Dear Ken,
Good post. One bit left me wondering...
Feels to me it depends on which hat one wears to interpret Deming.
Reading Deming wearing a process designer's hat, Deming's focus is on
improving profitability through reducing costs via reducing waste, rework,
useless inspection and a raft of other techniqus associated with removing
activities outside statisitical control. The benefits depend wholly on
bringing processes into statistical control. The use of management and
leadership is simply one tool amongst many in doing this. This is the view
of management and leadership theory and practice as a tool with achieving
statistical control as the main activity. For designers of automated
processes and machines, or cooperatives or many other socio-technical
arrangements, this makes good sense, many other tools are required or
possible than classical best practices in management and leadership. In this
sense, Deming's 14 points describes a good toolset.
Wearing an organisaiton designer hat and viewing the world through a
classical management and leadership lens, then the opposite persepctive
comes to the fore. As you suggested statisitical control can then be viewed
as a tool of management if management is taken as the given.
So....
Is improved management practices (Deming's 14 points) the tool needed to
achieve the statistical control necessary for good outcomes?
Or,
Is statistical control the tool needed form managers to achieve good
outcomes?
I read Deming's contribution in terms of the former, and I suspect you read
Deming in terms of the latter?
It would be intersting to know how other systems and organisaiton designers
see this.
Best wishes,
Terry
____________________
Dr. Terence Love, FRDS, AMIMechE, PMACM
Researcher, Digital Ecosystems and Business Intelligence Institute
Curtin University, PO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
Visiting Professor, Member of Scientific Council
UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon, Portugal
Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise
Development, Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
____________________
<snip>...While statistical quality control for industrial production is the
core of Deming management applied to industry, statistical quality control
is a tool for Deming, not a goal....
For W. Edwards Deming, developing effective management practice was the
goal. As Deming writes, this required us to "institute leadership."<>
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