More on Deming's Principles

Dr W. Edward Deming's 14 Principles - in full

1. Constancy of purpose: Create constancy of purpose for continual improvement of products and service to society, allocating resources to provide for long range needs rather than only short term profitability, with a plan to become competitive, to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. The new philosophy: Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age, created in Japan. We can no longer live with commonly accepted levels of delays, mistakes, defective materials and defective workmanship. Transformation of Western management style is necessary to halt the continued decline of business and industry.
3. Cease dependence on mass inspection: Eliminate the need for mass inspection as the way of life to achieve quality by building quality into the product in the first place. Require statistical evidence of built in quality in both manufacturing and purchasing functions.
4. End lowest tender contracts: End the practice of awarding business solely on the basis of price tag. Instead require meaningful measures of quality along with price. Reduce the number of suppliers for the same item by eliminating those that do not qualify with statistical and other evidence of quality. The aim is to minimize total cost, not merely initial cost, by minimizing variation. This may be achieved by moving toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long term relationship of loyalty and trust. Purchasing managers have a new job, and must learn it.
5. Improve every process: Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production, and service. Search continually for problems in order to improve every activity in the company, to improve quality and productivity, and thus to constantly decrease costs. Institute innovation and constant improvement of product, service, and process. It is management's job to work continually on the system (design, incoming materials, maintenance, improvement of machines, supervision, training, retraining).
6. Institute training on the job: Institute modern methods of training on the job for all, including management, to make better use of every employee. New skills are required to keep up with changes in materials, methods, product and service design, machinery, techniques, and service.
7. Institute leadership: Adopt and institute leadership aimed at helping people do a better job. The responsibility of managers and supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality. Improvement of quality will automatically improve productivity. Management must ensure that immediate action is taken on reports of inherited defects, maintenance requirements, poor tools, fuzzy operational definitions, and all conditions detrimental to quality.
8. Drive out fear: Encourage effective two way communication and other means to drive out fear throughout the organization so that everybody may work effectively and more productively for the company.
9. Break down barriers: Break down barriers between departments and staff areas. People in different areas, such as Leasing, Maintenance, Administration, must work in teams to tackle problems that may be encountered with products or service.
10. Eliminate exhortations: Eliminate the use of slogans, posters and exhortations for the work force, demanding Zero Defects and new levels of productivity, without providing methods. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships; 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. Eliminate arbitrary numerical targets: Eliminate work standards that prescribe quotas for the work force and numerical goals for people in management. Substitute aids and helpful leadership in order to achieve continual improvement of quality and productivity.
12. Permit pride of workmanship: Remove the barriers that rob hourly workers, and people in management, of their right to pride of workmanship. This implies, among other things, abolition of the annual merit rating (appraisal of performance) and of Management by Objective. Again, the responsibility of managers, supervisors, foremen must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
13. Encourage education: Institute a vigorous program of education, and encourage self improvement for everyone. What an organization needs is not just good people; it needs people that are improving with education. Advances in competitive position will have their roots in knowledge.
14. Top management commitment and action: Clearly define top management's permanent commitment to ever improving quality and productivity, and their obligation to implement all of these principles. Indeed, it is not enough that top management commit themselves for life to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to-that is, what they must do. Create a structure in top management that will push every day on the preceding 13 Points, and take action in order to accomplish the transformation. Support is not enough: action is required!

Deming's 14 Points of Management

PRINCIPLE 1 : "Create a constancy of purpose"
Define the problems of today and the future
Allocate resources for long-term planning
Allocate resources for research and education
Constantly improve design of product and service
PRINCIPLE 2 : "Adopt the new philosophy"
Quality costs less not more
Superstitious learning
The call for major change
Stop looking at your competition and look at your customer instead
PRINCIPLE 3 : "Cease dependence on inspection"
Quality does not come from inspection
Mass inspection is unreliable, costly, and ineffective
Inspectors fail to agree with each other
Inspection should be used to collect data for process control
PRINCIPLE 4 : "Do not award business basedon price tag alone"
Price alone has no meaning
Change focus from lowest initial cost to lowest total cost
Work toward a single source and long term relationship
Establish a mutual confidence and aid between purchaser and vendor
PRINCIPLE 5 : "Improve constantly the system of production and service"
Quality starts with the intent of management
Teamwork in design is fundamental
Forever, continue to reduce waste and continue to improve
Putting out fires is not improvement of the process
PRINCIPLE 6 : "Institute training"
Management must provide the setting where workers can be successful
Management must remove the inhibitors to good work
Management needs an appreciation of variation
This is management's new role.
PRINCIPLE 7: "Adopt and institute leadership"
MBO's
Work standards
Meet specifications
Zero defects
Appraisal of performance
Replace with leadership
Leaders must:
Remove barriers to pride of workmanship
Know the work they supervise
Know the difference between special and common cause of variation
Principle 8 : "Drive out fear"
The common denominator of fear
The fear of knowledge
Performance appraisals
Management by fear or numbers
PRINCIPLE 9 : "Break barriers among staff areas"
Know your internal suppliers and customers
Promote team work
PRINCIPLE 10 : "Eliminate slogans, exhortations,and targets
They are directed at the wrong group
They generate frustration and resentment
Use posters that explain what management is doing to improve the work environment
PRINCIPLE 11 :"Eliminate numerical quotas"
They impede quality
They reduce production
A person's job becomes meeting a quota
PRINCIPLE 12 : "Remove barriers"
Performance appraisal systems
Production rates
Financial management systems
Allow people to take pride in their workmanship
PRINCIPLE 13 :"Institute a program of education and self-improvement"
Commitment to lifelong employment
Overtime and education
Work with higher education of needs
Develop team building skills in children
PRINCIPLE 14 : "Take action to accomplish thetransformation"
Management must:
Struggle over the fourteen points
Take pride in the new philosophy
Include the critical mass of people in the change
Learn and use the Shewhart cycle

Quality Gurus

What is a quality guru?
A guru, by definition, is a good person, a wise person and a teacher. A quality guru should be all of these, plus have a concept and approach to quality within business that has made a major and lasting impact. The gurus mentioned in this section have done, and continue to do, that, in some cases, even after their death.

W Edwards Deming placed great importance and responsibility on management, at both the individual and
company level, believing management to be responsible for 94% of quality problems. His fourteen point
plan is a complete philosophy of management, that can be applied to small or large organisations in the
public, private or service sectors:
• Create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service
• Adopt the new philosophy. We can no longer live with commonly accepted levels of delay, mistakes
and defective workmanship
• Cease dependence on mass inspection. Instead, require statistical evidence that quality is built in
• End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price
• Find problems. It is management’s job to work continually on the system
• Institute modern methods of training on the job
• Institute modern methods of supervision of production workers, The responsibility of foremen must
be changed from numbers to quality
• Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company
• Break down barriers between departments
• Eliminate numerical goals, posters and slogans for the workforce asking for new levels of
productivity without providing methods
• Eliminate work standards that prescribe numerical quotas
• Remove barriers that stand between the hourly worker and their right to pride of workmanship
• Institute a vigorous programme of education and retraining
• Create a structure in top management that will push on the above points every day

He believed that adoption of, and action on, the fourteen points was a signal that management intended to stay in business. Deming also encouraged a systematic approach to problem solving and promoted the widely known Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) cycle. The PDCA cycle is also known as the Deming cycle, although it was developed by a colleague of Deming, Dr Shewhart.

It is a universal improvement methodology, the idea being to constantly improve, and thereby reduce the difference between the requirements of the customers and the performance of the process. The cycle is about learning and ongoing improvement, learning what works and what does not in a systematic way; and the cycle repeats; after one cycle is complete, another is started.

Dr Joseph M Juran developed the quality trilogy – quality planning, quality control and quality improvement. Good quality management requires quality actions to be planned out, improved and controlled. The process achieves control at one level of quality performance, then plans are made to improve the performance on a project by project basis, using tools and techniques such as Pareto analysis.

This activity eventually achieves breakthrough to an improved level, which is again controlled, to prevent any deterioration.

Juran believed quality is associated with customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the product, and emphasised the necessity for ongoing quality improvement through a succession of small improvement projects carried out throughout the organisation. His ten steps to quality improvement are:
• Build awareness of the need and opportunity for improvement
• Set goals for improvement
• Organise to reach the goals
• Provide training
• Carry out projects to solve problems
• Report progress
• Give recognition
• Communicate results
• Keep score of improvements achieved
• Maintain momentum
He concentrated not just on the end customer, but on other external and internal customers. Each person along the chain, from product designer to final user, is a supplier and a customer. In addition, the person will be a process, carrying out some transformation or activity.

Philip B Crosby is known for the concepts of “Quality is Free” and “Zero Defects”, and his quality improvement process is based on his four absolutes of quality:
• Quality is conformance to requirements
• The system of quality is prevention
• The performance standard is zero defect
• The measurement of quality is the price of non-conformance

His fourteen steps to quality improvement are:
• Management is committed to a formalised quality policy
• Form a management level quality improvement team (QIT) with responsibility for quality
improvement process planning and administration
• Determine where current and potential quality problems lie
• Evaluate the cost of quality and explain its use as a management tool to measure waste
• Raise quality awareness and personal concern for quality amongst all employees
• Take corrective actions, using established formal systems to remove the root causes of problems
• Establish a zero defects committee and programme
• Train all employees in quality improvement
• Hold a Zero Defects Day to broadcast the change and as a management recommitment and
employee commitment
• Encourage individuals and groups to set improvement goals
• Encourage employees to communicate to management any obstacles they face in attaining their
improvement goals
• Give formal recognition to all participants
• Establish quality councils for quality management information sharing
• Do it all over again – form a new quality improvement team

What Went Wrong with TQM?

What went wrong with TQM?
By Rebecca Anwar, Ph.D.

Total Quality Management - TQM. We know it well. It gripped the American workplace and crept into the health care industry in the early nineties. It was, and in some cases still is, the latest rage. From the onset, there was a lot of hype and acceptance of TQM. For many health care businesses it resulted in a commitment and an investment. They went on to retool operations, increase efficiency and improve "quality." Though some hospitals and medical practices continue to endorse and espouse the success of their TQM program, many have all but forgotten the efforts and investment made.

What went wrong? Here we are in 1996 and the enthusiasm for TQM has fizzled. Despite a
sincere interest in providing quality product and service, some small to mid-sized health care
organizations never got off the ground floor. For others, a considerable amount of time, energy
and money was invested to develop and support a TQM program that would improve management, increase efficiency and foster team spirit. Yet, in time, programs lost momentum
and the current status and success of TQM is questionable for many health care organizations.
Why is it that health care has not experienced overwhelming, "long term" success with TQM? At
the risk of offending TQM advocates, the following assessment is presented.

TQM - A Great Idea

The concept of TQM is fantastic: involve the people, examine their work flow and develop ways
to improve the output, thus eliminating waste. By including staff and gathering input from
everyone involved in a procedure, we are able to collectively examine the function (purpose) and
flowchart the process (action taken). We can quickly identify and eliminate wasted steps and
duplication. We are on the way to improving quality. So what could possibly get in the way of our
success?

Time Consuming and Laborious
Designing a structured TQM program includes the development of "teams" and the unfortunate
necessity of many meetings. And this is where the problem begins. The idea of the flowcharting
and streamlining process was to eliminate steps and time. Now time is spent meeting with other
team captains, documenting progress and monitoring performance. Team captains may have
been assigned who may not be as committed to the TQM concept (and the investment made) as
top management. In addition, the team may change. People leave the organization after we
involve them and invest time in their training.

Expecting Too Much Leadership
Our team captains may be great on the line, and, in fact, they climbed right on the bandwagon
with TQM. That doesn't mean they are natural leaders. After a year or so, it is possible that the
excitement has waned. They have other things on their minds and don't want to be involved any
longer as a team captain. They don't want the responsibility they have assumed. They have seen
people come and go and haven't been able to generate enthusiasm. This has been discouraging
and has eroded their confidence. Some of our team captains are well-intended, but are unable to
succeed in a leadership role.

Attrition and Change
The original team received extensive training with the TQM plan. They worked with great gusto
to set up a promising program. They enjoyed the fruits of early success. That was then, and this
is now. There has probably been some staff turnover. It is likely that some people in the initial
group have left the organization or are now working in another capacity. The people that came
aboard since then really haven't bought into the concept. In addition, with the evolution of
managed care, your organization has changed in order to adjust to external and internal
influences. Things just aren't the same. This makes it exceedingly difficult to keep your TQM
program going and to get new employees to "buy in."

A Costly Investment
Hiring advisors, trainers and training tools to implement your TQM program was quite an
investment. On top of that, consider the lost productivity with repeatedly bringing staff together
to set up the program, identify problems and determine viable solutions. And then there are all
those team meetings and the mechanics of documentation and follow-up essential to monitor
actions and measure results. No question about it, TQM can be a high maintenance, costly
program.

Can you really measure the gains achieved with your TQM program? Has the benefit exceeded
the investment of time and money? Will the gains received be long-lasting, or is TQM simply the
latest management rage?

The WISE Approach
There is a simpler way to achieve success with organizational management. The line people in an
organization are critical to our success. We must respect them and appreciate them. They can
help us keep a pulse on business operations. We don't need complicated manuals and written
guidelines defining function and process. It is a matter of recognizing each individual's strength
and appreciating their contribution. Setting up reporting mechanisms is important, but we will get automatic feedback and keep a pulse on our organization if we are wise.

The principles of sound management and efficient operation lie in the individuals. Each person's
contribution should be valued. Then we can examine the process and function. We must learn to
watch the people in our organization and be skillful in recognizing their potential. Believe in your
people and you will be able to inspire them to grow, produce and accomplish much more for your
organization than you might have imagined. The value of the loyalty and dedication you receive
is impossible to measure.

If you support and encourage your staff, the sky is the limit. They will take ownership not only
for their performance, but also for the success of the company. Enjoy your work, enjoy your
staff. They will feel it and they will help you succeed.
Here it is, and it's all too simple. Rely on your human relations skills and the technical gains will
follow. The concept is simple and there is little economic investment. Be a good coach, be a good
cheerleader. Celebrate your success on a regular basis. Be WISE.

Watch
Pay attention, be observant. You can learn a lot about your people and a great deal about the
organization. Too often, managers are caught up in the responsibility and the objectives they
must accomplish. Stop it! Get in touch with your people. They are the link to your success.

Recognize the problems they face. Have empathy and help them solve their problems. The
problems aren't yours to solve. Your job is to give people the tools to solve their own problems.

You can do that by watching to see what changes they face, their approach to dealing with
problems and by helping them gain perspective so they can achieve the desired outcome.
Start by giving them some "slam dunks" - easy wins. Deal first with problems easily solved and
solutions easy to implement. Once they begin to see the results they can achieve, their
confidence will grow. With the guidance of a good coach, they can excel and you will help them
build incredible confidence in their own ability to solve future (more significant) problems.

Inspire
This is not easy for everyone. It does require you to let go and have confidence that people will
grow and expand their contribution. If you set limits on people, they will fall to your lowest
expectation. Expect a lot from people, give them the confidence to accomplish more, and always
stand behind them. Celebrate their successes and downplay their failures. Encourage them to
pick themselves up and try again, giving constructive criticism to help them grow and expand
their capabilities.

Support
Your support will foster growth, team spirit, ownership in the organization and loyalty. You will
increase productivity and quality beyond your expectations. In addition, you will encourage
people to share their concerns. Communication and feedback will be open and honest. Fears will
disappear. This positive response will be contagious and each person's contribution to the
organization will increase. In fact, if you have a non-performing, problem employee, they will feel
peer pressure that will require a response. If they attempt to "poison the well" (create negative
feelings between management and co-workers), they will fail.

More often than not, the problematic, non-compliant employee will change to meet the
expectations of the organization or they will be compelled to leave. If this does not occur, you
will need to cut the cord by replacing the individual. If you don't, you will weaken your position
as a leader and experience a deterioration in staff morale.

Enjoy
Lighten up! This begins with valuing every employee and being enthusiastic. The common
denominators that exist with managers who love their work are basic. It is their respect for the
company, their enthusiasm and confidence about what they are achieving and the pride they
take in the accomplishments of the people they work with. If each of us appreciates and enjoys
our staff, recognizing that their contribution is critical to our success, we will reap the rewards.
If you apply these simple principles, you will be amazed at the organizational accomplishments
that can be achieved. A WISE decision is a matter of applying common sense principles that
respect and value the contribution of each individual. You won't need complicated, timeconsuming monitoring tools. You will have open communication and feedback that keeps a pulse on your organization. Management and staff will develop a passion for their work - it's
contagious.

It may be difficult to change habits and establish new work patterns. An outside expert can be
the perfect catalyst to get you headed in the right direction. WISE-Watch, Inspire, Support and
Enjoy - It's a personal investment in people that will bring you economic results and
organizational success!

The Concept of TQM

TQM is based on a number of ideas. It means thinking about quality in terms of all functions of
the enterprise and is a start-to-finish process that integrates interrelated functions at all levels.

It is a system approach that considers every interaction between the various elements of the
organization. Thus, the overall effectiveness of the system is higher than the sum of the
individuals outputs from the subsystems. The subsystems include all the organizational functions
in the life cycle of a product, such as design, planning, production, distribution, and field service.

The management subsystems also require integration, including strategy with a customer focus,
the tools of quality and employee involvement. A corollary is that any product, process, or
service can be improved, and a successful organization is one that consciously seeks and exploits
opportunities for improvement at all levels. The load-bearing structure is customer satisfaction.
The watchword is continuous improvement.

The following summarizes the key issues and terminology related to TQM:

1. the cost of quality as the measure of non-quality and a measure of how the quality
process is progressing.

2. a cultural change that appreciates the primary need to meet customer requirements ,
implements a management philosophy that acknowledges this emphasis, encourages
employee involvement, and embraces the ethic of continuous improvement.

3. enabling mechanisms of change, including training and education, communication,
recognition, management behavior, teamwork, and customer satisfaction programs.

4. implementing TQM by defining the mission, identifying the output, identifying the
customers, negotiating customer requirements, developing a supplier specification that
details customer objectives, and determining the activities required to fulfill\ill those
objectives.

5. management behavior that includes acting as role modes, use of quality processes and
tools, encouraging communication, sponsoring feedback activities, and fostering and
providing a supporting environment.