Deming

W. Edwards Deming

William Edwards Deming was a famous American statistician who is best known for his work in modernizing design, quality and sales control in post-world war II Japan. Possibly, his defining work was the publication of “Out of Crisis”, which presents in detail 14 points that serve as a managerial guideline to a more effective workforce, increased productivity and ultimately higher profits.

During the late 1920’s, after meeting with Walter A. Shewhart of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Deming began to work on the application of statistical analysis to industrial production and management. Later, through his theory of management, he realized that his work on statistical methods could also be applied to any business organization that operates through the use of management. Deming suggested that by identifying production defects and their causes, the causals would be corrected and the effects of such corrections could be measured on the following production quality.

Later in 1947, Deming was working on planning the Japanese census under the direction of the United States Army, then occupying Japan along the allied powers. Deming had such expertise in the fields of quality control techniques that he was asked by a group of Japanese scientists and engineers to assist them in the restructuration of their statistical process controls. Deming taught and trained Japanese executives and engineers about the importance of statistical processes. Thanks to W. Edwards Deming’s contribution, Japanese companies quickly rose to dominate certain product markets around the world. Deming asserted that by improving total quality control in the production process, the company’s expenses could be reduced exponentially and would allowed for higher productivity and market share.

Even though Deming’s work became highly acclaimed in other parts of the world, he was hired by Ford to help jump start their rapidly declining sales. He was also featured in an NBC documentary...