W. Edwards Deming

“In Japan, a company worker's position is secure. He is retrained for another job if his present job is eliminated by productivity improvement.”

“People don't like to make mistakes.”

“If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.”

“The prevailing - and foolish - attitude is that a good manager can be a good manager anywhere, with no special knowledge of the production process he's managing. A man with a financial background may know nothing about manufacturing shoes or cars, but he's put in charge anyway.”

“The result of long-term relationships is better and better quality, and lower and lower costs.”

“American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan. But they don't know what to copy.”

“The big problems are where people don't realise they have one in the first place.”

“All anyone asks for is a chance to work with pride.”

“It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.”

“A bad system will beat a good person every time.”

“The prevailing system of management has crushed fun out of the workplace.”

“Quality is pride of workmanship.”

“Declining productivity and quality means your unit production costs stay high but you don't have as much to sell. Your workers don't want to be paid less, so to maintain profits, you increase your prices. That's inflation.”

“Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.”

“Eliminate numerical quotas, including Management by Objectives.”

“'Quality' means what will sell and do a customer some good - at least try to.”

“No one knows the cost of a defective product - don't tell me you do. You know the cost of replacing it, but not the cost of a dissatisfied customer.”

“Any manager can do well in an expanding market.”

“Innovation comes from the producer - not from the customer.”

“Learning is not cumpulsory... neither is survival.”