W. Edwards Deming Quotes

If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.

Put a good person in a bad system and the bad system wins, no contest.

Quality comes not from inspection, but from improvement of the production process.

Two basic rules of life are: 1) Change is inevitable. 2) Everybody resists change.

The greatest waste … is failure to use the abilities of people…to learn about their frustrations and about the contributions that they are eager to make.

In God we trust; all others bring data.

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

Management by results - like driving a car by looking in rear view mirror.

Stamping out fires is a lot of fun, but it is only putting things back the way they were.

Improve quality, you automatically improve productivity.

The ultimate purpose of collecting the data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation.

It's not enough to do your best; you must know what to do & then do your best.

Understanding variation is the key to success in quality and business.

Inspection with the aim of finding the bad ones and throwing them out is too late, ineffective, and costly. Quality comes not from inspection but from improvement of the process.

Manage the cause, not the result.

Quality is pride of workmanship.

Each system is perfectly designed to give you exactly what you are getting today.

We should work on our process, not the outcome of our processes.

You must not run your Organization as a functional hierarchy. You must understand it as a System.

Learning is not compulsory; it's voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory; it's voluntary. But to survive, we must learn.

It is a mistake to assume that if everybody does his job, it will be all right. The whole system may be in trouble.

Defects are not free. Somebody makes them, and gets paid for making them.

Uncontrolled variation is the enemy of quality.

Divide responsibility and nobody is responsible.

Quality is everyone's responsibility.

A bad system will beat a good person every time.

Nobody goes to work to do a bad job.

Just because you can measure everything doesn't mean that you should.

If you wait for people to come to you, you'll only get small problems. You must go and find them. The big problems are where people don't realize they have one in the first place.

A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without the aim, there is no system.

The customer is the most important part of the production line.

Managing by results only makes things worse.

Nothing happens without personal transformation.

Don't expect smart people to listen to you without proof.

People are entitled to joy in work.

What makes a scientist great is the care that he takes in telling you what is wrong with his results, so that you will not misuse them.

You can expect what you inspect.

Quality starts in the boardroom.

The system that people work in and the interaction with people may account for 90 or 95 percent of performance.

We are being ruined by the best efforts of people who are doing the wrong thing.

Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.

A leader's job is to help his people.

The worker is not the problem. The problem is at the top! Management!

The result of long-term relationships is better and better quality, and lower and lower costs.

All anyone asks for is a chance to work with pride.

Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.

To manage one must lead. To lead, one must understand the work that he and his people are responsible for

Eighty percent of American managers cannot answer with any measure of confidence these seemingly simple questions: What is my job? What in it really counts? How well am I doing?

...the most important things we need to manage can't be measured.

Learning is not compulsory; it's voluntary... But to survive, we must learn.