W. Edwards Deming, credited with turning Japanese industry into world leaders, tells us how to do it here.

W. Edwards Deming, certainly a legend in his time, a management guru who is still making impact on the way industry manages itself today.

The Deming management method has been controversial for decades and followed by some of the most vibrant and successful corporations in the world yet still challenged by many and finding it difficult to get real traction here in America as it is revolutionary and controversial and somewhat opposite our business mind set. He was all about changing the way management was done in America. He succeeded in Japan but has had a much smaller impact here in America. We can learn much from his success and the success of those who followed his principles.

A hand full of leading corporations in America are following his lessons to some degree while the remainder of corporate America languishes under a false understanding of what works and what doesn’t, making the classic error of sacrificing quality for cheaper and less effective standards believing this is how to reduce costs and increase profit while the opposite is the Deming truth.

Deming believed management style must change starting at the top and questions and challenges the way we work here in America, challenging the leaders of our biggest and best industrial giants to reconsider their approach and change.

He is credited with revitalizing the Japanese industrial machine which resulted in incredibly successful giants, such as Toyota, which was heavily influenced by Deming principles and is perhaps one of the best testimonials for the success of the Deming’s theories.

Here is the heart and soul of the Deming philosophy, a concept which if utilized in America by any business will propel them to greater success, greater profitability, happier employees and management and a longer term existence.

This is the Deming chain reaction:

Constantly Improve quality:

1. Costs decrease because of less rework, fewer mistakes, fewer delays, better use of                                         machine time, materials and employees, all of which yield higher productivity>

Which results in:

2. Capturing the market with better quality and lower prices, creating greater consumer                                     demand which yields long term business success and provides long term employment and                             more jobs.

Improving quality must be done at every level, at the supply side from your source, at the manufacturing site with better equipment, materials, procedures etc, with your production process, design, etc.

Ultimately customer satisfaction is the key to success and is determined by the level of quality which if always improving will result in long term success and greater profitability or failure and elimination if the customer goes elsewhere because he is not satisfied with your products or services.

The way we achieve this is not by everyone doing their best which is the current standard in American management theory. If this were actually to happen, everyone would be bumping into each other, bottle necks and delays would be the rule and productivity would plummet downwards, were it is today.

It is a known fact that most small business productivity rates are between 30-40%…awful, and that’s with everyone presumably doing their best.

What is important is everyone knowing what doing their best means, what it looks like and how to achieve it, together as a team, with the result being higher productivity and a greater quality production. Then once everyone knows what doing their best means they then apply their best effort to this new standard, a team standard.

Constant improvement is the objective, always satisfying the customer with better product at lower prices because increased quality will deliver this result.

Deming describes 14 points, and 7 deadly diseases  to avoid, which if taken together are the Deming method of management.

I will discuss these fourteen points and seven diseases (two are only found in America and we as individual business owners can do little to deal with them), in the next blog entry, for the moment, cogitate on the revolutionary principle that Deming builds his method on:

Constant increase in quality results in lower costs, greater profits and happier employees, yielding long term success and more long term jobs. Toyota has never laid of an employee for lack of work.

Think about this standard and how it can apply to your business ad then find ways to deliver the Deming method of management.

I will discuss the how in  the next blog entry entited Demings 14 points and 7 diseases to avoid. Scroll forward to see.