W Edwards Deming

 Born in 1900, 

               

                 Edwards Deming was an American engineer, professor, statistician, lecturer, author, and management consultant.

               Deming opined that by embracing certain principles of the management, organizations can improve the quality of the product and concurrently reduce costs. Reduction of costs would include the reduction of waste production, reducing staff attrition and litigation while simultaneously increasing customer loyalty. The key, in Deming’s opinion, was to practice constant improvement, and to imagine the manufacturing process as a seamless whole, rather than as a system made up of incongruent parts.

1. Organizations should focus primarily on quality, which is defined by the equation ‘Quality = Results of work efforts/total costs’. When this occurs, quality improves, and costs plummet, over time.

      2. When organizations' focus is primarily on costs, the costs will rise, but over time the quality drops.

The Deming Cycle

1. Plan: Design a consumer research methodology which will inform business process components.
2. Do: Implement the plan to measure its performance.
3. Check: Check the measurements and report the findings to the decision makers
4. Act/Adjust: Draw a conclusion on the changes that need to be made and implement them.

In the 1970s, some of Deming's Japanese proponents summarized his philosophy in a two-part comparison:

         Also known as the Shewhart Cycle, the Deming Cycle, often called the PDCA, was a result of the need to link the manufacture of products with the needs of the consumer along with focusing departmental resources in a collegial effort to meet those needs.

The steps that the cycle follow are:

References:

Pioneers of Project Management: Deming vs Juran vs Crosby