Quotes from W. Edwards Deming

Mere allocation of huge sums of money for quality will not bring quality.

Adopt a new philosophy of cooperation (win-win) in which everybody wins.

Put a good person in a bad system and the bad system wins, no contest.

A bad system will beat a good person every time.

It's not enough to do your best; you must know what to do & then do your best.

The most important things cannot be measured.

My mother was my biggest role model. She taught me to hate waste. We never wasted anything.

If you don't understand how to run an efficient operation, new machinery will just give you new problems of operation and maintenance. The sure way to increase productivity is to better administrate man and machine.

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.

You must have a supplier relationship of constant improvement.

For Quality: Stamp out fires, automate, computerize, M.B.O., install merit pay, rank people, best efforts, zero defects. WRONG!!!! Missing ingredient: profound knowledge.

Learning is not compulsory; it's voluntary... But to survive, we must learn.

He that would run his company on visible figures alone will in time have neither company nor figures.

A leader is a coach, not a judge.

Learning is not compulsory; it's voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory; it's voluntary. But to survive, we must learn.

Experience by itself teaches nothing... Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence, without theory, there is no learning.

Without questions, there is no learning.

All models are wrong; some models are useful.

Two basic rules of life are: 1) Change is inevitable. 2) Everybody resists change.

Any manager can do well in an expanding market.

The big problems are where people don't realise they have one in the first place.

Lack of knowledge... that is the problem.

Innovation comes from the producer - not from the customer.