"Our problems are different"

A aplicabilidade das teses de Deming é de uma actualidade fascinante!

Deming's 14 points

Deming offered fourteen key principles for management for transforming business effectiveness. The points were first presented in his book Out of the Crisis (p. 23-24)[20].

1) Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2) 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.
3) 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.
4) End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust. 5) Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease cost.
6) Institute training on the job.
7) Institute leadership (see Point 12 and Ch. 8 of "Out of the Crisis"). 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.
8) Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. (See Ch. 3 of "Out of the Crisis")
9) 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.
10) 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.
11) Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.b. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute workmanship.
12) 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.b. 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 (See CH. 3 of "Out of the Crisis").
13) Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14) Put everyone in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everyone's work.

[edit] Seven Deadly Diseases
The Seven Deadly Diseases (also known as the "Seven Wastes"):
1) Lack of constancy of purpose.
2) Emphasis on short-term profits.
3) Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance.
4) Mobility of management.
5) Running a company on visible figures alone.
6) Excessive medical costs.
7) Excessive costs of warranty, fueled by lawyers who work for contingency fees.

A Lesser Category of Obstacles:
1) Neglecting long-range planning.
2) Relying on technology to solve problems.
3) Seeking examples to follow rather than developing solutions.
4) Excuses, such as "Our problems are different."

William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and consultant. Deming is widely credited with improving production in the United States during World War II, although he is perhaps best known for his work in Japan. There, from 1950 onward he taught top management how to improve design (and thus service), product quality, testing and sales (the last through global markets)[1] through various methods, including the application of statistical methods.Deming made a significant contribution to Japan's later renown for innovative high-quality products and its economic power. He is regarded as having had more impact upon Japanese manufacturing and business than any other individual not of Japanese heritage. Despite being considered something of a hero in Japan, he was only beginning to win widespread recognition in the U.S. at the time of his death. [2]

Mudança de Paradigma

Continuo a acreditar no racional de suporte ao post que apresentei no dia 6 de Outubro. Acho contudo que ele deve ser aplicado de uma forma mais abrangente do que a que inicialmente previ. Poderá inclusivamente significar uma mudança de paradigma para a sociedade actual.
As instituições financeiras, muito suportadas pelas políticas estatais, têm fomentado o acesso ao crédito como potenciador de um bem estar, como a panaceia do acesso a uma qualidade de vida de nível europeu, num país em clara desigualdade em termos de produção de riqueza. O endividamento de Portugal e das instituições financeiras nacionais não permite uma verdadeira avaliação, por parte das famílias, das reais dificuldades que atravessamos.
Não pode o crédito continuar a ser a solução para nos equipararmos aos outros membros da UE.
Então, perguntam-me como poderá o país avançar? Como poderão as famílias e o estado contribuir para uma redução da dívida externa?
Através do fomento da poupança. Apesar das ferramentas para alavancagem da poupança serem diversas, deixo aqui duas ideias:
· A (re)criação de benefícios fiscais para a constituição de poupanças criadas com o objectivo de amortizar as dívidas de crédito à habitação (os conhecidos PPH);
· Desenvolvimento da possibilidade de alocar parte da colecta dos impostos pagos pelas famílias à amortização deste tipo de dívidas ou a este tipo de instrumentos de poupança.

Qualquer solução ou ferramenta desta natureza irá permitir um aumento da liquidez no sistema financeiro, uma redução no risco nas operações de crédito à habitação que decorrem nas IF’s, o reforço da poupança na óptica da valorização do património das famílias.

A par do saneamento da dívida externa, o aumento do investimento por entidades privadas compensaria em termos macro-económicos a diminuição do consumo.

Parece-vos consistente esta tese?