William Edward Deming on Quality

As individuals we all have our own perspective on what would amount to quality. With regards to the general public we are a nation of extreme diversity, with individuals and families from a wide-range of nations, cultures, personal beliefs and superstitions. Therefore, quality may and will have contrasting opinions, or values, an example could be as follows: Each of us having a fine meal at a restaurant may or would have contrasting opinion on the setting, service, and the overall quality of the food.

This week’s assignment is about evaluating the quality issues of three organizations. The three sectors I chose to evaluate are manufacturing, service and government. I will then discuss the importance of quality to each organization, the relationship of quality to customers, the leadership commitment to quality and the alignment of quality to the organization’s strategic goals and objectives.

Quality begins with the person providing the service or who makes a quality product which enhances the “perceived value” for the consumer; who gains from the exchange. The employee makes the product, the consumer buys the product, ensuring a relationship with the company who provides the livelihood for the employee. It is a perfect circle.

Deming stressed that the lowest levels of operational staff in an organization must assume the overriding responsibility for quality management.

After the Japanese "miracle" had come to be recognized within America and Total Quality Management (TQM) had begun making fledgling appearances in American manufacturing, W. Edwards Deming, the so-called "father of TQM" gave us his famous 14 Points for the purpose of enabling the manufacturer to operate under the principles of TQM and the participatory management style that it requires. Several of Deming's (1986) 14 Points conclude with the statement, "substitute leadership" (p. 26).

Deming’s parents believed in being educated. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in electrical engineering from the University of Wyoming. He received his Master’s Degree at the University of Colorado. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics and physics from Yale. (“Deming: Biography”, 2000).

     The concept of quality should be built in at the design stage of the product. Each product should be viewed as “one of a kind” and there is only

Within any given industry, a level of quality has to be ascertained as to ensure that clients of products and goods were receiving the best possible level of quality for their desired product. Quality meant that the expectations of a client had to be met consistently. Business throughout the world started development of standards and

Quality can be defined as anything that enhances the customer’s satisfaction. Of course, the company has to satisfy not only customers, but their employees as well. Employees can be satisfied, if their needs are satisfied. If we apply Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, we can see that people’s needs can be divided in five groups:

The last decade of the twentieth century brought great development to the world and especially it has introduced new techniques and ideas to improve the business world. Subsequently, in the decade of 1990s the business world was revolutionized with the quality management technique in business. It was the time when the businesses started to embrace the concept of quality and so they started to use it as a competitive advantage (Abusa, 2013).

After he received his bachelor's degree he stayed at the University of Wyoming where he became an instructor in engineering and still studied math. Deming received his master's degree in 1924 at the University of Colorado at Boulder to become a physics teacher there. He later attended Yale to finish with his doctorate and worked at Western Electric where he learned of Walter Shewharts theory of quality control.

Quality is defined as conformance to the requirement, not goodness: The first absolute explains that management must strive to ensure that during the quality improvement process everyone is getting things done right the first time. Crosby stated that in other to do this management must state clearly what are the individual roles of the employee, management must also supply the employees with the resources needed to do their task and lastly management must give continuous support and encouragement to the employees during the improvement process. When quality is defined as conformance to requirement it helps to reduce hassle and improve quality at the same time. Crosby (1995).

Quality in fact has no exact definition, the term usually refers to creating designing the activities and operations of a single cooperation or business insure of quality organization skills and to also improve the services as well. Quality is also known for its capabilities for its learning process as well as its promise to be able to apply greater standards in order to better things in the company and or the organization.

Deming, Juran, and Crosby all define quality in different ways. Deming defines quality as a continuous improvement and the ultimate goal is zero defects; however, he realizes an error free product may not be economically feasible or practical (Kerzner, 2009, p. 880). Deming also states a product or service is defined by the customer and quality is a relative term and will change based on the customer’s needs (Suarez, 1992, p.3)

Quality is never an accident it is always the results of high intention, sincere efforts, intelligent directions and skillful execution, it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.