Plan for quality in the long term.Resist reacting with short-term solutions.Don't just do the same things better – find better things to do.Predict and prepare for future challenges, and always have the goal of getting better.

1. Create a constant purpose toward improvement.

Embrace quality throughout the organization.Put your customers' needs first, rather than react to competitive pressure – and design products and services to meet those needs.Be prepared for a major change in the way business is done. It's about leading, not simply managing.Create your quality vision, and implement it.

2. Adopt the new philosophy.

Inspections are costly and unreliable – and they don't improve quality, they merely find a lack of quality.Build quality into the process from start to finish.Don't just find what you did wrong – eliminate the "wrongs" altogether.Use statistical control methods – not physical inspections alone – to prove that the process is working.

3. Stop depending on inspections.

Quality relies on consistency – the less variation you have in the input, the less variation you'll have in the output.Look at suppliers as your partners in quality. Encourage them to spend time improving their own quality – they shouldn't compete for your business based on price alone.Analyze the total cost to you, not just the initial cost of the product.Use quality statistics to ensure that suppliers meet your quality standards.

4. Use a single supplier for any one item.

Continuously improve your systems and processes. Deming promoted the Plan-Do-Check-Act approach to process analysis and improvement.Emphasize training and education so everyone can do their jobs better.Use kaizen as a model to reduce waste and to improve productivity, effectiveness, and safety.

5. Improve constantly and forever.

Train for consistency to help reduce variation.Build a foundation of common knowledge.Allow workers to understand their roles in the "big picture."Encourage staff to learn from one another, and provide a culture and environment for effective teamwork.

6. Use training on the job.

Expect your supervisors and managers to understand their workers and the processes they use.Don't simply supervise – provide support and resources so that each staff member can do his or her best. Be a coach instead of a policeman.Figure out what each person actually needs to do his or her best.Emphasize the importance of participative management and transformational leadership.Find ways to reach full potential, and don't just focus on meeting targets and quotas.

7. Implement leadership.

Allow people to perform at their best by ensuring that they're not afraid to express ideas or concerns.Let everyone know that the goal is to achieve high quality by doing more things right – and that you're not interested in blaming people when mistakes happen.Make workers feel valued, and encourage them to look for better ways to do things.Ensure that your leaders are approachable and that they work with teams to act in the company's best interests.Use open and honest communication to remove fear from the organization.

8. Eliminate fear.

Build the "internal customer" concept – recognize that each department or function serves other departments that use their output.Build a shared vision.Use cross-functional teamwork to build understanding and reduce adversarial relationships.Focus on collaboration and consensus instead of compromise.

9. Break down barriers between departments.

Let people know exactly what you want – don't make them guess. "Excellence in service" is short and memorable, but what does it mean? How is it achieved? The message is clearer in a slogan like "You can do better if you try."Don't let words and nice-sounding phrases replace effective leadership. Outline your expectations, and then praise people face-to-face for doing good work.

10. Get rid of unclear slogans.

Look at how the process is carried out, not just numerical targets. Deming said that production targets encourage high output and low quality.Provide support and resources so that production levels and quality are high and achievable.Measure the process rather than the people behind the process.

11. Eliminate management by objectives.

Allow everyone to take pride in their work without being rated or compared.Treat workers the same, and don't make them compete with other workers for monetary or other rewards. Over time, the quality system will naturally raise the level of everyone's work to an equally high level.

12. Remove barriers to pride of workmanship.

Improve the current skills of workers.Encourage people to learn new skills to prepare for future changes and challenges.Build skills to make your workforce more adaptable to change, and better able to find and achieve improvements.

13. Implement education and self-improvement.

Improve your overall organization by having each person take a step toward quality.Analyze each small step, and understand how it fits into the larger picture.Use effective change management principles to introduce the new philosophy and ideas in Deming's 14 points.

14. Make "transformation" everyone's job.

Deming's 14 Points on Quality Management, or the Deming Model of Quality Management, a core concept on implementing total quality management (TQM), is a set of management practices to help companies increase their quality and productivity.

The name W. Edwards Deming is synonymous with the most insightful views, ideas, and commentary on management and quality control. Referred to as "the high prophet of quality" by the New York Times, Deming was instrumental in the spectacular rise of Japanese industry after World War II and influenced many of the world's most innovative managers in the ensuing decades. His original ideas led directly to the creation of relationships with suppliers and a plethora of quality initiatives. Now, with The Essential Deming, Fordham University professor and Deming expert Joyce Orsini draws on a wealth of previously unavailable material to present the legendary thinker's most important management principles in one indispensable volume. The book is filled with articles, papers, lectures, and notes touching on a wide range of topics, but which focus on Deming's overriding message: quality and operations are all about systems, not individual performance; the system has to be designed so that the worker can perform well. The Essential Deming reveals Deming's unique insight about: <ul> <li>How poor management infects an entire organization</li> <li>The critical importance of management on producing quality products and services</li> <li>Improving management in any company</li> <li>The effective management of people--the manager's single most important task</li> <li>How to educate workers into critical thinkers</li> <li>Ways to preserve statistical integrity while dealing with real-world problems</li> </ul> Fully authorized by the Deming estate and published in cooperation with The W. Edwards Deming Institute, The Essential Deming is the first book to distill Deming's life's worth of thinking and writing into a single source. Orsini provides expert commentary throughout, delivering a powerful, practical guide to superior management. With The Essential Deming, you have the rationale, insight, and best practices you need to transform your organization. "To move from the wilderness of news into the paths of history, we must distinguish true turning points from mistaken ones. W. Edwards Deming has seen the future and it works. He is a turning point of business history made flesh." -- U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT "I engaged Dr. Deming to assist Ford in planning, developing, and implementing the plans to accomplish major improvement in the way people worked together and in the quality of our products. . . . Ford achieved major success in this effort, and I consider Ed Deming to have been a key element in our progress." -- DONALD E. PETERSEN, former Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Ford Motor Company "It can be said of very few that they changed the way the world thinks, but Dr. Deming is among them. . . . The legacy of Dr. Deming's genius, already immense, grows even larger with this new collection of his thoughts." -- DONALD M. BERWICK , Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress "Toyota Motor Corporation was awarded a Deming Prize in 1965. This laid the foundations for the present growth of our company. I do believe the ideas and theories of Dr. Deming emphasizing the importance of quality control are very useful for people of all ages." -- TATSURO TOYODA, Senior Advisor, Toyota Motor Corporation "Few rival W. Edwards Deming for impact on management in the twentieth century. Indeed, Deming and Drucker, to my mind, stand apart for the breadth and depth of their vision for management as a profession that truly might help realize the possibility of people working together at their best. . . . The publication of this expansive edition of Deming in Deming's own words is a seminal event." -- PETER M. SENGE, MIT and the Society for Organizational Learning

The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality

Sean Quint