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Dr. Deming: The American Who Taught the Japanese About Quality (Paperback)
by Rafael Aguayo
| Category:
Quality management, Productivity improvement, Management, Biography |
| Market price: ¥ 158.00
MSL price:
¥ 148.00
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In Stock |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A handy introduction to TQM with all the basics, practices and examples. Especially valuable for quality and operation professionals. |
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Author: Rafael Aguayo
Publisher: Fireside
Pub. in: September, 1991
ISBN: 0671746219
Pages: 304
Measurements: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00370
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- Awards & Credential -
An excellent reference on TQM and the take-off of the Japanese quality. |
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- MSL Picks -
It has been well known the Big Three (GM, Ford and Chrysler) have been steadily losing market share to Asian automakers in the US market and the worst thing is that no one can stop this trend in the short run. Ford just brought in a top executive from Boeing, a no-auto hand, in a drastic effort to save the American icon; and a Fortune cover story in early 2006 warned us against the eventual collapse of General Motors. Shocking stuff, you would say.
The other scenario is the steep rise of Samsung as a premium brand and a top manufacturer in the past 10 years. Samsung is today so competitive that in terms of innovation, financial performance and the value of brand equity, it is now outshining Sony, its once master in technology and manufacturing.
In no overwhelming way, the Taiwanese and mainland Chinese companies are also rapidly climbing the quality ladder, and there are doing it so successfully that China has now actually become the factory floor to the world, making most of the world’s computers, cell phones, digital cameras, LCD displays, and household appliances. The result? While American governments and people complain about the millions of American jobs to China, the American trade deficit with China this year is expected to be more than $200 billion.
"Don't blame the Japanese" for the U.S. trade deficit, "we did it to ourselves." If you can still recall Deming’s argument.
Quality improvement explained the stunning performance of Asian automakers compared to their American counterparts. Quality improvement convincingly told the story of Samsung’s amazing success over Sony. Quality improvement has been one of the reasons China has emerged as a fiercely global competitor.
Quality is the # 1 core competency of Japanese industry (quality is a natural product of the Japanese business culture of Kaizen, or continuous improvement), and it’s becoming increasingly true with Korea as well. For China, there’s still a long way ahead, Chinese companies have to ramp up their quality further and further so that they can compete more effectively. The rampant “cheap, cheap” corporate culture long plagued the Chinese firms is damaging. In the long run, you can’t compete with price at the expense of quality; you can only win through quality and quality-based marketing. We see a big gap there: the Chinese managers are in dire need of world-class quality management practices. That’s why we decided to bring into China two books about Deming’s quality management principles and we hope our effort will pay off: One is Dr. Deming: The American Who Taught the Japanese About Quality by Rafael Aguayo, and the other is Out of Crisis by W. Edwards Deming himself.
Target readers:
Executives, managers, entrepreneurs, government leaders, operations professionals, quality and productivity improvement consultants, Six Sigma Black and Green Belts, and MBAs.
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Out of The Crisis
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Rafael Aguayo studied with W. Edwards Deming for seven years, has worked in the financial sector for fifteen years, and is a consultant in quality and management. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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From Publisher
Dr. W. Edwards Deming, a household name in Japan, became the prime catalyst behind the incredible success of Japanese industry. In fact, since 1951, the Deming Prize has been the most coveted and prestigious award among Japanese corporations, similar to the Malcolm Baldrige Award for quality in business in the United States. Today, Deming is finally becoming a household name in his own country. The lessons he has to teach American business are more urgent than ever.
Just how different is the Deming Management Method? Compare just a few of the many differences in beliefs between conventional organizations and Deming organizations:
- Standard Company
- Quality is expensive
- Defects are caused by workers
- Buy at lowest cost
- Fear and reward are proper ways to motivate
- Play one supplier off against another
- Deming Company
- Quality leads to lower costs
- Most defects are caused by the system
- Buy from vendors committed to quality
- Fear leads to disaster
- Work with suppliers
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CHAPTER 1 Management and Quality
In 1986 Ford emerged as the darling of the American auto industry. Earnings, for the first time since the 1920s, exceeded those of General Motors, and in fact exceeded GM's and Chrysler's combined. Ford's market share continued to increase at the expense of its two American rivals. Its new Taurus/Sable car line was an unqualified success, commercially and in the eyes of Detroit's critics.
Consumer Reports magazine, not usually a fan of American automobiles, called the new cars the best American cars it had ever tested and used the Taurus as the standard by which to judge other domestic models. In its press releases and advertisements, however, Ford did not stress sales or marketing but quality. For the sixth year in a row Ford automobiles were rated highest in quality of all the domestic manufacturers.
Subsequent years confirmed that Ford's success was not a fluke as earnings continued to exceed GM's and Chrysler's. Ford announced profit sharing for its hourly employees of over $2,000 per worker in 1987 and $3,700 in 1988. Some estimates of Ford's cost advantage over GM ran as high as $600 per car.
Not bad for a company that in 1980 had seemed on the brink of disaster and which prior to 1980 hadn't enjoyed a reputation for quality, particularly when compared to the Japanese automakers.
Back in 1980, while Chrysler was grabbing headlines with its brush with bankruptcy and the controversy surrounding the federal loan guarantee that kept its doors open, Ford was quietly suffering, hardly in better shape.
But in 1983 a quiet revolution began at Ford. The quality of American cars was the biggest complaint at the time. Ford management knew something had to be done. In 1983 Ford asked the foremost American expert on quality, the world-renowned Dr. W. Edwards Deming, for help. To management's surprise, however, Deming talked not about quality but about management. All of Ford's top management attended Deming's seminars, and the company has not been the same since. Among those who attended was Donald Petersen, who later became chairman and proclaimed Ford's intent to implement Deming's philosophy throughout the company.
In a letter to Autoweek, Petersen stated, "We are moving toward building a quality culture at Ford and the many changes that have been taking place here have their roots directly in Dr. Deming's teachings."
While other old-line domestic manufacturers have begun implementing quality cultures, few have gone as far as Ford in revamping their way of doing business. A limited or partial application of the Deming philosophy doesn't have the dramatic results that a full application has. An August 18, 1986, article in Fortune stated, "By spreading Deming's philosophy throughout the company, Ford, in the view of consultants and market researchers who have made comparisons, has probably taken greater strides in improving quality than any other U.S. auto manufacturer... A company that decides to take its quality consultant seriously can take off on a road that will transform the whole corporate culture. As Ford found out, following the Deming path leads to a lot more than tinkering with the assembly line."
Deming is no newcomer to American management or quality control. One of the founders of the field, he was actively involved in American quality control efforts during World War II, teaching engineers and academicians who in turn taught thousands of others. Many feel this program was integral to the success of the United States during the war.
After the war, however, many companies that had initiated quality control programs began to lose their incentive and conviction. The primary goal for most American enterprises was to produce enough to satisfy the seemingly endless demand for goods of all kinds. One of the main reasons for the failure of quality consciousness to take hold in this country was that management had never been taught its responsibility. The direct relationship between quality and sales, quality and productivity, quality and profit, quality and competitive position, had never been understood by most managers. The quality control courses taught by Deming and others under the auspices of the Department of War were directed primarily at engineers, inspectors, and industrial people who needed to be fully versed in specific methods and techniques. Once the critical push for high quality, low failure rates, and low cost was relaxed, management stopped the vigorous pursuit of quality.
Comparison Shopping
Although Deming is probably the most respected statistician in America, if not the world, his letterhead modestly introduces him as a "Consultant in Statistical Studies." Despite the fact that he has won every major statistical award, is a professor emeritus at New York University, has an American award for quality named in his honor, has written more than 170 scientific papers and several books, and is a management and quality control consultant to major companies throughout the world, he does not distribute a brochure listing his accomplishments. Among those companies which have attended his seminars in great numbers are the most successful and quality-conscious American companies, a veritable Who's Who of American Business, such as IBM, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Scott Paper, DuPont, and Procter & Gamble, but he steadfastly refuses to promote himself.
Deming is a remarkable man with remarkable credentials, but one must ask how his advice compares with the practices of Japanese companies. After all, Toyota is widely recognized as having the highest quality cars in the world (those who disagree place Nissan or Honda at the top - Honda's customer satisfaction exceeds that of Mercedes-Benz). Perhaps Ford should hire Toyota's quality consultant.
This might seem a reasonable approach, especially since the U.S. trade deficit with Japan exceeded an unprecedented $50 billion in 1986 and, despite the yen's dramatic rise against the dollar since then, stubbornly refuses to shrink. Consumers cite higher quality as the main reason they continue to prefer Japanese goods to American goods. Certainly a comparison of the methods advocated by the United States' premier quality expert and Japanese methods would prove instructive.
A good place to start is Toyota's headquarters in Tokyo. The striking thing one first notices in the main lobby is larger than life pictures of three individuals. One is of Toyota's founder, another of the same size is of Toyota's current chairman, and a third, much larger picture, is of W. Edwards Deming.
Is there some mistake? Has Toyota gone mad? Are they paying homage to the competition? No! The picture is there out of respect for the man they acknowledge as having started it all. W. Edwards Deming is the man who taught Japan quality.
After World War II, Deming visited Japan and at the request of the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) gave a series of lectures on quality control to Japanese engineers and to top management on management's tasks and responsibilities. Deming predicted that within five years Japan would be economically competitive and that consumers worldwide would clamor for Japanese goods. While many were skeptical, the presence of an American expert was compelling. In order not to lose face they faithfully followed his instructions. Within eighteen months of the first lecture the Japanese saw tremendous improvements in the quality of their goods and in productivity. They beat Deming's five-year timetable with a year to spare.
Few Americans have to be told of the prowess of Japanese business, as it has come to dominate industry after industry, including consumer electronics, motorcycles, automobiles, watches, cameras, and semi- conductors. But few Americans realize that Japanese industrial leaders credit Deming with having initiated that success and that the most prestigious award a Japanese company or industrialist can win is the Deming Prize.
What is also too little understood is the role that management has played. All too often American observers cite cultural differences as the reason for the disparity between American and Japanese business practices. But quality management was born in one of America's premier institutions, the Bell Telephone Laboratories of AT&T. Dr. Walter A. Shewhart, a physicist, worked on the problem of quality and uniformity for AT&T's manufacturing arm, Western Electric. His work was found to have great application not just in manufacturing but in the service end of the phone business. For years the American phone system was the envy of the world, providing a level and quality of service unmatched anywhere else.
Shewhart was Deming's friend and associate. Both men, trained in physics, were working in the new field of statistics. When Shewhart published his second book, Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, it was Deming who acted as editor and wrote the foreword.
When Deming joined the U.S. Census Bureau in 1939, he was already the acknowledged world expert in sampling. But the Census Bureau provided an environment in which quality control methods could be employed in a pure service field, with no manufacturing outlet. According to the theory expounded by Shewhart and Deming, as quality improves, costs go down and productivity increases. Quality and productivity can be continually improved. Could the Census Bureau, a government agency, be made ever more efficient and productive? The results were in decades ago. The Census Bureau provided then and provides today a bounty of information of unquestioned integrity at a price that cannot be matched by any other organization in the world, public or private.
Compare this with the Internal Revenue Service, which by its own account has an error rate of more than 25 percent for telephoned inquiries from taxpayers. Congress estimated the error rate at 43 percent. No matter which figure is more accurate, the cost to the IRS and to society is staggering. Are the management styles and methods of the two agencies different? Of course. According to Deming, management…
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| View all 9 comments |
USA Today (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-02 00:00>
Deming's management philosophies are the driving force behind Japan's economic miracle. |
Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-02 00:00>
Author Rafael Aguayo contends persuasively that Deming's advice is savvy, current, even indispensable. |
San Francisco Chronicle (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-02 00:00>
An energetic step-by-step introduction with lots of snappy subheads and entertaining anecdotes. |
BusinessWeek (MSL quote), USA
<2007-01-02 00:00>
Aguayo offers a schematic for putting Deming's teachings to work. |
View all 9 comments |
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