ABSTRACT
W. Edwards Deming, who died in 1994, is considered by many to be the founding father of the quality movement. He is perhaps the most widely known of the gurus, both within and outside the quality field. Deming held a doctorate in physics from Yale and was a keen statistician, working in the US government for many years in the Department of Agriculture and
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 411 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 3
ability to improve on the poor and the mediocre, and even on the good’, a belief which, as we shall see, is evident in both his theory and his practice. Logothetis (1992: xii) sees Deming as advocating ‘widespread use of statistical ideas, with management taking a strong initiative in building quality in’. Bank (1992: 62) cites Hutchins’s belief that a major contribution made by Deming to the Japanese quality movement was in helping them ‘to cut through the academic theory, to present the ideas in a simple way which could be meaningful right down to production worker levels’.
