Talk:W. Edwards Deming

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• Benchmarking is the last stage of civilization.
• If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.
• In God we trust, all others bring data.
• Innovation comes from freedom. It comes from those who are obligated to no one. It comes from people who are responsible only to themselves.
• ISO 9000 shows a lack of brains.
• It is important that an aim never be defined in terms of activity or methods. It must always relate directly to how life is better for everyone. . . . The aim of the system must be clear to everyone in the system. The aim must include plans for the future. The aim is a value judgment.
• There is a penalty for ignorance. We are paying through the nose.
• What we need to do is learn to work in the system, by which I mean that everybody, every team, every platform, every division, every component is there not for individual competitive profit or recognition, but for contribution to the system as a whole on a win-win basis.
• Zero defects, down the tubes we go.
• If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.
• The emphasis should be on why we do a job.
• It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
• We should work on our process, not the outcome of our processes.
• Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.
• Innovation comes from the producer -- not from the customer.
• It does not happen all at once. There is no instant pudding.
• If you stay in this world, you will never learn another one.
• Does experience help? NO! Not if we are doing the wrong things.
• We are here to make another world.
• Lack of knowledge... that is the problem.
• Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.
• There must be consistency in direction.
• Hold everybody accountable? Ridiculous!
• Choice of aim is clearly a matter of clarification of values, especially on the choice between possible options.
• We must understand variation.
• You can not define being exactly on time.
• You should not ask questions without knowledge.
• When a system is stable, telling the worker about mistakes is only tampering.

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