W. Edwards Deming
All anyone asks for is a chance to work with pride.Collection: Chance
Lack of knowledge... that is the problem.Collection: Knowledge
A bad system will beat a good person every time.Collection: Time
You should not ask questions without knowledge.Collection: Knowledge
Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.Collection: Business
The prevailing - and foolish - attitude is that a good manager can be a good manager anywhere, with no special knowledge of the production process he's managing. A man with a financial background may know nothing about manufacturing shoes or cars, but he's put in charge anyway.Collection: Attitude
Quality is pride of workmanship.Collection: Work
Quality is everyone's responsibility.Collection: Work
We are here to make another world.Collection: Inspirational
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.Collection: Learning
Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.Collection: Fear
The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work.Collection: Work
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.Collection: Change
It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.Collection: Best
I am forever learning and changing.Collection: Learning
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.
Hold everybody accountable? Ridiculous!
If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.
Research shows that the climate of an organization influences an individual's contribution far more than the individual himself.
People with targets and jobs dependent upon meeting them will probably meet the targets - even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it.
The big problems are where people don't realise they have one in the first place.
No one knows the cost of a defective product - don't tell me you do. You know the cost of replacing it, but not the cost of a dissatisfied customer.
The emphasis should be on why we do a job.
Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.
Eliminate numerical quotas, including Management by Objectives.
If you don't understand how to run an efficient operation, new machinery will just give you new problems of operation and maintenance. The sure way to increase productivity is to better administrate man and machine.
Declining productivity and quality means your unit production costs stay high but you don't have as much to sell. Your workers don't want to be paid less, so to maintain profits, you increase your prices. That's inflation.
What should be the aim of management? What is their job? Quality is the responsibility of the top people. Its origin is in the boardroom. They are the ones who decide.
The result of long-term relationships is better and better quality, and lower and lower costs.
Customer expectations? Nonsense. No customer ever asked for the electric light, the pneumatic tire, the VCR, or the CD. All customer expectations are only what you and your competitor have led him to expect. He knows nothing else.
American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan. But they don't know what to copy.
In 1945, the world was in a shambles. American companies had no competition. So nobody really thought much about quality. Why should they? The world bought everything America produced. It was a prescription for disaster.
Export anything to a friendly country except American management.
'Quality' means what will sell and do a customer some good - at least try to.
In Japan, a company worker's position is secure. He is retrained for another job if his present job is eliminated by productivity improvement.
People don't like to make mistakes.
You can not define being exactly on time.
I predicted in 1950 that in five years, manufacturers the world over would be screaming for protection. It took only four years.
When a system is stable, telling the worker about mistakes is only tampering.
The prevailing system of management has crushed fun out of the workplace.
Any manager can do well in an expanding market.
My mother was my biggest role model. She taught me to hate waste. We never wasted anything.
Innovation comes from the producer - not from the customer.
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.Collection: Roles
Put a good person in a bad system and the bad system wins, no contest.Collection: Winning
In God we trust; all others bring data.Collection: Funny Good Morning
Quality comes not from inspection, but from improvement of the production process.Collection: Quality
Two basic rules of life are: 1) Change is inevitable. 2) Everybody resists change.Collection: Learning
Improve quality, you automatically improve productivity.Collection: Quality
The greatest waste … is failure to use the abilities of people…to learn about their frustrations and about the contributions that they are eager to make.Collection: Frustration