W. Edwards Deming Quotes

You can not hear what you do not understand.

We want best efforts guided by theory.

Knowledge is the key.

Lack of knowledge - that is the problem.

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

Nobody goes to work to do a bad job.

Management is prediction.

The transformation will come from leadership.

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

You can expect what you inspect.

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.

It is management's job to direct the efforts of all components toward the aim of the system. The first step is clarification: everyone in the organization must understand the aim of the system, and how to direct his efforts toward it. Everyone must understand the damage and loss to the whole organization from a team that seeks to become a selfish, independent, profit center.

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.

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

Survival is optional. No one has to change.

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

Many people in management are being paid to produce waste.

There is no substitute for knowledge.

You must have a supplier relationship of constant improvement.

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

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

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

There is no economy in having one operation produce a part and another separate the good ones from the bad ones.

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

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

The emphasis should be on why we do a job.

There is no knowledge without theory.

All models are wrong; some models are useful.

Judging people does not help them.

Experience by itself teaches nothing... Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence, without theory, there is no learning.

In God we trust; all others bring data.

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.

The most important measures are both unknown and unknowable.

People copy examples and then they wonder what is the trouble. They look at examples and without theory they learn nothing.

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

Anybody can achieve gains in quality by slowing down production. That is not what we are talking about.

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

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

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.

...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.

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

People are entitled to joy in work.

Learn the basics of analytics and people will love you. If you don't have time to learn, hire someone.

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

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

A bad system will beat a good person every time.

Let us ask our suppliers to come and help us to solve our problems.

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.