Deming’s Legacy: What would Quality without him?
In his Out of the Crisis (1986) masterpiece, statistical and quality guru, W. Edwards Deming raises 7 points or 7 deadly diseases that can suffer the management of an organization. These diseases are opposed to change, improvement and positive transformation. Eradicate these diseases is not easy. It requires a very high degree of involvement by the Directorate. For this, you must acknowledge mistakes and must be convinced that they represent a real obstacle to productive development.
Deming identified 7 key conditions:
-Inconsistent purposes. The constant change in the guidelines only produces confusion on staff. Evidence also the lack of management commitment to continuous improvement.
-Emphasis on short-term gains. Only decisions to minimize costs and obtain greater profits, futilely trying to compensate underlying chronic problems are taken.
-Performance evaluation, classification according to merit. Blaming staff errors can only generate internal conflicts, friction and affect teamwork and synergy. The leading Japanese Kaoru Ishikawa manager argued that management is responsible for 85% of the problems of a company.
-Mobility of executives. Inconstancy of purpose produces high turnover of senior managers and middle management.
-Management company based solely on visible figures. If we rely only on visible figures in the financial status of a company, we are losing much of intangible assets. It would be extremely difficult to quantify the prestige, customer loyalty or staff capacity. If the only objective is to work on visible figures, financially, the company is doomed.
-excessive medical costs. The lack of motivation, laziness, bad working conditions will inevitably lead to increased absences for illnesses (stress, disabilities). This represents a high cost to the company.
excessive cost of guarantees. The lack of response to complaints, grievances or guarantees causes an avalanche of very difficult to quantify disrepute. We must remember a customer who complains is because you are unhappy, but a customer who is not complaining is not necessarily satisfied. Only buy us and we will no longer lose face exponentially with colleagues.
-These diseases whose eradication requires hard work, the author adds a number of (but not least) side obstacles such as neglecting the long-term planning and seek immediate results, relying solely on technology to solve problems or excuse himself from He is raising problems that are different from those of other companies.
The identification of these diseases and obstacles faced by organizations in the high command are the complement of the 14 points Deming suggests for the growth of a company.
Deming Point 14, which brings together the concepts raised in the previous 13, is nothing more than an action plan for directors to achieve the transformation of their organizations. What does it consist of? We will list the suggestions that the author provides:
-Directors with authority battle for fulfilling first 13 points, and against deadly diseases and obstacles.
-The directors will be proud to adopt the new philosophy and new responsibilities of running the risk to be isolated from their peers.
-The directors explain the entire company or at least the critical positions why the need for change.
-the processes identified and divide each in stages. Each stage has a client: the next stage. The final stage is to serve the end customer. harmony and agreement between stages is needed. Each work optimally.
-Start immediately, quickly, to develop an organization to guide continuous improvement. Here the author mentions the cycle of continuous improvement. While the original author was Walter A. Shewhart, Deming adopted it for his philosophy and viralizó so that today we all associate with it. For correct use of this cycle optimization and the application of statistical methods it is suggested.
-Everyone can be part of a team, which should improve the inputs and outputs of any stage. A team could be made up of people from different areas of staff. Each team has a client.
-Each team will embark on the establishment of an organization for quality.
-“Any substantial improvement must come from an action on the system, the responsibility of management. Desiring, imploring and begging workers to do so is better totally useless.” W. Edwards Deming
-Deming also provides a comprehensive list of questions to ask a team to settle. We invite you to know and to apply them in their organizations.
As a reminder, summarily we mention the famous 14 Points of Deming:
-Create constancy of purpose to improve the product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business and provide jobs.
-Adopt the new philosophy.
-Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. .
-End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price. Instead, minimizing the total cost. Tend to have a single supplier for any item with a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
-Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and reduce costs continually.
-Implement training at work.
-Implement leadership.
-Discard fear, so that everyone can work effectively for the company.
-Break down barriers between departments.
-Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets to ask the labor zero defects and new levels of productivity.
-Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the ground and eliminate management by objectives numéricos.Sustituirlo for leadership.
-Remove barriers that deprive workers of their right to be proud of their work.
-Implement a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
-Put all staff of the company to work towards transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.