System or employee - Who is responsible?0

[lifemap@ix.netcom.com]

RE: The System vs The Employee -- who is responsible:

To follow up on Myron's comment: Juran concluded from his studies of different types of work in 
various organizations that, on the whole, more than 80% of defects or errors were CONTROLLABLE by 
management and less than 20% were controllable by employees. For example, see Juran's Handbook 3rd 
edition, Section 16, pages 16-17, and 4th edition, Section 17, pages 5-6.  

Deming was trying to make a point. He said at various times that management was responsible for 
85% of the problems, 97% of the problems, and even 102% of the problems. Deming was a very wise 
man. Although he was an engineer, mathematician, physicist, and statistician, when it came to the 
system as a whole, he tended to speak more in parables, allegories, and metaphors, and other non 
quantitative abstractions. Although he promoted operational thinking on the shop floor, he 
recognized that as one moves into the larger system one was faced with the kinds of divergent 
problems of relationship that could not be meaningfully quantified. He preferred to make his 
profound points with stories, not with reductive analysis.

Ed Baker
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