The Deming Management Method

THE FOURTEEN POINTS

1.  Create constancy of purpose for improvement and service.   Dr. Deming suggests a radical new definition of a company's role.  Rather than making money, it is to stay in business and provide jobs through innovation, research, constant improvement, and maintenance.

2.  Adopt the new philosophy.  Americans are too tolerant of poor workmanship and sullen service.  We need a new religion in which mistakes and negativism are unacceptable.

3.  Cease dependence on mass inspection.  American firms typically inspect a product as it come off the line or at major stages.   Defective products are either thrown out or reworked; both are unnecessarily expensive.  In effect, a company is paying workers to make defects and then to correct them.  Quality comes not from inspection but from improvement of the process.   With instruction, workers can be enlisted in this improvement.

4.  End the practice of awarding business on price tag alone.   Purchasing departments customarily operate on orders to seek the lowest-priced vendor.  Frequently, this leads to supplies of low quality.  Instead, they should seek the best quality and work to achieve it with a single supplier for any one item in a long-term relationship.

5.  Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service.  Improvement is not a one-time effort.  Management is obligated to continually look for ways to reduce waste and improve quality.

6.  Institute training.  Too often, workers have learned their job from another worker who was never trained properly.  They are forced to follow unintelligible instructions.  They can't do their jobs because no one tells them how.

7.  Institute leadership.  The job of a supervisor is not to tell people what to do or to punish them but to lead.  Leading consists of helping people do a better job and of learning by objective methods who is in need of individual help.

8.  Drive out fear.  Many employees are afraid to ask questions or to take a position, even when they do not understand what the job is or what is right or wrong.  people will continue to do things the wrong way, or to not do them at all.  The economic loss from fear is appalling.  It is necessary for better quality and productivity that people feel secure.

9.  Break down barriers between staff areas.  Often staff areas - departments, units, whatever - are competing with each other or have goals that conflict.  They do not work as a team so they can solve or forsee problems.   Worse, one department's goals may cause trouble for another.

10.  Eliminate solgans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce.  These never helped anybody do a good job.  Let people put up their own slogans.

11.  Eliminate numerical quotas.  Quotas take account only of numbers, not quality or methods.  They are usually a guarantee of inefficiency and high cost.  A person, to hold a job, meets a quota at any cost, without regard to damage to the company.

12.  Remove barriers to prode of workmanship.  People are eager to do a good job and distressed when they can't.  Too often, misguided supervisors, faulty equipment, and defective materials stand in the way.  These barriers must be removed.

13.  Institute a vigorous program of education and retraining.   Both management and the workforce will have to be educated in the new methods, including teamwork and statistical techniques.

14.  Take action to accomplish the transformation.  It will take a special top management team with a plan of action to carry out the quality mission.  Workers can't do it on their own, nor can managers. 

"The Deming Management Method", Mary Walton, 1986.