Top 250 Quotes & Sayings by W. Edwards Deming - Page 4

The greatest losses are unknown and unknowable.

A rule should suit the purpose.

Lack of knowledge - that is the problem.

Without theory there is nothing to modify or learn.

A leader knows who is outside of the system and needs special help.

Failure of management to plan for the future and to foresee problems has brought about waste of manpower, of materials, of the machine-time, of all which raise the manufacturer's cost and price that the purchaser must pay

Many people in management are being paid to produce waste.

One need not be eminent in any part of profound knowledge in order to understand it and to apply it. The various segments of the system of profound knowledge cannot be separated. They interact with each other. For example knowledge about psychology is incomplete without knowledge of variation.

When a worker has reached a stable state, further training will not help him.

Hard work and best efforts will not by themselves dig us out of the pit.

A rational prediction has an explanation based on theory.

The process is not just the sum of its parts.

We must understand variation.

The job can't be finished only improved to please the customer.

Absence of defects does not necessarily build business... Something more is required.

Zero defects is a super highway going down the tube.

It is important that an aim never be defined in terms of a specific activity or method. It must always relate to a better life for everyone.

The aim of education should be to preserve and nurture the yearning for learning that a child is born with.

Let us ask our suppliers to come and help us to solve our problems.

There is no substitute for knowledge.

Management by results is confusing special causes with common causes.

Mere allocation of huge sums of money for quality will not bring quality.

When people try to do what they can not do, they wish to give up.

Shrink, shrink variation, to reduce the loss.

Anybody can achieve gains in quality by slowing down production. That is not what we are talking about.

Knowledge is the key.

You can not plan to make a discovery. You do not plan innovation.

The most important figures for management of any organization are unknown and unknowable.

We have to bring back the individual. Management has smothered the individual.

The individual has been crushed by our style of management today.

Management does not know what a system is.

People copy examples and then they wonder what is the trouble. They look at examples and without theory they learn nothing.

The most basic problem is that performance appraisals often don't accurately assess performance.

Knowledge needs to be a verb.

Adopt a new philosophy of cooperation (win-win) in which everybody wins.

Management of outcomes may not be any more than a skill. It does not require knowledge.

People care more for themselves when they contribute to the system.

We must satisfy our customers.

Profit in business comes from repeat customers

For Quality: Stamp out fires, automate, computerize, M.B.O., install merit pay, rank people, best efforts, zero defects. WRONG!!!! Missing ingredient: profound knowledge.

There must be consistency in direction.

Meeting specifications is not enough.

The moral is that it is necssary to innovate, to predict the needs of the customers, and give him more. He that innovates and is lucky will take the market.

A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive. We cannot afford the destructive effect of competition.

We want best efforts guided by theory.

Monetary rewards are not a substitute for intrinsic motivation.

Any two people have different ideas of what is important.

Survival is optional. No one has to change.

Change the rule and you will get a new number.

There is very little evidence that we give a hoot about profit.

A manager of people knows that in this stable state it is distracting to tell the worker about a mistake.

The principles and methods for improvement are the same for service as for manufacturing. The actual application differs, of course, from one product to another, and from one type of service to another.

The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system can not understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside.

It only takes a little innovation.

Retroactive management emphasizes the bottom line.

The aim should be to work on the method of management.

Management's job is to know which systems are stable and which are not.

No requirement of industry is so much neglected as operational definitions.

A system can not understand itself.

There is no knowledge without theory.