by W. Edwards Deming
Copyright 1982.
Deming’s Fourteen Points
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
- Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
- Institute training on the job.
- Institute leadership (see Point 12). 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 overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
- Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
- 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.
- Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force 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.
- Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
- Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
- Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
- Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective.
- Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
- Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.
Analysis
Deming’s fourteen points were famous in the 1980s when they were imported in Japan. Deming helped to lead the Japanese in an economic surge that was felt worldwide. The Japanese were outdoing the United States, especially in engineering. Deming’s fourteen points were given as a way to elucidate steps to proceed in the U.S.
What strikes me is that pride in one’s work is central to the whole gambit. Without the worker taking pride in her/his work, then there is nothing to be gained. This, not economic incentives, is the core of Deming’s work. Do not rob the worker of his pride, or you risk causing quality of production to decline. This simple observation – of what one takes pride in – is helpful whenever I analyze how to deal with others’ work.
Also prominent within this treatise is the idea of statistical control. When one’s work reaches the bounds within the upper limit and lower limit of control, then one can work freely towards decreasing variability and increasing reliability of one’s product. This, in essence, is work. This is how to improve one’s work each day.
Deming’s work was probably revolutionary back in his day (the 1980s). Today, however, most of his lessons have been absorbed by management of enterprises worldwide. They are commonly observed among many product-oriented companies. It is nice to read about them within their historical context. Most of his ideas are still useful in business today.