Misunderstanding the Deming Philosophy

[David Kerridge <dfkerridge@mac.com>]

These thoughts are prompted both by the enquiry as to exactly
what WED said about reducing variation, and also by several
posts concerned with the widespread misunderstanding of the
Deming Management Philosophy, confusion with "TQM", etc.

We should not be surprised that the Deming Management
Philosophy is misunderstood and misrepresented. Shewhart
saw a major difficulty even before WED developed Shewhart's
fundamental discoveries into an all-embracing philosophy.

On page 5 of his 1931 book Shewhart says "....it requires the
application of certain modern physical concepts..." He predicted
that this, and the need to understand statistics, would cause
delay in general acceptance of his discoveries. I hope to pursue
what Shewhart meant some other time.


But regardless of exactly what Shewhart meant, the Deming
Management Philosophy involves thinking in a completely
new way. It is logical, but as a friend put it "Completely
disorientating"

We all deal with this in different ways. But one way, which I
think we all fall into at times, is to catch hold of one aspect
of the philosophy, perhaps the only one we understand, and treat
that one thing as if it were all that matters.

An example is to take the idea of reducing variation - an
important concept used in the right way - and treat that as
the whole idea. Or to take continual improvement, which is
just one of the 14 points, treat it in isolation, and call it "TQM".
Or "reengineering", "Lean Management"... the list is endless.

As I said, I believe that all of us make this sort of mistake at
times. Naturally we are unaware of it, at the time. But in a sense, our
whole academic system, split into separate disciplines, trains
us to make this error. Besides, solving one problem at a time often
appears to work, especially in the short run.

So we should treat those who are confused with sympathy.
As Shewhart well knew, since it was in his lifetime, the very
existence of atoms was opposed by scientists and philosophers.
The same applies to the existence of photons, and relative
time.

If we are to help people, we must understand their problem.


-- 
Best wishes

David

dfkerridge@mac.com