Re: What are we doing here?*

[David Kerridge <dfkerridge@mac.com>]

John Bruman and others raise some very important questions. I imagine
that all of us on the DEN have at some time had to make compromises
for a range of reasons. In fact I have thought for some time that we
(on the DEN or in study groups) should do far more to help those
who are in organisations that will not transform. After all, most of us
are in that situation.


But first let us get our terms right:

>I may be wrong, but I don't believe WED ever intended for any of us to waste
>our energies in zealous critiques of methodologies for Quality improvement
>that go by some other name than the "official" (whatever that is) WED dogma.

I am alarmed by the word "dogma". Deming and Shewhart were scientists,
and dogma would be a betrayal of their principles. They dealt with concepts,
theories, and evidence. Some of these are difficult to understand, but they
*must* be criticised. Criticism of *ideas* (not people) is essential 
to scientific
method.

What angered Deming was refusal to listen, or to think. Or if you put it
that way, he was angered by dogma that resists the scientific approach.
Perhaps he did not make enough allowance for psychology. People
who are not used to science are deeply disturbed by the necessary
process of questioning accepted ideas. Remember Galileo.

But that aside, yes, Deming did criticise all the things that John mentions
in his posting, and many others. There is a lot to learn, I believe, by
trying to understand *why* he criticised them. Some reasons are easy to
see, but some not. Myron, in his perceptive posting, has pointed to some
of the deeper reasons.

But to put the whole subject in perspective, let us look at one of the things
that is not in John Bruman's list: mass inspection. When I was at the 4-day
seminar's, I thought at first that there was a contradiction. WED told us not
to rely on mass inspection, but then, usually on the last morning, went into
great detail about the correct way to do it.

He himself organised national censuses, of the USA and Japan.
That is mass inspection on the largest possible scale.

He knew, and said, that sampling would be both cheaper and more
accurate. But he still ran the census, because the law did not permit
the better alternative. And he used all his knowledge to make the
censuses work as well as possible.

In a similar way, he disagreed, in principle, with all awards and
prizes. Yet he did not refuse to present the Deming Prize, though he
was careful to emphasise that he "had nothing to do with it."

John speaks of living in the "real world." I would prefer to call
it "today's imperfect world". The "real world" implies that there is
something fixed about it. But given that the world is still imperfect,
we each have to make our own judgment as to how to operate in it.
We must *never* blame someone who judges differently, because
each of us is the only one who can know our own circumstances.

The more we understand the disadvantages of any method,
the better we can do, if we have to use it. Could I suggest,
as a useful exercise, that we might try to draw up a balance sheet
of the pros and cons of mass inspection? Some are easy, but
using the SoPK as a memory jogger, I think we may find some
interesting insights.
 
Best wishes

David

dfkerridge@mac.com
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