Edwards Deming: The Father of quality management

Deming's name is closely associated with total quality management. He was first credited with Japan's postwar economic rise. The "four-day talks" presided over by him also had a great impact on promoting the transformation of American management. And his academic dispute with Drucker also had a considerable influence on the development direction of management itself.

William Edwards Deming, a quality management scholar who grew up in the United States, was at best, if not by chance, a diligent and effective sampling expert. However, the results of the Second World War changed the world and changed him. He came to Japan and played a huge role in the post-war economic reconstruction of Japan, especially in the quality management of the epoch-making achievements, which established the status of the master.

With Japan's economic threat to the United States, Americans began to use Deming again and "import" his ideas back home. In the end, a generation of famous teachers in the economic interaction between Japan and the United States, "both sides of the source", to the world.

Growing up in the United States

Deming was born in Sioux City, Iowa, on October 4, 1900. His father was a farmer, but not a wealthy one. As a child, Deming developed the habit of supporting himself by working to earn his living expenses. He worked in a variety of jobs, including evening street lights, snow clearing, hotel chores, cleaning beds, and so on. Until he went to college, he still kept the habit of working.

Deming's studiousness and rigor were evident in his childhood. The nickname given to him by his children was "Professor", which can be confirmed. Of course, he was not a rigid little old man, and he did not lack the imagination and enthusiasm of a teenager. At 14, he had signed up as a volunteer to fight in a small war at the Mexican border, but his age gave him away and he was sent home.

In 1917, Deming enrolled at the University of Wyoming and earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering four years later. After graduating in 1921, he stayed on as an engineering teacher. At the same time, he studied mathematics and physics at the University of Colorado. When he was about to finish his degree, his supervisor recommended him to Yale. So Deming went to Yale University to study mathematical physics. Deming received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1928.

During his Ph.D., Deming worked summers in Chicago at the Hawthorne plant of the Western electronics company, where he began to realize the importance of statistics in the management process. About 1927, he met Dr. Shewhart at the Bell Institute. Shewhart, known as the "father of quality statistical control", had a major influence on Deming's life.

After graduation, Deming came to the United States Department of Agriculture Nitrogen Fixation Research, mainly engaged in statistical research work.

Statistics was Deming's specialty, and sampling techniques were his forte. In 1939, Deming became a survey consultant for the U.S. Census Bureau. Here he made two large-scale applications of sampling techniques, the first in the 1940 census, where he applied Shewhart's principles of statistical quality control to the social sphere. From this sampling survey, the population measurement of the United States was changed from a general survey to a sample statistic. In 1942, with the war going on, Deming introduced the principle of statistical quality control into industrial management. He and two other experts taught statistical quality control theory to inspectors and engineers and applied statistical theory to wartime production.

However, the production during the war period was only more, not better, "radish fast does not wash mud". Despite Deming's constant calls for quality in the United States, he rarely attracted attention at home. In the 1940s, Deming repeatedly stressed the importance of quality control, continuous quality management training, and trying to apply statistics to industrial production. It is said that the number of people who attended Deming's training courses in the U.S. government and companies reached 30,000 during this period. But his appeal has received a muted response in the US, where few people are genuinely interested in his advice and courses.

In 1946, with the war over, Deming left the government to set up his consulting firm and work part-time at New York University's Graduate School of Business Administration.

Japanese Quality Management "Master"

In 1947, Deming was drafted by the Allied High Command to Japan to help with post-war reconstruction. At that time, several major cities of Japan, except Kyoto, were destroyed by massive air raids. As an island nation with few natural resources, Japan's rise depended on its access to international markets. However, just after the war, Japan lacked the capital to open up to the international market. Material shortage made a large number of American goods flow to Japan, and Japan's huge trade deficit with the United States made them helpless. In the shortage economy, it is impossible to form quality pursuit. The problem of "good" and "bad" is not on the business agenda when the problem of "have" and "have not" is unresolved. As a result, postwar Japanese products were known for poor quality. In the international market, the mark "Made in Japan" is synonymous with inferior products. Interestingly, some Japanese companies were eager to set up a shop IN a small Japanese village called "USA", so that their products could be branded with the swaggering "MADE IN USA" IN capital letters.

Deming came to Japan with the original intention of instructing the Japanese in census and teaching statistics and quality management. From July 10 to 18, 1950, Deming was invited by the Japan Alliance for Science and Technology to teach in four major cities in Japan. Perhaps learning from his experience in the United States, Deming's lectures in Japan no longer highlighted statistics, his specialty, but quality management. He is based on the fundamental belief that high quality lowers costs. In the past, almost all people have two misunderstandings in quality management: one is that quality is the responsibility of the producer, and the other is that high quality inevitably leads to high cost. Deming went to great lengths to clarify both myths. "Most quality problems are the responsibility of the managers, not the workers because the whole stupid production process is set by the managers and the workers are excluded," he stressed as he imparted his management ideas to Japan's 21 most powerful entrepreneurs (who control 80% of the country's capital) in Tokyo. At the same time, he points out, "If you try to do things right at once, without waste, you can reduce costs without having to invest more."

The Japanese, most concerned with the process of postwar recovery and rise, asked Deming: How long will it take to change Japan's international image, to transform Japan from a country that made inferior and low-grade products into a country that could compete in the international market and produce high-quality products? Mr. Deming predicts: "With statistical analysis and quality management, in five years Japanese products will surpass those of the US." No one believed this assertion at the time, and Japan's greatest dream was simply to restore pre-war production levels. Although they thought the Yankee was too optimistic in their private conversations, they were willing to take his cue and go for it. The reason was simply that the Japanese had lost everything and had nothing to lose.

Sure enough, the overall level of product quality in Japan surpassed that of the United States four years later (about 1955). By the 1970s and 1980s, Japanese industry had posed a huge challenge to the American industry not only in terms of product quality but also in terms of economic aggregate.

From this, Deming became the "master" of quality management in Japan. Over the next 30 years, Deming gave training lectures on total quality management throughout Japan, imparting his management ideas. His theoretical framework and operational points about quality management were formed in Japan. For example, "Fourteen key points of management", "four steps of quality: learning, absorption, digestion, innovation" and so on, are the crystallization of lectures in Japan. It is estimated that four out of every five top leaders of Japanese companies have attended his lectures. Corporate Japan is beholden to Deming. It is said that in the lobby of Toyota's Tokyo headquarters, there are three larger-than-life photos, one of them is the founder of Toyota, another is the current president of Toyota, and the third, larger than the first two, is Deming.

To express their gratitude and respect to the "master", in 1951, the Japanese Science and Technology Alliance set up the famous "Deming Award" -- a silver medal engraved with Deming's profile, to reward enterprises that had made great achievements in quality management with the fees of course handouts donated by Deming and the funds raised. In 1960, the Emperor of Japan presented Deming with the SECOND-class Ruebo Medal, the first American to receive it. "The people of Japan owe Dr. Deming's work here to the rebirth of the Japanese industry and the global marketing of Japanese-made radios and components, semiconductors, cameras, binoculars, sewing machines, etc.," the citation read.

America rediscovers Deming

While Mr. Deming was famous in Japan, he remained largely unknown in the United States. When he returned from Japan, he had a basement office in Washington, D.C., that was as bleak and dank as it had been in the United States. By 1980, however, that had finally changed.

That year, Ms. Mason, a television producer, produced a television documentary called "Japan, Why Can't We?" "And was broadcast across the United States by ABC. The TV show praised Japanese manufacturing but featured Deming. Overnight, Deming became a star of quality management.