MIT Center for Advanced Engineering Study, 1991.
4 videocassettes (179 min. total): color.
Available locally for viewing from the
Learning Resources Center Collection of Management Films at the
Sterling C. Evans Library.
The Deming Videotapes are available from the MIT Center for Advanced Educational Services.
The videocassettes contain the following nine presentation modules.
In the eyes of the user, how could it be improved?
It is up to the plant manager to take action.
There are a lot of theorems that are true and don't do anybody any good.
Definitions of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable make the worker's
job possible. Clear operational definitions are critical.
The System - Common and Special Causes of Trouble
The only way to find out what happens is with statistical methods.
The system is often what causes problems. Management is responsible for finding the problem.
Common causes are faults of the system and account for
94% of the problems.
Special causes are related to specific events or the action
of people and account for 6% of the problems.
Statistics are important for locating problems.
The 14 Points for Management
The 14 Points are the obligations of top management to work on
forever. They provide criteria to everyone in the
company. Best efforts to be effective require guidance.
And that's why we're here, to guide efforts.
The control chart was designed by Walter A. Shewhart.
Control charts can be used as a judgment for whether a process is in statistical control.
Another use is during production for detection of a special cause as it occurs. Control charts help to maintain a state of statistical control.
After reaching statistical control, if a point goes out of control, that's an indication of a special cause.
It's a good idea for the people on the job to have their chart.
New Principles of Training and Supervision
The aim of supervision is to improve the performance of man and the machine,
to increase output and simultaneously to lighten the load of the production
worker, to make his job more interesting as well as more productive. Put in the
negative, the aim of supervision is not merely to find and record failures of men
but to remove the causes of failure, to help people to do a better job with less
effort.
Focus on those who need help to improve.
Diseases and Obstacles
Here is a list of some of these points.
Divided responsibility always gives trouble.
Quality of service should always be measured by the customer's opinion.
Service providers need to improve
Environmental expectation -
no one to help
no one seems to be working there
customer is a nuisance
The further an internal mistake goes, the more the cost to correct it.
Loss of future business is immeasurable.
Supervise a small sample of the records to understand the process.
Use tools to map out the existing system and look for ways to improve it.
There are two systems of quality.
There is some difference between service and manufacturing yet the same 14 points.
Service organizations must implement the 14 Points to improve quality, keep
existing customers, and gain new ones.
Quality and the Consumer
The consumer is the judge of quality.
It's not always easy to find out about the consumer.
However, the information is not sufficient for making full use of the methods. For example, the formulas for determining the upper and lower control limits of the control chart are not explained. They are visible in one of the diagrams and that's how I found them.
It also seems to me that for a management "theory" the theory is not very theoretical. That may be good! Yet in terms of explaining the reasoning that leads to many of the 14 points not much of a theoretical basis is provided. So, if someone said, "why drive out fear?" the answer seems to be a value judgement with mention of a benefit. That may be good also. We know that it brought a tremendous advantage to Japan where the emphasis on quality brought the country from the aftermath of war to the forefront of technology.