Whether you're the owner of our own small business, a middle manager in a mid-sized company, or the CEO of a multinational, this book can show you how to improve your profits and productivity. How? By following the principles of The Deming Management Method . Middle- and top-echelon managers in particular will find Dr. Deming's method provocative and controversial. He is for a total revamping of the way American managers manage. Some of his pet peeves are: managers who manage by slogans or by setting quotas, managers who don't know what their jobs are and who can't define the responsibilities of the workers under them, managers who tend to blame workers, not realizing that workers want to take pride in their work. Change, Dr. Deming beliees, starts at the top with an informed, quality-conscious management. This book includes excellent advice on how to achieve that level of management expertise in the author's analysis of Dr. Deming's famous 14 Points for Managers and his Deadly diseases of management . Dr. Deming's management techniques are all carefully explained in this detailed, step-by-step treatment of their major points and of their practical applications to everyday business life. A large portion of The Deming Management Method is devoted to practical applications of the method by some of American's most innovative firms, including Honeywell, AT&T and Campbell's Soup. "I'm proud to say I'm a Deming disciple, and we at Ford are committed to his operating principles, particularlly the ethic of continuous improvement and and the involvement of all employees." — Donald E. Petersen, Chairman of the Board (retired), Ford Motor Company "W. Edwards Deming is to management what Benjamin Franklin was to the Republican conscience — a guide, a prophet, an instigator. Here in one book is an incisive summary of his wisdom." — Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor Mary Walton worked as a journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer for more than 22 years. She has also written for the  New York Times , the  Washington Post , Harper's Magazine , and other publications. Walton lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. THE DEMING MANAGEMENT METHOD by Mary Walton FOREWORD BY W. Edwards Deming Foreword by W. Edwards Deming Why is Western industry on the decline? Why has the balance of trade of the United States of America deteriorated year by year for twenty years? The deficit in export of manufactured goods is worse than the overall figures indicate, as export of agricultural products has been on the increase. We have people; we have natural resources, experience. Why the decline? The cause of the decline is that management have walked off the job of management, striving instead for dividends and good performance of the price of the company’s stock. A better way to serve stockholders would be to stay in business with constant improvement of quality of product and of service, thus to decrease costs, capture markets, provide jobs, and increase dividends. In the decade after the War [the Second World War], the rest of the world was devastated. North America was the only source of manufactured products that the rest of the world needed. Almost any system of management will do well in a seller’s market. Success in business in North America was confused with ability to manage. Management in America (not all) have moved into what I call retroactive management: focus on the end-product—look at reports on sales, inventory, quality in and quality out, the annual appraisal of people; start the statistical control of quality and QC-Circles for operations, unfortunately, detached from management’s responsibility; apply management by the numbers, management by MBO. [Management By Objective], work standards. The follies of the systems of management that thrived in the expanding market that followed the War are now all too obvious. They must now be blasted out, new construction commenced. Patchwork will not suffice. Everyone doing his best is not the answer. Everyone is doing his best. It is necessary that people understand the reason for the transformation that is necessary for survival. Moreover, there must be consistency of understanding and of effort. There is no substitute for knowledge. A conjurer may pull a rabbit out of a hat, but he cannot pull quality out of a hat. The biggest problem that most any company in the Western world faces is not its competitors, nor the Japanese. The biggest problems are self-inflicted, created right at home by management that are off course in the competitive world of today. Recognition of the distinction between a stable system and an unstable one is vital for management. The responsibility for improvement of a stable system rests totally on the management. A stable system is one whose performance is predictable. It is reached by removal, one by one, of special causes of trouble, best detected by statistical signal. Understanding of a stable system discloses devastation of people wroug