W. Edwards Deming quotes

W. Edwards Deming was an American statistician, professor, and consultant, widely recognized as a pioneer in quality management. His methods and philosophy played a key role in transforming post-war Japanese industry. He became famous for promoting the importance of continuous improvement and statistical control in business processes. Here are 66 of his quotes:

Foremost is the principle that the purpose of consumer research is to understand the customer's needs and wishes, and thus design product and service that will provide better living for him in the future. A second principle is that no one can guess the future loss of business from a dissatisfied customer...

W. Edwards Deming

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 Deming

To successfully respond to the myriad of changes that shake the world, transformation into a new style of management is required. The route to take is what I call profound knowledge - knowledge for leadership of transformation.

W. Edwards Deming

All anyone asks for is a chance to work with pride.

W. Edwards Deming

Hold everybody accountable? Ridiculous!

W. Edwards Deming

The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work.

W. Edwards Deming

It 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 Deming

Experience by itself teaches nothing...Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence without theory there is no learning.

W. Edwards Deming

We cannot rely on mass inspection to improve quality, though there are times when 100 percent inspection is necessary. As Harold S. Dodge said many years ago, 'You cannot inspect quality into a product.' The quality is there or it isn't by the time it's inspected.

W. Edwards Deming

The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!

W. Edwards Deming

Choice of aim is clearly a matter of clarification of values, especially on the choice between possible options.

W. Edwards Deming

Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.

W. Edwards Deming

Defects are not free. Somebody makes them, and gets paid for making them.

W. Edwards Deming

Learning is not compulsory; it's voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory; it's voluntary. But to survive, we must learn.

W. Edwards Deming

Uncontrolled variation is the enemy of quality.

W. Edwards Deming

Knowledge 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 Deming

Quality comes not from inspection, but from improvement of the production process.

W. Edwards Deming

Management's job. It is management's job to direct the efforts of all components toward the aim of the system. The first step is clarification: everyone in the organization must understand the aim of the system, and how to direct his efforts toward it. Everyone must understand the damage and loss to the whole organization from a team that seeks to become a selfish, independent, profit centre.

W. Edwards Deming

The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside. The aim of this chapter is to provide an outside view-a lens-that I call a system of profound knowledge. It provides a map of theory by which to understand the organizations that we work in. The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people. Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgment of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations that he belongs to.

W. Edwards Deming

The aim of this book is to try to explain to top management of America that their job is to improve competitive position. One need not be an economist to understand from the papers that many American products are not competitive at home or abroad, lost to foreign invasion, causing unemployment at home. Failure of management to plan for the future and to foresee problems has nurtured waste of manpower, of materials and of machine time, all of which raise the manufacturers costs and the price the purchaser must pay. The consumer is not always willing to subsidize this waste.

W. Edwards Deming

Statistical methods had taken fire in America around 1942, following a series of ten-day intensive courses for engineers, initiated by Stanford University on a suggestion from this author. The war department also gave courses at factories of suppliers. Brilliant applications attracted much attention, but the flare of statistical methods by themselves, in an atmosphere in which management did not know their responsibilities, burned, sputtered, fizzled and died out.

W. Edwards Deming

The supposition is prevalent the world over that there would be no problems in production or service if only our production workers would do their jobs in the way that they were taught. Pleasant dreams. The workers are handicapped by the system, and the system belongs to the management.

W. Edwards Deming