ABSTRACT
W.EdwardsDeming, who died in 1993, is considered bymany as the founding father of the qualitymovement. Perhaps themostwidely knownof the gurus bothwithin and outside the quality field, Deming held a Doctorate in Physics from Yale and was a keen statistician, working in the U.S. Government for many years in the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Census. According to Bendell (1989: 4) Deming rose to prominence in Japan where he was closely involved in the post-war development of quality for which Bendell suggests ‘he is considered largely responsible’. Heller (1989) sees Deming as having a ‘passionate belief in man’s ability to improve on the poor and the mediocre, and even on the good’, a belief which shall be seen 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’. Summers (2009) describes Deming’s ‘mission to teach optimal management strategies for effective organisations’ while Bank (1992: 62), citesHutchins’s belief that amajor contributionmade byDeming 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.
