Re: Why not Deming?

[Roger Erickson <rge@270tech.net>]

Sorry for the delay.  Got busy.

I was referring to Shewhart's hunch that there would BE progress, albeit 
slow.  Looks like the guys running Lucent never secured whatever 
progress they allowed - and nearly bankrupted the company.  Graduating 
to a systems approach may be a stochastic process, not necessarily one 
that's gradual & inevitable.

Case in point:  I just read a glowing review of YABOSS (yet another book 
on Six Sigma).  As a first time reader of both Deming & SS, it seems 
obvious that the SS folks are missing the point.  Sounds like SS is 
"Deming dumbed down", interpreted as follows.  "If your workers are 
producing any product to specs, make damn sure they're minimizing errors 
below 'SixSigma' levels. Or else!"
  Doesn't that leaves out most of the long term value of continuous 
quality improvement?  Maybe that explains GE's record of making SixSigma 
famous while laying off tens of thousands of workers and constantly 
switching to the cheapest current suppliers - all the while awarding 
hundreds of millions of $ to their supposedly brilliant top management.

SixSigma sounds like an approach that works in instances where you have 
an Aristocracy shamelessly manipulating peasants considered too dumb to 
educate. (And too ignorant to recognize what's happening to them.)

David Kerridge wrote:
> At the foot of page 4 of "The Economic Control of Quality.." Shewhart
> wrote:
>
> "Progress in modifying our concept of control has been and
> will be comparatively slow. In the first place, it requires
> the application of certain modern physical concepts......"
>
> Later Deming wrote, in the preface to the 1968 reissue of Shewhart's
> book "Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control"
>
> "Another half-century may pass before the full spectrum of Dr. 
> Shewhart's contributions has been revealed in liberal education, 
> science, and industry."
>
> He was still saying this in seminars in 1992
>
>
> Roger Erickson wrote:
> >  Interestingly, the recent history of Lucent (where he worked) doesn't 
> > support Shewhart's hunch and, in fact, illustrates the fragility of 
> > system knowledge.  It can be lost.
> David Kerridge wrote:
> Surely it supports what Shewhart said. They did not understand his ideas
> at the time, even though they knew he was a brilliant thinker. They still
> don't. Give it another 100 years.

Waiting 100 years may not be a good investment given all the short term 
thinking that constitutes the alternative.


--

regards, roger
  301-370-1097
__________________________________________________________________
Roger Erickson, Pres  |
270Tech               | "People will do anything within their power
rge@270Tech.net       |           to avoid thinking"