RE: 14 points - all good?

[Steven_S_Prevette@RL.gov]

>Dr. Deming understood that in a factory people need to adhere to 
>schedules to provide an integration of the sequential nature of most 
>production.  Dr. Deming was inveighing against the use of ARBITRARY 
>setting of quotas as a means to goad people into higher production 
>rates.  Numbers arrived at by careful analysis of the needs of 
>customers (for delivery rates, etc., ) are legitimate numbers to use 
>in an enterprise.

I just got into a long discussion last night on numerical targets with some
Baldrige folks at an Association for Quality and Participation meeting.  I,
unfortunately, do not have Myron's first hand experience, but in all the
Deming source material I have read, and in talking to those that have been
trained by Dr. Deming (including my father), I have not run across a quote
where Dr. Deming "acknowledges" that any form of numerical target (no matter
how well formed) is appropriate.

Now Dr. Deming does refer to "facts of life".  I do have to meet customer
delivery schedules, make a profit (at least in the long term), create jobs.
I personally like the model that the BDA has published (attributed to Mike
Dickinson in issue 36 of Variation, the BDA newsletter) which states there
are three kinds of numbers:

1.  Facts of life
2.  Figures needed for planning, prediction, and budgets
3.  Arbitrary numerical targets.

The problem comes when people use type 2 numbers for type 3.  A real example
I have seen at my work is folks making planning predictions (which as the
best prediction represent the "expected value" or average), and turning
those into "do not exceed" targets.  But if it was a good planning number to
use in planning, you have a 50% chance of failure if you use it as a target.
If you want to use it as a "promise" or "deliverable", you would have to add
in the expected variation.  

But I would like to go further into any actual Dr. Deming quotes about "well
thought out" targets.  

Steve Prevette
ESH Planning and Performance
Fluor Hanford, A Fluor Global Services Company
ASQ Certified Quality Engineer
steven_s_prevette@rl.gov
509-373-9371
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