W. Edwards Deming: Theory & Concept – Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

An Example of Deming’s Theory

In the 1950s, an American automobile company was producing a vehicle that was the same in every way, except that some of the transmissions were being made in Japan while others were made in the U.S. Shortly after the cars went to market, customers were requesting the models with the transmissions from Japan and would wait for one, instead of buying the American-manufactured transmission.

When engineers examined a sample of the transmissions made in Japan and a sample of the transmissions made in the U.S., they found that the American-made parts were all within approved tolerance levels, but that the same parts made in Japan were much closer to the goal metric. Even though the parts worked if they were within the acceptable tolerance limits, they worked better the closer they were to the goal metric. For Deming, that was quality.

Deming’s Other Theories

In addition to his encouragement to focus on a specific goal and forget about tolerance limits, Deming developed other theories that have withstood the test of time. These include the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, Deming’s 14 Points, and the Seven Deadly Diseases. Deming’s 14 Points focus on improving efficiencies, not just for manufacturing firms but for any organization. The 14 points include things like ”institute training on the job,” ”drive out fear so that everyone may work effectively for the company,” and ”put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation; the transformation is everybody’s job.”

The Seven Deadly Diseases are Deming’s attempt at highlighting practices that can be detrimental to an organization. This theory includes things like ”lack of consistency of purpose,” ”emphasis on short-term profits,” and ”running a company on visible figures alone.” In addition to the Seven Deadly Diseases, Deming also offered eight other challenges he called ”a lesser category of obstacles.”

Lesson Summary

All right, let’s take a moment to review what we’ve learned. We learned that W. Edwards Deming is considered by many to be the father of the total quality management movement and that total quality management is the simple concept that continual improvement can help increase quality while decreasing costs.

We learned that Deming believed tolerance limits were detriments on the quality of products, with tolerance limits being the degrees of variance from the goal that management considers acceptable.

Finally, we learned that he also came up with several other theories, including:

• Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle
• Deming’s 14 Points, and
• The Seven Deadly Diseases