Dr. Deming and the NASA Communications System

[FVoehl@aol.com]

<< >>I am a Quality Manager for a small manufacturing company. I am 
attempting 
to implement SPC for tracking continual improvement but the president had a 
bad experience with it in the past and is reluctant to utilize it.  > >>

This is one of the most common laments that I have heard in my twenty years 
of consulting on measurement quality.  Many CEOs and Presidents have had a bad 
experience with SPC-type-tools, so many, in fact, that it no sense trying to 
probe or argue the point.  A number of years ago, around the time that FPL won 
the Deming Prize (1989), I asked Dr. Deming his advice on dealing with this 
type of CEO.  

His answer was very illuminating and we called it *The Burnt Toast  Syndrome* 
and it goes something like this:  Without quality measurement and 
communications, management is just burning the toast and scraping it clean, instead of 
fixing the toaster.  NASA was contaminated with this syndrome.  At one time 
considered to be #1 in the world for its quality control and communications practi
ces.   Seventy uninterrupted flight missions;  considered to be the best in 
the business at communications as well.  But when the communication system was 
abondoned at NASA--the system that Werner Von Braun installed in the 70s called 
the Monday Notes--its quality system also started to crack apart.  

Dr. Deming's message:  start with the organization's communication system, 
not with SPC.  Once the communication system is in place, tools like SPC will 
surely follow.  It was Dr. Deming who first pointed me to Von Braun's Monday 
Notes communication system as an example of where to start in breaking down the 
barriers.  I heartily recommend its study to anyone interested in solving the 
Bad-Experience-and-the-Boss-problem.

Frank Voehl (FVoehl@aol.com)