W. Edwards Deming Quotes

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.

If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.

Put a good person in a bad system and the bad system wins, no contest.

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

...a person and an organization must have goals, take actions to achieve those goals, gather evidence of achievement, study and reflect on the data and from that take actions again. Thus, they are in a continuous feedback spiral toward continuous improvement. This is what 'Kaizan' means.

Two basic rules of life are: 1) Change is inevitable. 2) Everybody resists change.

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.

In God we trust; all others bring data.

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to the proportions something like this: 94% belongs to the system responsibility of management 6% special

The most valuable "currency" of any organization is the initiative and creativity of its members. Every leader has the solemn moral responsibility to develop these to the maximum in all his people. This is the leader's highest priority.

Management by results - like driving a car by looking in rear view mirror.

Stamping out fires is a lot of fun, but it is only putting things back the way they were.

Improve quality, you automatically improve productivity.

It's not enough to do your best; you must know what to do & then do your best.

The ultimate purpose of collecting the data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation.

Understanding variation is the key to success in quality and business.

What we need to do is learn to work in the system, by which I mean that everybody, every team, every platform, every division, every component is there not for individual competitive profit or recognition, but for contribution to the system as a whole on a win-win basis.

Inspection with the aim of finding the bad ones and throwing them out is too late, ineffective, and costly. Quality comes not from inspection but from improvement of the process.

Scientific data are not taken for museum purposes; they are taken as a basis for doing something. If nothing is to be done with the data, then there is no use in collecting any. The ultimate purpose of taking data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation for action. The step intermediate between the collection of data and the action is prediction.

Manage the cause, not the result.

Quality is pride of workmanship.

Each system is perfectly designed to give you exactly what you are getting today.

We should work on our process, not the outcome of our processes.

You must not run your Organization as a functional hierarchy. You must understand it as a System.

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

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

It is a mistake to assume that if everybody does his job, it will be all right. The whole system may be in trouble.

Divide responsibility and nobody is responsible.

Uncontrolled variation is the enemy of quality.

Long-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.

Quality is everyone's responsibility.

A bad system will beat a good person every time.

Nobody goes to work to do a bad job.

Just because you can measure everything doesn't mean that you should.

If 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.

The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people. Put in a negative way, the aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure: to help people to do a better job with less effort.

The customer is the most important part of the production line.

A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without the aim, there is no system.

Managing by results only makes things worse.

Nothing happens without personal transformation.

Don't expect smart people to listen to you without proof.

Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers - a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars - and on up through the university. On the job people, teams, and divisions are ranked, reward for the top, punishment for the bottom. Management by Objectives, quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknowable.

People are entitled to joy in work.

What makes a scientist great is the care that he takes in telling you what is wrong with his results, so that you will not misuse them.

You can expect what you inspect.

Quality starts in the boardroom.

It is not enough that top management commit themselves for life to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to - that is, what they must do. These obligations cannot be delegated. Support is not enough; action is required.

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.

We are being ruined by the best efforts of people who are doing the wrong thing.