W. Edwards Deming Quotes

The biggest cost of poor quality is when your customer buys it from someone else because they didn't like yours.

Scrap doesn't come for free, we pay someone to make it.

You cannot inspect quality into the product; it is already there.

The questions are more important than the answers.

Sub-optimization is when everyone is for himself. Optimization is when everyone is working to help the company.

Experience by itself teaches nothing.

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

Learn the basics of analytics and people will love you. If you don't have time to learn, hire someone.

Lack of knowledge - that is the problem.

Zero defects is a super highway going down the tube.

We must understand variation.

When asked what single event was most helpful in developing the Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein replied, "Figuring out how to think about the problem".

Forces of Destruction: grades in school, merit system, incentive pay, business plans, quotas.

I am not reporting things about people. I am reporting things about practices.

To copy is to invite disaster.

You can see from a flow diagram who depends on you and whom you can depend on. You can now take joy in your work.

Quality begins with the intent, which is fixed by management.

The emphasis should be on why we do a job.

A rule should suit the purpose.

Profit in business comes from repeat customers

Hold everybody accountable? Ridiculous!

Many people in management are being paid to produce waste.

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

Innovation comes from the producer - not from the customer.

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

We are here to make another world.

To optimize the whole, we must sub-optimize the parts

Without questions, there is no learning.

A leader is a coach, not a judge.

Quality is made in the board room. A worker can deliver lower quality, but she cannot deliver quality better than the system allow.

3% of the problems have figures, 97% of the problems do not.

A leader must have knowledge. A leader must be able to teach.

You must have a supplier relationship of constant improvement.

The process is not just the sum of its parts.

Meeting specifications is not enough.

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

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

We are here to learn, to make a difference and to have fun.

Management's job is to optimize the whole system.

You do not find knowledge in a dictionary, only information.

The transformation will come from leadership.

When we cooperate, everybody wins.

The aim proposed here for any organization is for everybody to gain - stockholders, employees, suppliers, customers, community, the environment - over the long term.

Management by results is confusing special causes with common causes.

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

We must satisfy our customers.

A rational prediction has an explanation based on theory.

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

Eliminate numerical quotas, including Management by Objectives.

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