Re: REQUEST: Deming's "Path of Frustration"

["William J. Latzko" <latzko@worldnet.att.net>]

At 06:13 PM 7/11/2000 -0400, michael_harkins@dell.com wrote:
>I saw a brief reference in a company internal publication to Deming's 
>"Path of Frustration".  It shows graphically, and illustration of the 
>management path taken to remove special causes, then shifting more to 
>management and finally obvious sources of improvement dry up.  Can you 
>give me the source of this perhaps a reference which explains it in more 
>detail?
  Mike,

See pages 322 - 324 in Deming's "Out of the Crisis". Ed Deming showed me 
this chart for the first time at one of the Deming Conferences when we had 
breakfast together in Atlantic City. We were discussing the fact that any 
operation when first looked at (usually because of a problem) was improved. 
In my book "Quality and Productivity for Bankers and Financial Managers," I 
show the concept with the illustration of picking the low hanging fruit (p. 
149, I was discussing the failure of so many Quality Control Circles in the 
US).

Any attention to a management neglected process seems to bear results right 
away. From this, management often concludes that the rate of improvement 
will continue. However, the rate of improvement does not continue because 
the obvious big problems were solved early on. What is needed after that is 
the use of profound knowledge.

Bill Latzko
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