W. Edwards Deming

Books

• Sample Design in Business Research:
  Original publication 1960.

• Some Theory of Sampling:
  Original publication 1950.

• Statistical Adjustment of Data:
  Original publication 1938.

• On Errors in Surveys:
  

• Quality Productivity and Competitive Position:
  Out of print.

• The New Economics: For Industry, Government, Education
  Second Edition (reprint). The best of Deming's books for learning about his system for management. Packed with great thoughts but not as easy to read as the best books. This is a great book, but often it is best for managers already committed to finding new ideas.

• Out of the Crisis:
  A classic but not an easy book to read. Packed with good ideas that still have great merit. New paperback printing (2000).

• The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality
  The book is filled with articles, papers, lectures, and notes touching on a wide range of topics, but which focus on Deming's overriding message: quality and operations are all about systems, not individual performance; the system has to be designed so that the worker can perform well. Published in cooperation with The W. Edwards Deming Institute, The Essential Deming captures Deming's life's worth of thinking and writing. Dr. Orsini provides expert commentary throughout, delivering a powerful, practical guide to superior management. With The Essential Deming, you have the rationale, insight, and best practices you need to transform your organization.

Articles

• Quality and the Required Style of Management: the Need for Change   view details
  

• Does anybody give a hoot about profit?   view details
  Dr W. Edwards Deming gave a short presentation to some 25 executives from major European companies. This document is a transcript prepared and edited by Henry Neave.

• Deming Interaction - Fall 2006   view details
  Deming institute newsletter including, Some notes on Management in a Hospital, by W. Edwards Deming: "The same problems that I have noted will continue. A physician cannot change the system. A head nurse cannot change the system. Meanwhile, who would kn

• Drastic Changes for Western Management   view details
  A compact summary of the most important points that Dr. W. Edwards Deming has been making about changes that must be made by American businesses if they are to be competitive from 1986.

• Interview of and by Dr. Ackoff and Dr. Deming   view details
  Great stuff. The transcript spells Dr. Ackoff's name wrong (Akoff). They discuss the important of viewing organizations as systems and a fair amount of time on the problems with business school education in the USA. And they touch on a huge number of management topics. Dr. Deming "When one understands who depends on me, then I may take joy in my work." Dr. Ackoff "If there isn't join in work, you won't get productivity, and you won't get quality."

• Transcript of Speech by W. Edwards Deming to Japanese Leaders in 1950   view details
  "The knowledge and brains applied to statistics by the Japanese are an essential national resource; it is important in the same way as water power, forests, and railroads. And that statistical knowledge, much like water power, is not useful at all unless it has an impact on work opportunity and work. With water power, if one were to get rid of turbines and generator machines, no power would emerge."

• On Probability As a Basis For Action   view details
  "The aim here is to try to contribute something to the improvement of statistical practice. The basic supposition here is that any statistical investigation is carried out for purposes of action. New knowledge modifies existing knowledge. " Deming distinguishes between enumerative studies and analytic studies. An enumerative study has for its aim an estimate of the number of units of a frame that belong to a specified class. An analytic study has for its aim a basis for action on the cause-system or the process, in order to improve product of the future.

• What's Holding Back American Industry? Burning toast and scraping it.   view details
  They might have inspectors, sorting out the good products from the bad, but that's just burning toast and scraping it, burning toast and scraping it. They plan for defects, when they could be preventing defects!"

Author Quotes

• People are entitled to joy in work.

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• Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.

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• the aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people. Put in a negative way, the aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure: to help people to do a better job with less effort.

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  Out of the Crisis

• Management by results -- like driving a car by looking in rear view mirror.

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  Notes on video: The Deming of America

• The aim proposed here for any organization is for everybody to gain - stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, community, the environment - over the long term.

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  The New Economics

• No one can measure the loss of business that may arise from a defective item that goes out to a customer.

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  The Essential Deming

• It is easy to date an earthquake, but not an economic decline.

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  The New Economics

• our system of make-and-inspect, which if applied to making toast would be expressed: “You burn, I’ll scrape.”

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  Quality Comes to City Hall

• There is no substitute for knowledge.

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  The New Economics

• It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth.

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  The New Economics

All quotes by W. Edwards Deming

Web sites

• Management Wisdom
  Home of the Deming Library tapes and Better Management for a Changing World (with Ackoff and Suarez).
• W. Edwards Deming Institute
  Founded by W. Edwards Deming the institute carries forward his philosophy. The site includes information on the institutes annual conferences and offers newsletters online.