1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of
product and service, with the aim to become competitive and
to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age.
Western management must awaken to the challenge, must
learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for
change.
3. Cease dependence on inspectionto achieve quality.
Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building
quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price
tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move toward a single
supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of
loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production
and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus
constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to
help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job.
Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as
supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for
the company.
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in
research, design, sales, and production must work as a
team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may
be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the wok
force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity.
Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as
the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity
belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the
work force.
11. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor.
Substitute leadership. Eliminate management by objective.
Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals.
12. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right
to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors
must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-
improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the
transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.
Source: W. Edwards Deming, Out of the Crisis, 1982,
MIT CAES.
For more than 25 years, Joseph Sorrentino has been
instrumental in
implementing successful quality management systems for
commercial
companies and government agencies throughout the United
States. His
clients have included The Boeing Company, Allied Signal/
Honeywell, the
United States Army Corp of Engineers and the Unites States
Navy.
