Quality-Control Guru Raps Western Managers
The American who taught the concept of quality control to the Japanese in 1950 is warning his successful students not to succumb to the “diseases” of Western management.
Edward Deming, in a speech this week at the Top Management Quality Control Conference, criticized Western managers for ranking their workers rather than ascribing differences in performance to the company’s overall system. And he criticized them for having several sources provide the same product rather than building a partnership with one supplier.
“Beware of the poison that could come from unstudied practices from the Western world . . . (and) the style of management that has devastated the West,” Deming told about 600 Japanese businessmen and a few foreign observers.
But Deming, who is 85, was preaching to the converted. Japanese executives listened to him 35 years ago, and the result has propelled their firms into giants selling products that have become household names around the world. Now it is the West that is trying to adopt Deming’s concept.
Deming’s idea dictates that quality be maintained throughout production, not just by inspection after the product is completed. Companies set a limit within which a product’s quality may vary and then adjust the work environment and the assembly line until the goal is reached. Workers and managers regularly discuss how production is going through groups called quality-control circles.
The Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers says there were more than 200,000 quality-control circles in Japan last year.
Myron Tribus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a teacher of quality control, said that the circles are “popping up like dandelions” in the United States but that their numbers are still “far too small.”
Among the foreigners at the conference was a group of American executives studying what now is popularly called the Japanese style of management.
“We’ve hired people up to the neck and thrown away the head,” said Rick Ross, manager of a Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce organization that advises regional firms on quality control. “You build in quality, using people to improve the process.”
Another member of the Philadelphia-area group, Lewis Springer, a senior vice president at Campbell Soup, said the world’s largest soup maker has had better employee relations and 20% fewer consumer complaints since it began to introduce new quality-control methods five years ago. Inventories of the 44,000-employee firm, based in Camden, N.J., also have decreased 15% to 20%.
Mary Ann Gould, president of Janbridge Inc., a Philadelphia-based electronics company, said she made profitable changes in her 200-employee firm after she heard Deming speak in Washington.
Quality control depends on “the culture of the company, not of the country. People on the factory floor are ready for change,” she said, adding that Janbridge has adopted a no-layoffs policy and has given line operators authority to shut down operations if they see a problem.
Springer said: “Japan is beating us on products already on the market, improving on what has been invented abroad. If we want to be a world-class manufacturer, we have to adopt this system.”
