Words matter. These are the best W. Edwards Deming Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
When a system is stable, telling the worker about mistakes is only tampering.
Lack of knowledge… that is the problem.
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
The prevailing system of management has crushed fun out of the workplace.
Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.
The prevailing – and foolish – attitude is that a good manager can be a good manager anywhere, with no special knowledge of the production process he’s managing. A man with a financial background may know nothing about manufacturing shoes or cars, but he’s put in charge anyway.
You should not ask questions without knowledge.
In 1945, the world was in a shambles. American companies had no competition. So nobody really thought much about quality. Why should they? The world bought everything America produced. It was a prescription for disaster.
‘Quality’ means what will sell and do a customer some good – at least try to.
I predicted in 1950 that in five years, manufacturers the world over would be screaming for protection. It took only four years.
Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.
The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work.
Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.
If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.
It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.
We are here to make another world.
American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan. But they don’t know what to copy.
The big problems are where people don’t realise they have one in the first place.
Quality is everyone’s responsibility.
No one knows the cost of a defective product – don’t tell me you do. You know the cost of replacing it, but not the cost of a dissatisfied customer.
My mother was my biggest role model. She taught me to hate waste. We never wasted anything.
Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.
Any manager can do well in an expanding market.
Declining productivity and quality means your unit production costs stay high but you don’t have as much to sell. Your workers don’t want to be paid less, so to maintain profits, you increase your prices. That’s inflation.
I am forever learning and changing.