Quotes from W. Edwards Deming

No one knows the cost of a defective product - don't tell me you do. You know the cost of replacing it, but not the cost of a dissatisfied customer.

In 1945, the world was in a shambles. American companies had no competition. So nobody really thought much about quality. Why should they? The world bought everything America produced. It was a prescription for disaster.

Understanding variation is the key to success in quality and business.

The emphasis should be on why we do a job.

I am forever learning and changing.

Export anything to a friendly country except American management.

People with targets and jobs dependent upon meeting them will probably meet the targets - even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it.

If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.

You should not ask questions without knowledge.

It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.

Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.

American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan. But they don't know what to copy.

The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work.

Quality is everyone's responsibility.

You can not define being exactly on time.

In Japan, a company worker's position is secure. He is retrained for another job if his present job is eliminated by productivity improvement.

When a system is stable, telling the worker about mistakes is only tampering.

Declining productivity and quality means your unit production costs stay high but you don't have as much to sell. Your workers don't want to be paid less, so to maintain profits, you increase your prices. That's inflation.

Quality is pride of workmanship.

The prevailing system of management has crushed fun out of the workplace.

Customer expectations? Nonsense. No customer ever asked for the electric light, the pneumatic tire, the VCR, or the CD. All customer expectations are only what you and your competitor have led him to expect. He knows nothing else.

The result of long-term relationships is better and better quality, and lower and lower costs.

Hold everybody accountable? Ridiculous!

What should be the aim of management? What is their job? Quality is the responsibility of the top people. Its origin is in the boardroom. They are the ones who decide.