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W. Edwards Deming: The Reigning Guru of Quality Control
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15689 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1989 |
2,992 Words |
| Author
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Peter Gwynne
Peter Gwynne is a free-lance science writer based in
Washington, D.C. |
For three decades, W. Edwards Deming was the quintessential prophet without honor in his own country. He did not even attain enough prominence to be politely ignored; American executives simply hadn't heard of him. But starting in 1950, the quality control theories of the Sioux City, Iowa-born statistician were greeted and widely applied by Japanese businessmen, many of whom credit Deming with a major role in that nation's current economic success.
However, the crusty consultant managed to live long enough to earn, first the grudging admiration of his compatriots, and then real acceptance. Now 88, Deming has finally become a hot property on the business celebrity circuit, a guru who accepts up to $10,000 per day to lecture managements on their shortcomings in quality control, and how to overcome them--and charges $6,000 for a 15-cassette video course on the same subject matter.
His message is simple: Management generally has its priorities wrong; it must shift its focus from the end product to getting each product or service right from the start. High-quality goods and services, says Deming, stem naturally from a company that is working right, by identifying problems and then encouraging everyone, from the office cleaner to the CEO, to help solve them.
Deming doesn't kowtow to his audiences, which consist predominantly of managers, when he delivers the message. Rather, he blames all company problems--from defective products to high turnover in the work force--on management. "The biggest problem that most any company in the Western world faces is not its competitors, not the Japanese," he thunders. "The biggest problems are self-inflicted, created right at home by management that is off course in the competitive world of today."
Deming preaches a revolutionary gospel in other ways: no inspection of products; no merit raises; no annual performance reviews; no sales quotas or other numerical goals for the work force. Such an array of negatives, together with Deming's active opposition to anything that encourages competition within the work place, goes against the grain of business school curricula and often--at first glimpse--common sense. Nevertheless, U.S. managements are lapping them up. "We think [his approach] is absolutely essential," Ford Motor Company spokeswoman Linda Lee told Inc. magazine. "We aim to produce quality products, and we don't think we can do it without statistical process control, both at our own plants and those of our
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