Out of the Crisis

by W. Edwards Deming

Number of pages: 520

Publisher: The MIT Press

BBB Library: Business Classics, Operations Management

ISBN: 978-0911379013



About the Author

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

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Editorial Review

This book is one of the main books describing the modern business through the quality management system approach. Through the pages of the book, Dr. Deming put the main theme of his theory in the 14 principles of management, which is still applicable even after this long period of more than 4 decades from the first edition of this book. 

Book Reviews

“This is Deming’s first book published on his management philosophy (1982). I understand, of the two books he wrote on the subject (the other being The New Economics), this one is the most difficult to read. My feeling is Dr. Deming wasn’t used to writing toward the management audience (his previous books were geared toward statisticians) and was so darn brilliant he didn’t know how to ‘dumb’ down his message yet.” – Evolving Agile

“Deming offers a theory of management based on his famous 14 Points for Management. Management's failure to plan for the future, he claims, brings about loss of market, which brings about loss of jobs. Management must be judged not only by the quarterly dividend, but by innovative plans to stay in business, protect investment, ensure future dividends, and provide more jobs through improved product and service. In simple, direct language, he explains the principles of management transformation and how to apply them.” – The MIT Press

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Wisdom to Share

The starting point of quality is the intent of management, or what is called management commitment.

A company cannot buy its way into quality; it must design this way itself.

Experience must go side by side with theories to improve quality and competitiveness.

It is easy to observe the faults in a process, but it is hard to describe in detail the performance over a long period of time.

No system, whatever is its perfectionism, will be free of accidents.

Quality improvement in any organization means to transfer wastes of man hours and machine time into better products and service.

The core of management in all its aspects and functions like planning, procurement, manufacturing, research, sales, personnel, accounting and law is to understand better the meaning of variation.

In statistical quality control, what is needed is improvement of the process, by reduction of variation, or by change of level or both.

Leaders must know the work they supervise.

Leaders must be field managers, not managing from their desks.

Being secure, or without fear, means to make workers not afraid from expressing their opinions, asking questions, and developing new ideas and techniques.

Every activity must be part of a process

The performance appraisal system focuses on the end result, not on the whole stream or leadership. This transforms the manager from being a leader to being a manager of defects.

Due to emphasizing on individual performance appraisal, it has become a difficult task for employees to work together as one team.

A computer is a double-edged weapon, as some people are good computer users, but a few of them are aware of the dark side of automation.