W. Edwards Deming - Management Quotes

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A manager of people needs to understand that all people are different. This is not ranking people. He needs to understand that the performance of anyone is governed largely by the system that he works in, the responsibility of management.

W. Edwards Deming
Management's job. It is management's job to direct the efforts of all components toward the aim of the system. The first step is clarification: everyone in the organization must understand the aim of the system, and how to direct his efforts toward it. Everyone must understand the damage and loss to the whole organization from a team that seeks to become a selfish, independent, profit centre.

W. Edwards Deming
Long-term commitment to new learning and new philosophy is required of any management that seeks transformation. The timid and the fainthearted, and the people that expect quick results, are doomed to disappointment.

W. Edwards Deming
They realized that the gains that you get by statistical methods are gains that you get without new machinery, without new people. Anybody can produce quality if he lowers his production rate. That is not what I am talking about. Statistical thinking and statistical methods are to Japanese production workers, foremen, and all the way through the company, a second language. In statistical control you have a reproducible product hour after hour, day after day. And see how comforting that is to management, they now know what they can produce, they know what their costs are going to be.

W. Edwards Deming
I think that people here expect miracles. American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan—but they don't know what to copy!

W. Edwards Deming
The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system can not understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside.

W. Edwards Deming
To successfully respond to the myriad of changes that shake the world, transformation into a new style of management is required. The route to take is what I call profound knowledge - knowledge for leadership of transformation.

W. Edwards Deming
Knowledge is theory. We should be thankful if action of management is based on theory. Knowledge has temporal spread. Information is not knowledge. The world is drowning in information but is slow in acquisition of knowledge. There is no substitute for knowledge.

W. Edwards Deming
Quality begins with the intent, which is fixed by management.

W. Edwards Deming
The supposition is prevalent the world over that there would be no problems in production or service if only our production workers would do their jobs in the way that they we taught. Pleasant dreams. The workers are handicapped by the system, and the system belongs to the management.

W. Edwards Deming
The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!

W. Edwards Deming
It is not enough that top management commit themselves for life to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to - that is, what they must do. These obligations cannot be delegated. Support is not enough; action is required.

W. Edwards Deming
Failure of management to plan for the future and to foresee problems has brought about waste of manpower, of materials, of the machine-time, of all which raise the manufacturer's cost and price that the purchaser must pay

W. Edwards Deming
The statistician's report to management should not talk about probabilities. It will merely give outside margins of error for the results of chief importance.

W. Edwards Deming