Deming Philosophy Tie-in with Environmental Quality

[fritzr1950@hotmail.com]

2005 July 14

Gentlemen:

Deming's philosophy holds that quality is more achievable as variation is cut. (Quality is a catchall summing up whichever aspects of goods or services customers value in using the good or service. Quality is what economists call utility or benefits.) 

In addition Deming's philosophy also holds that as product variation is cut, waste and other costs, incurred in making the good or service, are also cut. 

OKAY? NOW to POLLUTION:

The key cause of pollution is PRODUCERS of a good or service shifting production costs to others or USERS of a good or service can shift shifting usage costs to others. 
As either producer or user I benefit, but mostly others pay.

Examples of the former--my factory throws acid into streams or fills local air with harmful soot and pollution when I make a product. (I breathe the same air or fish the same streams, but my benefit exceeds my loss.) 

Examples of the latter--my car pollutes the air when I drive. I make messes when I throw wrappers, empty cans, and bottles on streets. When I do not take the small extra step of disposing of these properly, the municipality pays a lot more to pick up my messes. Or the municipality can let my mess and others' messes accumulate. Either way the most of the cost is to (the other guy or)society

ANY KNOWN TIE-IN, WHERE DEMING PHILOSOPHY SPECIFICALLY ADDRESSES cutting social (environmental) costs by making  
a better product? Examples of better products might be no- or lower-pollution cars, bio-degradable wrappers, bio-degradable plastic bottles.

Something that seems to approach cutting waste to keep the environment cleaner is a pod of factories in Denmark. (I have only read about this and can provide no names or places.) Apparently, each factory in the pod is on a separate island. But for the beginning factory, one factory's waste is another's vital raw material in-put. All waste products get used up. That seems to fit a concept of  ecologic Demingism. 

I asked Harvard Business School's Prof Richard Vietor whether factories could be more profitable (with lower costs) if they did not pollute. At the time, he answered  he did not think (believe) so. Prof Vietor is a very thoroughly analytical macro-guy, who can report only what he knows of. He is no production expert and clearly does  not KNOW of such factories. (He did not rule such factories out. He only said he "thought" they were not possible.) 

Can anyone out there offer a crumb of hope that market-competitive, low-cost mass production is POSSIBLE? OR can anyone offer specific evidence (as with a certain factory or certain, known, currently existing certain style of mass-production) that market-competitive, low-cost manufacturing now exists? 

The Network must include people of many different backgrounds in many far-flung places. Therefore, if such manufacturing is possible or actually exists, someone in the Network, must know of it. 

/s/ Max Roberts
BALTIMORE MD, USA 21209
Message posting through the Clemson CQI Web Server.

[Moderator's Note:  You might look for _Environmental TQM_ by John Willig, ISBN 0-07-019844-6 ]