W. Edwards Deming was an American engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer and management consultant. He is regarded as having brought the concepts of quality management, statistical process control to the Western world following World War II. He taught statistical methods as part of the Japanese post-war reconstruction and helped Japanese companies apply such methods to boost quality and productivity. Deming is known for his 14 Points for Management and the Deming Prize, an annual award for quality management. He is widely considered the father of quality management and quality assurance.

3. • He was born on October 14, 1900 in Sioux City, Iowa to
William Albert Deming and Pluma Irene Edwards
• His parents were well-educated and emphasized the
importance of education to their children
• As a youngster, Deming took on odd jobs and either
saved the money he made or helped with family
expenses
• The mostly frugal conditions which Deming was raised
influenced his belief about not wasting anything

4. • He taught physics at the Colorado School of Mines and
University of Colorado Graduate School.
• During his stay at Yale, he spent four months each summer
working on transmitters at the famous Western Electric
Hawthorne Plant in Chicago. It was during this time that Deming
had another experience that was to greatly influence his
thinking about quality and how workers should be treated. He
later recalled the inhumane conditions under which most of the
workers had to work.
• It was during his time at Western Electric that Deming began to
learn about the importance of uniformity in telephone
equipment.

5. EDUCATION
1921 BS Electrical Engineering at the
University of Wyoming in Laramine
1925 Master’s degree in
Mathematics and Physics at the
University of Colorado in Boulder
1928 Doctorate in Mathematical
Physics at Yale University in
Conneticut

6. He married Agnes Belle, a young
school teacher, in June 1922 and
later adopted a daughter, Dorothy,
when she was 14 months old.
Deming’s marriage to Agnes was
short-lived as she died in
November 1930. Two years later,
he married Lola Shupe, his
assistant at the United Stated
Department of Agriculture (USDA)
Fixed Nitrogen Research
Laboratory.

7. • Deming worked at USDA from 1927 until 1939 and then worked as a
statistical advisor for the US. Census Bureau
• Once he began working for the Census Bureau, his papers were mostly
about sampling, a technique Deming helped pioneer at the Bureau.
• He met Walter Shewart of Bell Laboratories in New York through Dr.
Charles Kunsman, his deputy chief at the Fixed Nitrogen Laboratory.
• Deming handled mathematics and statistics at the USDA graduate
school around 1935
• Deming developed the sampling techniques that were used for the
first time during the 1940 U.S. Census, formulating the Deming-
Stephan algorithm for iterative proportional fitting in the process.

8. WALTER A. SHEWART
• Deming found great inspiration in the work of Shewhart, the originator
of the concepts of statistical control of processes and the related
technical tool of the control chart, as Deming began to move toward
the application of statistical methods to industrial production and
management.
• Shewart’s idea of common and special causes of variation led directly
to Deming’s theory of management.
• Deming saw that these ideas could be applied not only to
manufacturing processes, but also to the processes by which
enterprises are led and managed. The key insight made possible his
enormous influence on the economics of the industrialized world after
1950.

9. • In 1947, he was recruited to help Japan prepare for the
1951 Japan Census. He was brought over at the request of
General Douglas MacArthur who was then the Supreme
Commander for the Allied Powers during the Allied
occupation of Japan following World War II.
• Deming received an invitation from The Union of Japanese
Scientist and Engineers (JUSE) in March 1950 to return to
Japan and teach the application of statistics to quality
improvement.
• JUSE members had studied Shewhart’s techniques, and as
part of Japan’s reconstruction efforts, they sought an
expert to teach statistical control.

10. • From June-August 1950, Deming trained hundreds of
engineers, managers, and scholars in statistical process
control (SPEC) and concepts of quality.
• His message to Japan’s chief executives was that
improving quality would reduce expenses while
increasing productivity and market share.
• Japanese manufactures applied his techniques widely
and experienced a surge in level of quality and
productivity. The improved quality combined with the
lowered cost created new international demand for
Japanese products.

11. DEMING PRIZE
Deming declined to receive royalties from
transcripts of his 1950 lectures, so JUSE’s
board of directors established the Deming
Prize to repay him for his friendship and
kindness. The Deming Prize is a global quality
award that recognized both individuals for
their contributions to the field of Total Quality
Management (TQM) and business that have
successfully implemented TQM. It is the oldest
and most widely recognized quality award in
the world.

12. • Deming wrote and published 58 papers, 16 of
which were co-authored. Half of the papers dealt
with specific applications of statistics.
• He was awarded the Second Order Medal of the
Sacred Treasure by the Emperor of Japan in May
1960, which is the highest award Japan can
bestow on a foreigner.
• Deming made a three-week visit to Japan in 1965,
which at that time, the Japanese industry had
begun to change.

13. • On June 24, 1980 NBC aired a documentary called “If
Japan Can, Why Can’t We?” which discussed about the
increasing industrial competition the United States
were facing from Japan
• As a result of the broadcast, the demand for his
services increased dramatically.
• One of the first American corporations to seek help
from Deming was Ford Motor Company. Deming then
advised Ford that management actions were
responsible for 85 percent of all problems in
developing better cars.

14. • In 1986, Ford came out with a profitable line of cars,
the Taurus-Sable line. By 1992, the Taurus became the
bestselling car in America. Ford the moved into second
place for U.S. and world automobile sales.
• Deming’s classic work, Out of the Crisis, was published
in 1986. It presents all his ideas for quality
improvement.
• Another one of his major work, The New Economics,
was first published in 1988.
• In 1987, he was given the National Medal of
Technology award by President Reagan.

15. • In 1990, he founded the W. Edwards Deming Center
for Qaulity, Productivity, and Competitiveness at
Columbia Business School to promote operational
excellence in business through the development of
research, best practices and strategic planning.
• In 1993, Deming published his final book, The New
Economics for Industry, Government, Education,
which included the System of Profound Knowledge and
the 14 Points for Management.
• Deming died in his sleep at the age of 93 on December
20, 1993.

16. Contribution to Total Quality Management
Whilst in Japan, Deming became involved with
the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers
(JUSE) and his career of lecturing to the
Japanese on statistical methods and company-
wide quality: a combination of techniques now
known as Total Quality Management (TQM) had
begun.

18. Father of Quality Control
TQM was demonstrated on a grand scale by
Japanese industry through the intervention of
W. Edwards Deming—who, in consequence, and
thanks to his missionary labors in the U.S. and
across the world, has come to be viewed as the
"father" of quality control, quality circles, and
the quality movement generally.

19. 14 POINTS TO GUIDE COMPANY’S QUALITY
IMPROVEMENT
1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of
product and service.
2. Reduce levels of delays, mistakes, defective materials,
and defective workmanship.
3. Cease dependence on mass inspection. (Prevent
defects rather than detect defects.)
4. Eliminate suppliers that cannot qualify with statistical
evidence of quality.
5. Find problems. It is management’s job to work
continually on system improvement.

20. 6. Institute modern methods of training on the job.
7. Emphasize quality instead of volume alone.
Management must prepare to take immediate
action on reports from foremen concerning barriers
such as inherent defects, machines not maintained,
poor tools, and fuzzy operational definitions.
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.

21. 10. Eliminate goals and slogans asking for new levels of
productivity without providing methods.
11. Eliminate work standards that prescribe numerical
quotas.
12. Remove barriers that stand between the hourly
worker and his right to pride of workmanship.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and
retraining.
14. Create a structure in top management that will
push every day on the above 13 points.