A Look Back at the Early Days of Lean

Dr. W. Edwards Deming

This fascinating article, A Look Back at the Early Days of Lean  by John Dyer was published by Industry Week back in September. John is one of those people who was lucky enough to have done a (now famous) 4-day seminar with Dr. W. Edwards Deming.

The article contains seven of John's favourite quotes by Dr. Deming and a link to a very informative podcast that he did with Mark Graban.

Here are 3 of his Deming quotes that I particularly like.

“No knowledge without theory. Schools teach information, not knowledge. Information is not knowledge. People go to Japan (to copy what they are doing there) and don’t learn anything because they don’t understand the theories. I hope they enjoyed the ride!”

“We must focus on win-win. Would you want to be married to a loser? Would you want to be in business with a loser… work with a supplier that is a loser or employees that are losers? We must work as a system, Union and Management. Everybody wins.”

“What state of a company is in the best position to improve quality? A healthy company is in an excellent position to improve and has the greatest obligation to improve. A company on the rocks can only think of survival.”