Guest post by Michael Godfried: planner and policy analyst in Washington State. Jerry Z. Muller’s The Tyranny of Metrics (2018) is a book that I believe Dr. Deming would have surely appreciated. This well-researched book gives an ever timely overview of the history and drivers behind the misuse of metrics that dominate organizational life in […]
Guest post by John Hunter. This webcast shows Bob Browne’s presentation, Profound Knowledge of the Real Thing, at the 2012 Annual Deming Conference. Bob is the former CEO of the Great Plains Coca Cola Bottling Company. Among other things, this presentation is a good option for those seeking an example that provides historical business results […]
In this presentation Dan Jones discusses what we (with an understanding of Deming’s ideas) can see as an aspect of the Deming chain reaction: Focusing on quality and then time the consequence is that we lower costs. Rather than focusing initially on costs as most people do and then somehow hoping that quality and time […]
Far too often companies promote employees into management positions and expect them to fulfill the obligations of their new position without helping prepare them to meet their new responsibilities. People who excelled at doing their non-supervisory job often have little education or experience to succeed with their new responsibilities. Managing a software development team is […]
In Clayton Christensen’s new book, Competing Against Luck, the authors delve into the importance of gaining a deep understanding of what your customers desire. The book lays out a Theory of Jobs to be Done in a very compelling way. To me this is a great example of extending Deming’s ideas with a great deal […]
One of Dr. Deming’s 7 deadly diseases is: Emphasis on short-term profits: short-term thinking It is easy to focus on short term goals and use a somewhat simple short term figure to measure success. But just because it is easier to look at the quarterly profit figure than determine progress without such a clear measure […]
Total Quality Management in Logistics: a case study from the trucking industry by Harry Lehman, Jr. (a thesis at the Naval Postgraduate School). The thesis aims to study the practical aspects of implementing a W. Edwards Deming-based quality program within a particular trucking company, Mason Transporters I am thankful the Navy makes such documents available […]
In response to our request asking what topics readers would like to see addressed on our blog, Dan Bracewell said: I’d like to see some posts about how to implement change in an organization. How does one get an organization to start looking at itself as a system? How does one get the organization to […]
Deming Institute podcast with TJ Gokcen, CEO of Acquate on “Joy in Software Development” (download the podcast). Describing the importance of creating software using Deming’s ideas as expressed in agile software development, TJ says so it is a set of methods and practices that is more catered to change. So you do not have a […]
Meetings are often frustrating for those spending time sitting through them. The solutions proposed for this issue often seem not very well thought out to me. The various traits (frequency, length, detailed agendas or not etc.) of meetings are useful or harmful depending on the circumstances. This is similar to Deming’s ideas on management, I […]