Jack -- W. Edwards Deming - Fourteen Points

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The Quality Management Philosophy of W. Edwards Deming
"The Fourteen Points"

Last Modified: 7-4-08

Dr. Deming's influence is all around us.... When Ford said "Quality is Job One!", this sentence was part of a quality management statement Deming helped them create. General Motors and Toyota have used Deming's ideas. To build the fabulous 777 jet, Boeing used a new management philosophy and called it Working Together; in it were a number of Deming ideas. Companies, hospitals, churches, and schools are all using Deming's Fourteen Points. The Department of the Navy has saved millions of dollars with the Deming approach!

1. Create Constancy of Purpose
     You have to answer two questions: What are we doing? Why are we doing it? You must have a long-term aim, something that every member of the organization knows and can understand.

2. Learn the New Philosophy
     The old philosophy was to compete. The new philosophy is to cooperate in the organization so that everyone can win.

3. Cease Dependence on Mass Inspection
     Inspection does not add quality. Inspections tell you if quality is there. It is or is not, and inspection cannot change it either way.

4. Don't Buy on Price Tag Alone
     This one used to send purchasing agents into fits, but more and more companies are finding out it actually works.

5. Improve Constantly Every Process
     This point is often misunderstood. You do get those leap-forward improvements using the Deming management system, but you also get the smaller improvements between the leaps.

6. Institute Training for Skills
     Part of training is about how to do the job and another part is about why the job is being done. Unless everyone knows why they are doing a job, they cannot do it well.

7. Institute Leadership for People
     Training for management must include training for leadership, an altogether different skill from what has normally been required, which is supervision.

8. Drive Out Fear -- Build Trust
     Drive out fear, build trust. To lead a company focused on improvements requires a whole different set of values and attitudes and relationships than leading an organization focused on control.

9. Break Down Barriers Between Staff Areas
     Build a system within your organization for win-win. This means cooperation. It means abolishment of competition.

10. Eliminate Slogans, Exhortations, & Targets
     By what method? How are you going to increase productivity? If the supplies are shoddy, the work force untrained and fearful, the machines out of control, and the management system chaotic, productivity is not going to be increased.

11. Eliminate Numerical Goals & Quotas
     Deming's story about the person with two job requirements... satisfying the calling customers and taking 25 calls each hour. You can do either but not both.

12. Remove Barriers that Rob People of Joy
     Abolish the annual rating or merit system which ranks people, creates competition, conflict.

13. Program of Education & Self-Improvement
     Do not confuse education with training (point 6). Education has to do with anything whatever to keep people's minds developing.

14. Accomplish the Transformation
     Knowing all that you now know does you no good at all if you do not put it to use. You must develop a critical mass of associates who also believe it will work.

Learn more about Deming's work...

Here's a book you might enjoy reading.
      Thinking About Quality -- Progress, Wisdom, and the Deming Philosophy
      Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason,
Times Books, a division of Random House, Inc.: 1994
      You can find this book at
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=081292133X/3780-8353576-583190>.

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