The W. Edwards Deming Institute Blog

Archive for the ‘understanding variation’ Category

The Improvement Guide

The Improvement Guide is a fantastic book on using the PDSA cycle well. The 2nd edition was published in 2009. The power of applying the PDSA cycle properly is huge. It leads to successful improvements which is important. Using the PDSA cycle also reinforces many aspects of applying Dr. Deming’s principles. Together with Leader’s Handbook [...]

The Idea of Performance Rating to Capture Merit is Alluring

The merit rating nourishes short-term performance, annihilates long-term planning, builds fear, demolishes teamwork, [and] nourishes rivalry and politics. It leaves people bitter, crushed, bruised, battered, desolate, despondent, dejected, feeling inferior, some even depressed, unfit for work for weeks after receipt of rating, unable to comprehend why they are inferior. It is unfair, as it ascribes [...]

We Need to Understand Variation to Manage Effectively

Guest post by Mike Stoecklein I had the good fortune to get to know Dr. Deming beginning in 1986. I call it a “correspondence relationship”. We wrote letters (these were the days before e-mail, and I doubt that Dr. Deming would ever send an e-mail even if it had existed). I played a small role [...]

The Essential Deming – New Book on Dr. Deming’s Work

The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality 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. [...]

Eliminate Sales Commissions: Reject Theory X Management and Embrace Systems Thinking

Dr. Deming explained that paying sales commissions to staff introduced distortions into the organization that damaged overall performance. Each topic has different connections to Deming’s system of profound knowledge, as he laid it out in the New Economics. The problems with sales commissions heavily touch on all of the four areas of the management system. [...]

Knowledge of Variation

The System Of Profound Knowledge® (SoPK) is the culmination of W. Edwards Deming’s work on management. The four areas of the system are: appreciation for a system, knowledge of variation, theory of knowledge and psychology. This post explores knowledge of variation in the context of Dr. Deming’s management philosophy. Even the cursory overviews of Dr. [...]

Theory of Knowledge

The System Of Profound Knowledge® (SoPK) is the culmination of W. Edwards Deming’s work on management. The four areas of the system are: appreciation for a system, knowledge of variation, theory of knowledge and psychology. This post explores the theory of knowledge in the context of Dr. Deming’s management philosophy. “The greatest obstacle to discovery [...]

Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge

The System Of Profound Knowledge® (SoPK) is the culmination of W. Edwards Deming’s lifelong work. The SoPK ties together Dr. Deming’s seminal theories and teachings on quality, management and leadership into four interrelated areas: appreciation for a system, knowledge of variation, theory of knowledge and psychology. Over the next four days we will dedicate a [...]

The Deming Files @ The Process Excellence Network

The W. Edwards Deming Institute is working with the Process Excellence Network to publish articles on Deming’s ideas: The Deming Files. The first article was published in early 2011. A 4 part series looked at Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge: Systems Thinking and the Three Musketeers – Deming’s SoPK by Eric Christiansen The Trouble with [...]