W Edwards Deming’s Principles of Quality Management
The grandfather of quality management had a 14 point plan that focuses largely on his philosophy of management. These points are still relevant today, for companies both small and large, in private, public and service industries. Without further ado, here are Dr. W Edwards Deming’s 14 points of quality:
- Create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service.
- Adopt the new philosophy. We can no longer live with commonly accepted levels of delay, mistakes and defective workmanship.
- Cease dependence on mass inspection. Instead, require statistical evidence that quality is built in.
- End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price.
- Find problems. It is management’s job to work continually on the system.
- Institute modern methods of training on the job.
- Institute modern methods of supervision of production workers. The responsibility of foremen must be changed from numbers to quality.
- Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
- Break down barriers between departments.
- Eliminate numerical goals, posters and slogans for the workforce asking for new levels of productivity without providing methods.
- Eliminate work standards that prescribe numerical quotas.
- Remove barriers that stand between the hourly worker and their right to pride of workmanship.
- Institute a vigorous program of education and retraining.
- Create a structure in top management that will push on the above points every day
These principles and his various other work have resulted in Deming being well-respected in Japan, where there is even a quality award named in his honour. The Deming Prize is coined as the business success version of the Nobel Prize, and is awarded to the companies who have presented best practice innovation and commitment to quality.
Dr. Shoichiro Toyoda, Chairman and former President (1982-1999) of Toyota, once said of this quality leader, “Every day I think about what he meant to us. Deming is the core of our management”. For companies who are in the process of implementing their quality management strategies, these points have much to offer in the way of insight, and as Dr. Deming intended, they offer much lessons on the greater impact of quality, too.
