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.
W. Edwards DemingThe customer invents nothing. New products and new services come from the producer.
W. Edwards DemingThe only useful function of a statistician is to make predictions, and thus to provide a basis for action.
W. Edwards DemingIt is a mistake to assume that if everybody does his job, it will be all right. The whole system may be in trouble.
W. Edwards DemingWhen asked what single event was most helpful in developing the Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein replied, "Figuring out how to think about the problem".
W. Edwards DemingFor Quality: Stamp out fires, automate, computerize, M.B.O., install merit pay, rank people, best efforts, zero defects. WRONG!!!! Missing ingredient: profound knowledge.
W. Edwards DemingLong-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.
W. Edwards DemingIt is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth
W. Edwards DemingDoes the customer invent new product or service? The customer generates nothing. No customer asked for electric lights. There was gas and gas mantles, which gave good light.
W. Edwards DemingStamping out fires is a lot of fun, but it is only putting things back the way they were.
W. Edwards DemingYou can only elevate individual performance by elevating that of the entire system.
W. Edwards DemingIf 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.
W. Edwards DemingIt is important that an aim never be defined in terms of a specific activity or method. It must always relate to a better life for everyone.
W. Edwards DemingKnowledge 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.
W. Edwards DemingThe most important figures for management of any organization are unknown and unknowable.
W. Edwards DemingSub-optimization is when everyone is for himself. Optimization is when everyone is working to help the company.
W. Edwards DemingOne need not be eminent in any part of profound knowledge in order to understand it and to apply it. The various segments of the system of profound knowledge cannot be separated. They interact with each other. For example knowledge about psychology is incomplete without knowledge of variation.
W. Edwards Deming