A System of Profound Consciousness: Building Beyond Deming

Total Quality Management Vol. 19, Nos. 7 – 8, July –August 2008, 683– 707

A System of Profound Consciousness: Building beyond Deming

Rick L. Edgemanaà and Lynn A. Fraleyb

a

Department of Statistics, University of Idaho, USA; bFraley & Associates, USA

W. Edwards Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge has long been acknowledged as the gold standard of quality management theory with many organisations operationalising this system in its highly consumable form known as ‘14 Points for Management’. In the late 1990s, a next stage in the evolution of the System of Profound Knowledge was proposed, but not elaborated. That system, which is herein called a System of Profound Consciousness, is both developed and elaborated. Keywords: collaboration; W. Edwards Deming; human motivation; profound consciousness; profound knowledge; synergy

Introduction Advances in quality management theory and practice in the years since the 1993 death of W. Edwards Deming have been led by Six Sigma, lean manufacturing and management, selfassessment principles employed by business excellence models, and integration of green business sustainability considerations into each of these. More than inherent theoretical soundness of these approaches, advancement has been driven by a combination of fruitful application; appeal to moral, ethical or regulatory sensibilities; and bottom-line results. Examination of these areas reveals either clear influence by or intersections with Deming’s work, especially his System of Profound Knowledge (SPK) with its four primary components of knowledge of variation, knowledge of psychology, systems thinking and theory of knowledge. Although Dr Deming elaborated both ‘system’ and ‘knowledge’, ‘profound’ was largely left open to interpretation. As such, we take profound to mean ‘having and applying intellectual insight that extends far beyond the boundaries of common knowledge’. This definition implies that deep insight alone is insufficient, requiring also...