"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]