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

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.

Managers don't like giving appraisals, and employees don't like getting them. Perhaps they're not liked because both parties suspect what the evidence has proved for decades: Traditional performance appraisals don't work.

Quality is pride of workmanship.

Innovation comes from people who take joy in their work.

Part of America's industrial problems is the aim of its corporate managers. Most American executives think they are in the business to make money, rather than products or service. The Japanese corporate credo, on the other hand, is that a company should become the world's most efficient provider of whatever product and service it offers. Once it becomes the world leader and continues to offer good products, profits follow.

Managing by results only makes things worse.

Research shows that the climate of an organization influences an individuals contribution far more than the individual himself.

People need to know how their job contributes.

Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.

Management's job is to optimize the whole system.

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

I am not reporting things about people. I am reporting things about practices.

To manage one must lead. To lead, one must understand the work that he and his people are responsible for

It's not enough to do your best; you must know what to do & then do your best.

Management is prediction.

Improve quality, you automatically improve productivity.

What makes a scientist great is the care that he takes in telling you what is wrong with his results, so that you will not misuse them.

A leader is a coach, not a judge.

You do not install quality; you begin to work at it.

Divide responsibility and nobody is responsible.

One cannot be successful on visible figures alone ... the most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable, but successful management must nevertheless take account of them.

If someone can make a contribution to the company he feels important.

No one can measure the loss of business that may arise from a defective item that goes out to a customer.

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

It is not enough that top management commit themselves for life to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to - that is, what they must do. These obligations cannot be delegated. Support is not enough; action is required.

I think that people here expect miracles. American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan - but they don't know what to copy!

Quality comes not from inspection, but from improvement of the production process.

In God we trust; all others bring data.

The aim proposed here for any organization is for everybody to gain - stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, community, the environment - over the long term.

It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth

You have to manage a system. The system doesn't manage itself.

A leader must have knowledge. A leader must be able to teach.

A manager of people needs to understand that all people are different. This is not ranking people. He needs to understand that the performance of anyone is governed largely by the system that he works in, the responsibility of management.

The ultimate purpose of collecting the data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation.

When we cooperate, everybody wins.

The customer is the most important part of the production line.

Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.

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

Quality is everyone's responsibility.

A bad system will beat a good person every time.

Nobody should try to use data unless he has collected data.

Everyone is a customer for somebody, or a supplier to somebody.

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

Does experience help? NO! Not if we are doing the wrong things.

People are entitled to joy in work.

Nobody goes to work to do a bad job.

The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work.

You can not achieve an aim unless you have a method.

When asked what single event was most helpful in developing the Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein replied, "Figuring out how to think about the problem".

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.

If you destroy the people of a company, you do not have much left.

Eighty percent of American managers cannot answer with any measure of confidence these seemingly simple questions: What is my job? What in it really counts? How well am I doing?

Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.

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

We are here to learn, to make a difference and to have fun.

...the most important things we need to manage can't be measured.

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

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

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

Quality is made in the board room. A worker can deliver lower quality, but she cannot deliver quality better than the system allow.

It does not happen all at once. There is no instant pudding.