SV: Where has the DEN been?

[Øgland, Petter <petter.ogland@skatteetaten.no>]

Steve Brant said that the world has changed since 1993, and the DEN need to keep up with time.  The DEN should try to change the world.  The Ford Motor Company has forgotten all the Deming philosophy.  Nations and companies are being run by fear rather than rationality.  Is it time for a second quality revolution?  Is it about time to teach the world about Deming insights again?

Personally, I think these are valid opinions.  If Deming was right about understanding organizations as systems that should be studied and improved scientifically, just like the agricultural revolution in the 1930s, why do management throw rationality out the window and run businesses as though they were using Harry Potter as management theory?

Unlike Steve Brant, however, I have missed the DEN greatly.  Some of the comments about "quality improvement" of the British Railway system (measuring defects rather than puctuality of arrival) were some of the best insights I've ever read on quality, also showing quite clearly why Six Sigma is wrong (applying statistical tools with the philosophy of Crosby rather than Deming) and why Lean Production is right (Deming's philosophy without statistical methods).

I also enjoyed the past posts about Zen, Tao, Buddhism, Mystisism, Holism, Systems Thinking etc that showed how Deming's way of thinking is an ecological way of thinking.  Deming grew up with farmers in Montana.  He understood how nature works, and how farmers think.  His philosophy was based on philosophical pragmatism; the philosophy of Emerson, Thorau, James, Peirce, Dewey and C.I. Lewis.

I think Deming would be appalled if he lived today.  Rather than understanding society as one big farm were we all have to help each other, improve the farm from one generation to the next and love our neighbours through win-win relationship, society looks much more like a big shopping mall.  The message of 9/11 wasn't international terrorism, but it was that if people stop shopping, the infrastructure of modern society will crash.  We are now trapped in the shopping machine, like Chaplin was trapped by the assembly line.

At no time in history has Deming's message been more important than it is now.  The world has forgotten Deming.  Only the DEN can carry on his vision.

Petter