Dispelling Some Deming Myths
Dan Strongin
There is are a lot of misconception online and in practice about what Dr. Deming said, and meant, so I want to take on a couple of the more common myths. As always, it is the context that matters, and it is not fair for Deming to take the blame for others misinterpretation of his thinking. In his life he was diligent to give credit to others where credit was due.
Myth One:
Deming increased the efficiency in shipyards during WWII. (This one is popular in England for some reason)
Truth:
In 1942, while at the Bureau of the Census, Deming was retained as a consultant to the Secretary of War and was asked by W. Allen Wallis, a statistician at Stanford University, for ideas on ways to aid the war effort. Deming suggested a short course in Shewhart’s methods to teach the basics of applied statistics to engineers and others.
Deming, along with others,published the Z series of lectures which were incorporated by the American Standards Association and are still in use today (although not by that name, I don’t believe). So it wasn’t only shipyards. Several quality groups were formed to teach and learn and they formed the basis for American Society of Quality Control (Now The American Society for Quality) which was founded around 1946. (this clarification from John Dowd, www.jsdstat.com/statblog )
During the war effort, the Z lectures did lead to a redesign of how merchant ships were manufactured, and the building of 6,000 high quality ships in 6 years, an incredible achievement. It also laid the foundation for America’s industrial dominance after the war fed by no competition, and the vestiges of quality manufacturing, too quickly abandoned in the executive suites after the war.
While there was an incredible increase in efficiency across the war effort, effectiveness is another issue. Some of the things produced efficiently were not effective. The ships built were not well adapted to the North Sea, for instance. But Deming had nothing to do with designing ships.
Myth Two: 94% of the problem is the system
The Truth:
This idea, which he stated many times with many different variations, is an empirical comment, not an abstraction, nor pure math. In context, it referred to the habit of management to duck responsibility and blame the workers for things the workers have no control over as they are built into the system they work in, and only management can change the system. It is founded, originally, on the Pareto Principle, but overtime the number he used kept increasing due to his experience working with companies.
To clarify we could easily say the vast majority of variation in outcomes within a closed system are the result of common cause variation, and built into the system, so when solving problems in closed systems, it is more effective to apply resources to understanding the system and what it is capable of, including the range of variation in outcomes, before blaming the people who are working in it. This only applies to closed systems under statistical control. If someone is to “blame” it will come to the surface.
Myth: Deming invented ST
Truth: At no time did Dr. Deming even hint at this, as he was meticulous in giving credit where credit was due. In his book, The New Economics, he cites “An Appreciation for a System,” as one of his four pillars of SoPk. He was a close friend and associate of Dr. Ackoff’s for many years, so was aware of the discipline, and spoke often of looking at your organization as a system. But he was a Management Thinker, Statistician, and Physicist, not a Systems Thinker. Though he encountered the work of Dr. Mayo in Industrial Psychology at Western Electric, and included Psychology as one of the four elements of his System of Profound Knowledge, no one has ever claimed that he created Psychology.
Ludwig von Bertalanffy, is considered as being the father of the modern general systems theory, but really it is rooted in Plato and Aristotle, who invented the cybernetic concept; also Kant and Hegel.
Deming and Shewhart, for that matter, were aware that companies are systems. The quality of a particular worker on a particular machine, for instance, is not just a function of the effort of the worker, but the whole company, the whole system. Shewhart recognized that the input of material, the machinery used, the training, the management ideas, the lighting were all part of the system in which the operator functioned. While he did not develop Systems Thinking, he was very aware of the concept of a system and recognized its importance in management and quality.
During his lectures to the Japanese in 1950 he had a flow chart of the company as a system on the board. He taught that just working on the parts is insufficient and would probably lead to ruin. A manager had to view the whole company as a system and understand its role and obligations to society.
Deming Myths
Dispelling Some Deming Myths
Dan Strongin
There is are a lot of misconception online and in practice about what Dr. Deming said, and meant, so I want to take on a couple of the more common myths. As always, it is the context that matters, and it is not fair for Deming to take the blame for others misinterpretation of his thinking. In his life he was diligent to give credit to others where credit was due.
Myth One:
Deming increased the efficiency in shipyards during WWII. (This one is popular in England for some reason)
Truth:
In 1942, while at the Bureau of the Census, Deming was retained as a consultant to the Secretary of War and was asked by W. Allen Wallis, a statistician at Stanford University, for ideas on ways to aid the war effort. Deming suggested a short course in Shewhart’s methods to teach the basics of applied statistics to engineers and others.
Deming, along with others,published the Z series of lectures which were incorporated by the American Standards Association and are still in use today (although not by that name, I don’t believe). So it wasn’t only shipyards. Several quality groups were formed to teach and learn and they formed the basis for American Society of Quality Control (Now The American Society for Quality) which was founded around 1946. (this clarification from John Dowd, www.jsdstat.com/statblog )
During the war effort, the Z lectures did lead to a redesign of how merchant ships were manufactured, and the building of 6,000 high quality ships in 6 years, an incredible achievement. It also laid the foundation for America’s industrial dominance after the war fed by no competition, and the vestiges of quality manufacturing, too quickly abandoned in the executive suites after the war.
While there was an incredible increase in efficiency across the war effort, effectiveness is another issue. Some of the things produced efficiently were not effective. The ships built were not well adapted to the North Sea, for instance. But Deming had nothing to do with designing ships.
Myth Two: 94% of the problem is the system
The Truth:
This idea, which he stated many times with many different variations, is an empirical comment, not an abstraction, nor pure math. In context, it referred to the habit of management to duck responsibility and blame the workers for things the workers have no control over as they are built into the system they work in, and only management can change the system. It is founded, originally, on the Pareto Principle, but overtime the number he used kept increasing due to his experience working with companies.
To clarify we could easily say the vast majority of variation in outcomes within a closed system are the result of common cause variation, and built into the system, so when solving problems in closed systems, it is more effective to apply resources to understanding the system and what it is capable of, including the range of variation in outcomes, before blaming the people who are working in it. This only applies to closed systems under statistical control. If someone is to “blame” it will come to the surface.
Myth: Deming invented ST
Truth: At no time did Dr. Deming even hint at this, as he was meticulous in giving credit where credit was due. In his book, The New Economics, he cites “An Appreciation for a System,” as one of his four pillars of SoPk. He was a close friend and associate of Dr. Ackoff’s for many years, so was aware of the discipline, and spoke often of looking at your organization as a system. But he was a Management Thinker, Statistician, and Physicist, not a Systems Thinker. Though he encountered the work of Dr. Mayo in Industrial Psychology at Western Electric, and included Psychology as one of the four elements of his System of Profound Knowledge, no one has ever claimed that he created Psychology.
Ludwig von Bertalanffy, is considered as being the father of the modern general systems theory, but really it is rooted in Plato and Aristotle, who invented the cybernetic concept; also Kant and Hegel.
Deming and Shewhart, for that matter, were aware that companies are systems. The quality of a particular worker on a particular machine, for instance, is not just a function of the effort of the worker, but the whole company, the whole system. Shewhart recognized that the input of material, the machinery used, the training, the management ideas, the lighting were all part of the system in which the operator functioned. While he did not develop Systems Thinking, he was very aware of the concept of a system and recognized its importance in management and quality.
During his lectures to the Japanese in 1950 he had a flow chart of the company as a system on the board. He taught that just working on the parts is insufficient and would probably lead to ruin. A manager had to view the whole company as a system and understand its role and obligations to society.