Deming’s Challenge to Us, Part 1

While doing some research for my book on W. Edwards Deming’s activities during World War II, I came across some fascinating information, particularly in Nancy R. Mann’s book, The Keys to Excellence (Mercury Business Books, 1989). I wrote this column based on my research notes and excerpts from Mann’s book.

In 1942, Deming was working for the Bureau of the Census and served as a consultant to the Secretary of War. He received a letter from W. Allan Wallis, who was a member of the statistics faculty at Stanford University. Wallis and several other members were seeking ways to contribute to the war effort. Deming responded that, “The only useful function of a statistician is to make predictions, and thus to provide a basis for action.”

Deming proposed that a short two-day course on Walter Shewhart’s statistical process control (SPC) methods should be taught to executives and industrialists. Afterward, a more lengthy course would be given to those who would use the statistical methods. “I would suggest both courses be thrown open to engineers, inspectors, and industrial people with or without mathematical and statistical training,” he said.

In May, 1942, Wallis wrote back to Deming and shared his plans to conduct such courses. Wallis sent letters to firms supplying ordnance to the U.S. Army in the western United States. The first course was given in July 1942.

Securing active support from the ordnance department in the Army’s San Francisco district office, 29 men plus the Stanford professors were brought together for 10 days of intensive training led by Deming, Eugene Grant of General Electric, and Charles Mummery of the Hoover Co. Two months later another class was given in Los Angeles. The courses were a success.

In early 1943, eight-day courses were developed and taught at universities throughout the country, with 2,000 men and women from 700 industrial organizations attending. Deming taught 23 of these courses. Many of these students went on to teach the Shewhart methods to another 31,000 men and women in U.S. industries, and monumental reductions in rework and scrap were achieved.

These activities led to the establishment of the American Society for Quality Control (ASQC). Deming encouraged this formation. “Whenever I taught, I told the people, ‘Nothing will happen if you don’t keep working together,’” he said. “‘And you’ve learned only a little, so you must keep working and meeting together.’ They did, and out of that nucleus grew the ASQC.”

Post-World War II

Following World War II, Deming was largely ignored in the productivity-crazed United States. Deming “mocked American management, finding it responsible for most of the nation’s woes, and he liked [to] tell his audiences that the one thing this country must never do is export its managerial class—at least to friendly nations,” writes David Halberstam in The Reckoning (William Morrow & Co., 1986).

The message Deming made to the United States was that productivity without quality was a dead end. He attempted to teach engineers his philosophy, but the companies they worked for were focused on other things. He turned to the U.S. Census Bureau for a period of time to find solace. The bureau sent him to Japan during the late 1940s to help with the census.

However, Deming’s interest was in quality, not the census. In Japan he was fortunate to meet Ichiro Ishikawa. Being an important figure in that country, Ishikawa suggested that Deming teach engineers his methods. Deming, still stinging from previous rejection in the United States, dismissed the suggestion and told Ishikawa that only meeting with the senior people would be worthwhile.

On July 13, 1950, Deming met with 21 Japanese industrialists who, in Deming’s estimation, controlled about 80 percent of the capital in Japan. He told them that if they followed his methods, they would be competitive with the Americans in five years. In Deming’s words they did it in four. (See The World of W. Edwards Deming, Second Edition, by Cecelia S. Kilian, SPC Press, 1992.)

As famous as Deming had become in Japan, he became virtually unknown is his nation of origin. He was almost apologetic about his own country, sorry that the United States didn’t grasp the importance of quality. He knew he was teaching the right methods and angry that his own country ignored him. Japan, however, saw the value of his work and even named a prestigious award—The Deming Prize—in his name.

In 1981, in an article in Military Science and Technology magazine, Deming bluntly stated the principle reason why Shewhart’s methods were not adopted by companies in the United States to increase their competitive position, even though the methods had great success in Japan: “The courses were well-received by engineers, but management paid no attention to them,” he said. “Management did not understand that they had to get behind improvement and carry out the obligations from the top down.”

In an interview with Mann in 1982, Deming echoed the same sentiment. “In wartime courses, we taught people that there was variation in all things, and that the measurements that one takes from manufacturing process must exhibit stability, or they don’t have any meaning as far as defining the process,” he said. “Any instabilities can help to point out specific times or locations of local problems. Once these local problems are removed, there is a process that will continue until somebody changes it. It might be a change in chemistry, or a change in temperature or pressure. It would require study by engineers, chemists, and people who understand, after a fashion, the production process. Changing the process is management’s responsibility. And we failed to teach them that.”

Our challenge

After World War II, when the largely female U.S. workforce returned home and men returned to the plants, the control charts disappeared and were replaced by a mass-production mindset to satisfy the world’s demands. All that statistical training was lost to the new workforce, and management focused on a different problem: quality vs. productivity. Taylorism returned and hasn’t left since.

Our collective challenge as part of the ASQ community would seem to be to continue its original mission—to keep working and meeting together. It just so happens in today’s world that more of the working and meeting is done online. Here is the challenge: How do we engage management in improvement efforts?

New tactics are needed, and as a society interested in improving organizations (e.g., government, manufacturing, and service), these should be our aim. We can’t sit back and wait for management to “get it.”

Everyone must be involved in improvement. The responsibility rests with all of us. New research has been done and documented by people like Ryan Quinn and Robert E. Quinn, Adam Grant, Scott Sonenschein, Edgar Schein, Carol Dweck, and many others. These people have ideas to help effect change no matter where you sit in the organization.

Yes, your company must be technically sound. However, if real change is to take place, we must expand beyond the technical. Deming did, and from this knowledge he compiled his System of Profound Knowledge. Our problems are more than statistical; they won’t be solved by implementing the Toyota Production System (TPS), just-in-time, or other methods. They are also steeped in physics, epistemology, systems thinking, and more. Unless we start thinking outside the technological box, we will continue to be just the “improvement people” waiting for management to do something.

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