Dr W. Edwards Deming was an American engineer-turned-statistician and a pupil of Dr Walter Shewhart. During the Second World War, his statistical methods were used by the American industry to step up production significantly but quickly faded from use when "normal life" returned in 1945. Deming was asked to assist with a post-war census in Japan and was invited to speak to the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers; those who attended his first sessions were the founders of Toyota and Sony. His message to these business leaders was surprisingly simple: improving quality will reduce expenses while increasing productivity and market share.
Toward the end of his life, Deming began to get recognition in the USA for his ideas, which ran contrary to 'prevailing business wisdom'. In 1980, he was featured in an NBC television documentary called "If Japan can... Why can't we?" and then in a series of videos now sold as "The Deming Library". He also began to write more extensively and for popular consumption. A good place to start is Deming's "Out of the Crisis", in which he describes many of his statistical techniques. More importantly is what Deming referred to as 'Profound Knowledge' - the understanding of underlying principles, both good and bad, that can affect business processes deeply. He identified fourteen points for business (as well as some 'deadly diseases', of which I may write in due course). In 1986, he wrote, "The 14 points are a basis for transformation of [American] industry. Adoption and action on the 14 points are a signal that management intend to stay in business and aim to protect investors and jobs. Such a system formed the basis for lessons for top management in Japan in 1950 and in subsequent years. The 14 points apply anywhere, to small organisations as well as to large ones, to the service industry as well as to manufacturing. They apply to a division within a company." He listed the 14 points:
1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimise total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of an overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
11. a. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
12. a. Remove barriers that rob the hourly paid worker of his right to pride in workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
b. Remove barriers that rob people in management and engineering of their right to pride in workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and management by objective.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.
I'll address how these might apply in health care - and the 'deadly diseases' that we may have to confront - in the next blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment