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.

The process is not just the sum of its parts.

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

Hold everybody accountable? Ridiculous!

Plants don't close from poor workmanship, but from poor management.

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

Hard work and best efforts will not by themselves dig us out of the pit.

To copy is to invite disaster.

People need to know what their jobs are.

The questions are more important than the answers.

Forces of Destruction: grades in school, merit system, incentive pay, business plans, quotas.

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

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

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

The aim of education should be to preserve and nurture the yearning for learning that a child is born with.

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

People need to know how their job contributes.

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.

There is very little evidence that we give a hoot about profit.

People care more for themselves when they contribute to the system.

You do not install knowledge.

You should not ask questions without knowledge.

Absence of defects does not necessarily build business... Something more is required.

Monetary rewards are not a substitute for intrinsic motivation.

The aim should be to work on the method of management.

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

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

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

The most basic problem is that performance appraisals often don't accurately assess performance.

Zero defects is a super highway going down the tube.

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.

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

Without theory there is nothing to modify or learn.

The most important things cannot be measured.

You can not define being exactly on time.

A rational prediction has an explanation based on theory.

We have to bring back the individual. Management has smothered the individual.

We are here for an education.

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.

No requirement of industry is so much neglected as operational definitions.

Adopt a new philosophy of cooperation (win-win) in which everybody wins.

The principles and methods for improvement are the same for service as for manufacturing. The actual application differs, of course, from one product to another, and from one type of service to another.

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

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

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

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

It only takes a little innovation.

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