W. Edwards Deming Philosophy

W. Edwards Deming Philosophy       Student:   Professor:   Course title:   Date:             Abstract W. Edwards Deming was a teacher, an author, a consultant, and an adviser to some of the most prominent companies, business people, as well as scientific pioneers of business process reengineering. His message, directed chiefly at management, is described in a few words in his well-known fourteen points for management. In the year 1950, business leaders in Japan invited this quality guru to teach engineers and executives with regard to the new methods. Companies in Japan rapidly implemented Deming’s 14-point plan method, and this resulted in a commitment to quality control which helped Japanese corporations dominate some product markets in several parts of the globe. Keywords: Total Quality Management, 14 Points, Deming philosophy, Japanese manufacturers                   W. Edwards Deming Philosophy The quality guru: Life and philosophy of W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) W. Edwards Deming was a teacher, an author, a consultant, and an adviser to some of the most prominent companies, business people, as well as scientific pioneers of business process reengineering. In Japan, W. Edwards Deming has been described as a national folk hero given that he was very much responsible for guiding and inspiring the spectacular rise of Japanese industry following the Second World War (Swinton, 2009). This quality guru was born in the year 1900 and was trained as a physicist. He studied at University of Wyoming and University of Colorado before going to Yale and graduated from there with a Doctorate Degree in the year 1928. Deming became Walter Shewhart’s student as he worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories (Bendel, 2010). Deming worked at the Western Electric Plant in the state of Illinois, and learned the early quality control theories of Walter Shewhart during this time. For the following 19 years after earning his PhD in the year 1928, Deming worked for several branches of the federal government (Smith, 2010). Following the Second World War, this quality guru renounced his career with the government to begin his own global consulting company with the aim of helping war-torn nations rebuild their economies. He travelled to several different nations including Mexico, West Germany, India, Turkey, and Greece. It was in Japan, nevertheless, that this quality guru made his biggest mark (Gitlow, 2005).   Deming, in the year 1946, became a statistics professor at New York University’s Graduate School of Business Administration (Smith, 2010). In the year 1947, Deming was hired in Japan to help this country in preparing for its census in 1951. During the era of his celebrated turnaround activities in Japan where he taught 20,000 engineers in rudimentary statistical techniques in just ten years, he followed the same mission in America but it took people in the United States much longer than in Japan to consider his teachings. In the year 1988, W. Edwards Deming joined Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business after being invited by Professor John Whitney (Bendel, 2010). Deming Philosophy: the message of this quality guru, directed chiefly at management, is described concisely in his well-known fourteen points for management. These are illustrated in the table below (Bendel, 2010):

Deming’s fourteen point plan for Total Quality Management
1	Form constancy of purpose for service and product improvement	8	Drive out fear
2	Espouse the new philosophy	9	Remove obstacles between staff areas
3	Stop reliance on mass inspection	10	Remove numerical goals for the workers
4	Cease the practice of awarding business on just price tag alone	11	Remove numerical quotas and work standards
5	Always improve the system of production and service	12	Eliminate the obstacles that encumber the hourly employee
6	Introduce modern on-the-job training methods	13	Introduce a vigorous program of training and education
7	Introduce modern supervision methods	14	Commit to continuously improving quality

      Quality method from Deming’s contributions: the 14 point plan The fourteen points that W. Edwards Deming conceptualized are described comprehensively in this section. Point 1: form a continuous purpose towards improvement of service and/or product – companies need to motivate their staff members to remain competitive in the marketplace. Companies should plan for quality in the long-term and they should not react with short-term solutions (Smith, 2010). Point 2: implement the new philosophy – customer taste and demands often change rapidly and competition in the marketplace increases very fast nowadays. Therefore, companies must accept new philosophies consistent with the technology revolutions and market trends (Osgood, 2011). Point 3: stop dependence on mass inspection – Rather than inspecting the product for quality following production, companies need to instill quality at the start itself with production quality control given that this would make sure that no raw materials go to waste for the sake of quality (Gitlow, 2005). Point 4: do not award business on price tag alone – companies should move towards single suppliers for any 1 item. They should develop lasting relationships with suppliers basing on trust and loyalty (Swinton, 2009). Point 5: always improve the system of service and production – a company should always improve its processes and systems. A company should not just be satisfied with good enough. Every aspect of the business should improve continually. By improving quality, customer satisfaction and morale increases, and cost decrease (McInnis, 2007). Point 6: introduce modern training methods – a trained employee has more quality and productivity compared to an untrained employee. Therefore, providing training sessions would considerably improve the quality of the individual and it directly helps in better product quality performance (Swinton, 2009). Point 7: institute modern supervision methods/implement leadership – The highlighting of production supervisors should be to assist employees to perform a better job. Improvement of quality would improve productivity automatically (McInnis, 2007). Point 8: remove fear – an organization should allow employees to do their best by making sure that the...