The big problems are where people don't realise they have one in the first place.
— W. Edwards Deming
Export anything to a friendly country except American management.
I predicted in 1950 that in five years, manufacturers the world over would be screaming for protection. It took only four years.
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.
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.
In Japan, a company worker's position is secure. He is retrained for another job if his present job is eliminated by productivity improvement.
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.
The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work.
When a system is stable, telling the worker about mistakes is only tampering.
The emphasis should be on why we do a job.
Quality is everyone's responsibility.
Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.
We are here to make another world.
Eliminate numerical quotas, including Management by Objectives.
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.
People don't like to make mistakes.
Quality is pride of workmanship.
I am forever learning and changing.
The prevailing system of management has crushed fun out of the workplace.
'Quality' means what will sell and do a customer some good - at least try to.
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.
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 result of long-term relationships is better and better quality, and lower and lower costs.
Innovation comes from the producer - not from the customer.
Hold everybody accountable? Ridiculous!
You can not define being exactly on time.
You should not ask questions without knowledge.
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.
It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.
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.
Research shows that the climate of an organization influences an individual's contribution far more than the individual himself.
My mother was my biggest role model. She taught me to hate waste. We never wasted anything.
American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan. But they don't know what to copy.
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.
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.
A bad system will beat a good person every time.
Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.
Any manager can do well in an expanding market.
Lack of knowledge... that is the problem.
All anyone asks for is a chance to work with pride.
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.
If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.
