Dear Terry,

Thanks for another well reasoned and reflective note [reposted in full below]. While the quote you selected sounds accurate, I'd want to read it for myself in context to see what I think he meant by it. I'm simply not as convinced as you are that statistical quality control was Deming's goal, rather than a tool to achieve larger goals.

Statistical quality control was vital, and Deming understood that the point was to shape systems so that people could do their best work. What I'm not so sure about is whether the 14 Points all told were directed to the West, as contrasted with the chapter of which he writes.

Before I post again, I've got to find my copies of Out of the Crisis and The New Economics.

Deming was influenced by Japan in his was of thinking and writing. You can read Miyamoto Mushashi as a vague series of sound bites, but if you are immersed in the way of the sword, you can also read it as a useful and explicit guide. When I read the Book of Five Rings, I am intensely aware that I can never understand what he truly means by his sensory and feeling descriptions. I suspect that someone who practices kendo with a wooden sword can never truly know what Musashi meant either. It is one thing to know the way of the sword as a sport, and another to know the way of the sword as a samurai who cuts down over sixty opponents in a career of armed combat.

By this, I mean to say that you may be seeing sound bites and aphorisms in what form explicit, well reasoned arguments in concise form to those who have managerial and leadership responsibility.

I'd agree that engineers and managers may read these books differently, but I am not sure that Deming meant them primarily as engineering guides. While Deming was a mathematician and a physicist, he was a thinker and an organizational activist as well.

I must read the books again before I come back to this. And I've ordered the DVD sets of Deming's courses from the Deming Institute, so I'll get a chance to see what he had to say by listening and watching to the man himself. 

In this conversation, you've been speaking of Deming in relation to the 14 Points without attending to the fact that Deming brought this all together in his System of Profound Knowledge. Here, knowledge of variation -- statistical quality control -- is one element among the four.

One the other hand, I could be wrong on this. So I will read, review, and listen to Deming himself before I make any further comments.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean

Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia

Telephone +61 3 9214 6755 
www.swinburne.edu.au/design

--

On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:57:32 +0900, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Hi Ken,
>
>Thanks for your message. I have some of Deming's writing to hand and also
>the opportunity to chat with a systems colleague who has studied Deming
>deeply. A confession is we both have  maths as well as design backgrounds so
>we might be seeing things differently!
>
>Another confession is I'm convinced Deming's work is really essential  to
>improving design as a profession across all fields of design but that it is
>widely misread.
>
>I'm also aware that discussing Deming and management of design is as boring
>as batpoo to many on this list - if so please stop reading now!
>
>Cheers,
>Terry
>
>
>====== Here goes!
>
>I've referenced the following to an '86 copy of 'Out of the Crisis'
>
>Deming describes his 14 points and the reasons for them in Chapter 2 of 'Out
>of the Crisis' (pp 18-96), titled 'Principles of Transformation of Western
>Management'.
>
>Deming  starts the chapter as follows:
>
> 'Purpose of this Chapter. Western style of management must change to halt
>the decline of Western industry, and to turn it upward. The purpose of this
>chapter and the next one is to explain the elements of the transformation
>that must take place'. The focus of the 14 points is clearly 'Western
>management'
>
>An aside. Two things come to mind on reading the chapter. 1) In Deming's 14
>points, the devil is in the detail. He uses terms in very specific ways and
>uses examples to confirm to the reader how he is using the terms. Many of
>the ways he uses terms differ from what a reader might expect. 2) From a
>systems perspective, all 14 points are simply 14 specific instances of
>advice of the potentially very large set  of items of advice on how to avoid
>local suboptimisation. His 14 points of advice  are chosen to match the
>context.
>
>Page 23, 'Origin of the 14 points. [subhead] The 14 points are the basis for
>transformation of American Industry....Such a system formed the basis for
>lessons for top management in Japan in 1950 and in subsequent years (see,
>pp1-6 and the Appendix)'. Thus he reaffirms the focus of the 14 points is
>American industry and says that the Japanese version which is th eorigin of
>it is found in pp 1-6 and the Appendix. If the Japanes and the American
>veriosn are the same, then we would expect the descriptions in pp1-6 and the
>Appendix to be similar in purpiose and content to the 14 points - they are
>not.
>
>Here is where it gets interesting because in pp1-6 and the Appendix, Deming
>describes something very different from how many readers interpret his 14
>points for transformation of American industry. He describes production as a
>system that includes consumers (his model also includes services
>organisations such as design businesses) and uses Shewart's
>statistically-based analyses of rework and productivity for  improving
>quality at all stages in the system. Deming states (p5) that the improvement
>of Japanese industry were due to management and engineers learning their
>responsibilities for improvement and engineers learning statistical methods
>for understanding and managing variation to improve quality. (again very
>different from the 14 points). The summary practical explanation of pp1-6
>occurs across pp6-9 where he demonstrated how production systems can act as
>a stable system of making faulty outcomes - and this is beyond workers or
>management to change by exhortation or pressure. Instead, management must
>create a better stable system that makes outputs that are all in the
>acceptable range. These explanations are very different from the common
>interpretations of Deming's 14 points.
>
>In the Appendix (pp 486-492) (which he also says describes the basis of the
>14 points as derived from Japan), Deming describes the history of change in
>Japan using his statistical and management approaches. The origin was that
>around 1948-1949 the Union of Japanese Science and Engineering (JUSE) began
>to appreciate how Shewart statistical methods might benefit in the
>reconstruction of Japan. Deming was invited in 1950, after 2 previous trips
>to help Japanese statisticians in studies of housing and nutrition and
>preparing the 1951 census. In America, the statistical methods of quality
>had failed due to weaknesses in management. Deming  describes how in Japan
>they avoided this by an intensive program of education for top management
>and engineers in statistical methods. Supported by advice on management's
>responsibilities by Dr JJ Juran,  the effect was almost immediate reductions
>in rework and increases in productivity. Unlike to approach proposed for
>America, in Japan in the 14 points, the management approach used in Japan
>was based around QC-circles (p491-492).
>
>Some other points, that show how Deming is specific in his use of words in
>ways that differ form common use and align with the statistical/system basis
>of his quality improvement approach that Toyota and other companies have
>used to great success:
>
>Leadership (p54): 'Leaders must know the work they supervise. They must be
>empowered and directed to inform upper management concerning conditions that
>need correction (inherited defects...). Management must act on the
>corrections proposed.' This specific definition is very different from many
>current views on leadership that might not work to achieve the ends that
>Deming envisaged [Deming's approach to leadership is in essence  a strategy
>to avoid local suboptimisation by management, accounting and upstream
>processes].
>
>'Drive out fear' (p59) - Deming's  aim is to avoid individuals out of fear
>setting their subprocess up as best they can , with the result that the
>overall system and the companies outputs are compromised [local
>suboptimisation]
>
>'Break down barriers between staff areas' (p62) - Deming's  reason is so
>that everyone knows everyone else's job so it is possible to optimise across
>the whole system and understand the negative implications of local
>suboptimisation.
>
>'Eliminate slogans and exhortations' (p65) - the purpose is to avoid local
>suboptimisation.
>
>Deming's other '14' points  are all good advice in a Western industrial
>context for changing to a system that brings outputs into statistical
>control and improves them whilst avoiding the problems of  local
>suboptimisation. It seems to me that viewing Deming's work in this light
>shows  that other good advice and different points would be appropriate in
>other contexts. For example, with a colleague I've been recently researching
>the design of university research quality improvement motivation systems
>(what a mouthful!). The outcome of a case study suggests a Deming point on
>avoiding giving the professoriate the responsibility for deciding the
>weightings for internal funding  incentives for research. In the case study,
>they appear consciously or unconsciously to rearrange the systems so that
>the benefits are strongly skewed towards them in ways that also set up
>barriers to competition - the local suboptimisation at the expense of the
>overall quality of output that Deming tries to avoid. Although Deming's  14
>points from the 70s still have a useful ring and in sound bite terms sound
>like they are generic good advice for anywhere, I'm sure Deming would have
>created a different set of critical 14 points for transformation of industry
>now as opposed to then.
>
>All the best,
>
>Terry
>
>
>Ken Friedman wrote
>
>The 14 points are more than general heuristic guidelines. While they are
>concise, they are clear and explicit. Treated with care and reflection, they
>are a model for excellent leadership.