DEMING

William Edwards Deming was an American statistician, college professor, author, lecturer, and consultant. Deming is widely credited with improving production in the United States during World War II, although he is perhaps best known for his work in Japan. There, from 1950 onward he taught top management how to improve design (and thus service), product quality, testing and sales (the latter through global markets). Deming made a significant contribution to Japan becoming renowned for producing innovative high-quality products. Deming is regarded as having had more impact upon Japanese manufacturing and business than any other individual not of Japanese heritage.


Deming was the author of Out of the Crisis (1982-1986) and The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993).


When people and organizations focus primarily on quality, quality defined by the following ratio:

QUALITY = results of work efforts/total costs

then quality tends to increase and costs fall over time.
(b) However, when people and organizations focus primarily on cost, then costs tend to rise and quality declines over time.