Deming’s 14 points

– When I say made in Japan, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? I think of quality, high quality products made efficiently. Companies like Toyota and Sony set the standard for quality around the world. But it hasn’t always been that way. When I was growing up, made in Japan meant poor quality. Japan was famous for making very inexpensive electronics that didn’t last very long, like transistor radios. When the radio quit working, you just threw it away and bought another cheap one. It took a long time for Japan to transition from making junk to making high quality products. Dr. W. Edwards Deming was a big part of that change, thanks to his philosophy for managing quality. In fact, the highest award a Japanese company can earn is called the Deming Prize. Deming’s philosophy focuses on reducing variability. The thought is that consistency can not only help companies design more reliable products and services, but can also lower costs. Deming’s approach involves an integrated 14-point strategy to help manage quality in companies. You’ll notice I said manage because Deming believed management must drive every quality program. I won’t go into detail on all of his strategies, so you can print out the document called Deming’s 14 Points in the exercise files. That gives you a brief explanation of each one. But I would like to talk about one point specifically. Point five of the Deming philosophy is to improve constantly and forever. If you’re familiar with Lean principles, this is the foundation of Kaizen, which is the Japanese word for improvement. In business, Kaizen means to continuously make small, incremental improvements to every process. To accomplish this, Japanese companies adopted a four-step model called the Deming Cycle. This guides you first to develop a plan for improving a specific process, product, or service, then to try out the idea, execute the plan you developed. Next, analyze the results, and implement any changes that gave you improvements in the process. This last step is, of course, the longest and each change may take some time to put into place. Toyota’s a good example here. It took many years to implement Deming’s principles and become a world standard for quality. The most important aspect of the Deming Cycle is that, once you have completed the last step, you start the cycle again. This is the foundation of a continuous improvement culture. Take a close look at Deming’s 14 points. You may find some of these practices in your organization, but with a different name. Specifically look for the plan, do, check, act cycle. It’s the heart of many quality improvement teams. It’s the heart of many quality improvement teams.