Title: Deming’s Quality Principles
Course: PW-Course-Import-Test > Section: Module 2: Quality Concepts and Principles

Module 2

If you have not heard about Edward Deming do not worry; you will know all about him here in a bit.  Edward Demming was was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant. He helped develop the sampling techniques still used by the U.S. Department of the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Deming is best known for his work in Japan after WWII, particularly his work with the leaders of Japanese industry. Many in Japan credit Deming as the inspiration for what has become known as the Japanese post-war economic miracle of 1950 to 1960, when Japan rose from the ashes of war and started on the road to becoming the second largest economy in the world. This happened largely through processes founded on the ideas Deming taught.

Ford Motor Company was one of the first American corporations to seek help from Deming. Adapting Deming’s ideas helped the Ford Motor Company to produce quality cars and become profitable.

So you may be wondering how all of this is relevant to the job of a quality inspector in a medical device industry. The basic quality principles that Deming taught the automotive industry are relevant to any industry, and particularly to the medical device industry that manufactures devices for patients who are already sick.

You are not expected to memorize all of these principles. It is sufficient to know that Edward Deming developed these fourteen principles for business effectiveness and that these principles are aimed at improving overall quality.

Deming offered fourteen key principles to managers for transforming business effectiveness. Business effectiveness includes improving the quality of the product or service provided by that business. These principles (Deming 1982) are:

1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service.
2. Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for massive inspection by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of a price tag. Instead, minimize total cost. Move towards a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Adopt and institute leadership.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, in order to foresee problems of production and usage that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
11. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
12. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objectives.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.

One of the principles that will be helpful as a quality inspector is the third one. This principal asks that a company does not rely on inspection alone to achieve quality in a product. As seen from the 100% inspection exercise, 100% inspection is never 100%. This principal asks that manufacturers design products in such a way that they do not have any inherent quality issues. This will help reduce a company's dependence on inspection. To find a defect in during inspection is too late, ineffective and costly. However companies need to rely on some degree of sampling inspection. You will learn all about sampling inspection in the following modules.

References

Deming, W. Edward. 1982. Out of Crisis, Boston, MA: MIT Press. pps 23-24.