Profound knowledge, knowledge that is under our noses, pops up all around us. Dr Deming gave us a System of Profound Knowledge (SoPK) that has the potential to continually generate profound knowledge. It is called profound because of the reaction we have when it is uncovered and the impact it can have on our activities. It can appear by chance, intuition or a SoPK.
The article below appeared in the Sunday, January 9, 2011, Detroit Free Press entitled "Nonprofit group saves 150 homes from tax auction block with $194,000." With all the millions spent very ineffectively trying to prevent folks from losing their homes, a small organization armed with Profound Knowledge very effectively and efficiently saves scores of homes from foreclosure. Good job, United Housing Coalition!
http://www.freep.com/article/20110109/NEWS06/101090510/1319/Coalition-saves-150-homes-from-tax-auction-block-with-194000
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Anti-Point 11: Increase numercial quotas
My tongue is firmly planted in cheek as I am writing this! By the rationale of US industry and the auto manufacturers in particular Dr Deming's was totally ignorant of human psychology. You do not eliminate numerical quotas, you increase them to improve quality is their motto. Read the article: "GM: Tie workers' pay to vehicle quality". http://www.linkedin.com/redirect?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdetnews%2Ecom%2Farticle%2F20110111%2FAUTO04%2F101110385%2F-1%2FARCHIVE%2FGM--Tie-workers%E2%80%99-pay-to-vehicle-quality&urlhash=vBI3&_t=tracking_anet
This is definitely the mantra of the Six Sigma I have encountered, "Increase Numercial Quotas". We can call it the Anti-Deming Management Method and thus, the 14 Anti-Points
This is definitely the mantra of the Six Sigma I have encountered, "Increase Numercial Quotas". We can call it the Anti-Deming Management Method and thus, the 14 Anti-Points
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Why Layoffs Generally Result from Incompetent Management?
At one time I read somewhere there are three steps to layoffs:
1) Layoff managers
2) Layoff managers
3) Layoff managers
The point is "what brings a company to a place and a time where in some cases there is a need to layoff tens of thousands of employees at one time?" This means there was no proactiveness, no attrition, and no forethought among management. I cannot even imagine a company carrying an extra 20,000 employees it does not need to perform the function of the company, and then in one fell swoop, make redundant 20,000 employees. This huge excess of employees were all hired by management. Not one of these redundancies were hired by a front-line worker. So if there was so gross a miscalculation of manpower who should pay the price first, second and third. I think better managers/leaders were needed. And then often when the managers are let go there is no rhyme or reason for their layoffs. In particular American culture needs a change of culture.
I could go on and on here making my point, but I won't. The point is so simple and basic with students of Dr Deming that I will just let the link below stand as a witness to my thoughts on the matter.
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/enderle/why-layoffs-generally-result-from-incompetent-management/?cs=30821
1) Layoff managers
2) Layoff managers
3) Layoff managers
The point is "what brings a company to a place and a time where in some cases there is a need to layoff tens of thousands of employees at one time?" This means there was no proactiveness, no attrition, and no forethought among management. I cannot even imagine a company carrying an extra 20,000 employees it does not need to perform the function of the company, and then in one fell swoop, make redundant 20,000 employees. This huge excess of employees were all hired by management. Not one of these redundancies were hired by a front-line worker. So if there was so gross a miscalculation of manpower who should pay the price first, second and third. I think better managers/leaders were needed. And then often when the managers are let go there is no rhyme or reason for their layoffs. In particular American culture needs a change of culture.
I could go on and on here making my point, but I won't. The point is so simple and basic with students of Dr Deming that I will just let the link below stand as a witness to my thoughts on the matter.
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/enderle/why-layoffs-generally-result-from-incompetent-management/?cs=30821
Understanding the Motive of Dr Deming in Japan: PEOPLE
It is my thought the main reason Dr Deming's management method has not been more widely accepted and implemented in North America is because the motivated force behind his work in Japan was not known or understood. The following exert is from "Deming Management Method" by Mary Walton. I strongly recommend all who want to learn about Dr Deming start with Mary's work.
"Japan had paid dearly for its participation in World War II. Of its major cities only Kyoto had escaped wide-scale damage from aerial bombardments, and 668,000 citizen haad died. The nation's industrial base was in ruins; agricultural production was off by a thrid. The once-prosperous populace had first gone without consumer goods, then without food for the wartime effort. Now there was little of either. The cities had been destroyed; many Japanese had scattered to the countryside. Morale had collasped. They had lost confidence in themselves and in their leaders, which perhaps explains why they greeting the Allied occupation forces with so little hostility.
Under US General Douglas MacArthur, SCAP made priorities of dismantling the military goverment and establishing a constitutional regime. When Dr. Deming arrived, two years into the occupation, little physical recovery was yet in evidence. He toook note in his diary of the suffering: 'Practically all the area of heavy industry between Tokyo and Yokhama and in every big city is a complete blank, some concrete and twisted steel left. New wooden homes are springing up like mushrooms everywhere over the seared areas. The debris is practically all cleared away; what is not being built on is in winter wheat or garden. Food was scarce. A tearoom in those days , he would later say, was exactly that-no more than tea was served. Rice, which was also in short supply, could not be served in restaurants. People were forbidden to sleep in the Tokyo train station, because so many had died, not from cold, but from hunger. He carried candy from the Army PX with him on his travels because no food was available.
The plight of the children moved him the most. On one occasion, an American captain took him to the railroad yards where twenty or thirty homeless men slept on rice mats. He saw and old man and a young boy huddled around a charcoal burner with scarcely a flame. Teh boy told the captain that he had been in an institution but the adults ate all the food so he ran away. Deming wrote in his diary, 'At 11:30 I crawled into my beautiful bed, wondering why some of the people have so many good things, while others are sleeping on mats in rags and hungry. Another time he visited and institution: "Miserable wretches in rags, most of them dying of hunger. Human being wasting away. Curous mixtures of the sick with the well, old and dying. Crazy people in dark cells, no windows because they would escape. But who said they were crazy, and who wouldn't be? He used whatever authority he had to urge that the superintendent be fired.
Then in years to come, he did not closet himself with the American colony that sprang up in post-war Japan. He delighted himself in invitations from Japanese hosts, and sought to familiarize himself with the culture, frequently attending Kabuki theater and Noh plays, exploring markets and shops, visiting temples and shrines. 'My method of learning is to become, so far as posssible Japanese, he wrote in 1956. His longtime secretary, Cecelia Kilian remembers him studying Japanese by records late at night in his Washington study."
Dr Deming went to Japan as a census worker. He was effected by the plight of people. The motivating force that tranformed him was PEOPLE. It changed him from census bureau employee to corporate consultant extrodinaire. It gave him a single mission over decades. And it was in this role he would have a most profound impact on the nation of Japan. Thirty years later (early 1980's) America would finally have their eyes opened to see the results of this transformation. The results being high quality, high market penetration and profitability. It was these results America for the most part wanted and desired. Give us the results they said without taking the time to understand the motivating force: PEOPLE.
And so US companies went to Toyota and other Japanese companies and attempted to learn and imitate their systems of "lean manufacturing" they called it. Lean manufacturing is the result of the Deming Management Method applied correctly over years. US companies imitated and developed statistical science which eventually evolved into their own brand, called Six Sigma, which goes directly in the face of Dr Deming's advice, eliminate numerical quotas. Statistics is a important part of the Deming Management Method, but a part nonetheless. They picked and chose portions of the whole in an attempt to bring about the results in as short as time as possible. Their results were usually not sustainable or evolved into the next fad. It is now assumed that management fads are a necessary part of management. You have to have fads to loook at your company a different way, they say. Go to most companies and look on the managers' desk for the book on the current fad. The sustainability of quality is directly proportional to the commitment to PEOPLE: the employees, managers, customers, community, nation and even the globe in a large multinational corporation. When I speak of the sustainability of quality I am speaking about quality that lasts more than one generation, 30 years. This is my benchmark. This does not mean being in business for a long time, but setting a standard for quality in the industry that a company participates. Honda Motors, the number one internal combustion engine manufacturer in the world, meets this requirement now and stands out above the rest. This is my benchmark for quality in industry. But the past is not a guarantee of the future. Look at Toyota for an example of this. They have damaged their reputation considerably by practicing numerical quotas: be the number one auto manfacturer by volume in the world or "beat GM". They have lost marketshare and Some profitability, had many recalls and opened themselves up to considerable liability. But despite this, they have not stumbled so far as US auto makers have i.e. bankruptcy, mergers and buyouts. There is still an element of sustainabilty of quality in Toyota, US automakers are attempting to achieve. Remember we are looking in the 30 year range. US automakers have just begun to attempt to achieve world class quality. They are in their young adolescent years in terms of quality.
"Japan had paid dearly for its participation in World War II. Of its major cities only Kyoto had escaped wide-scale damage from aerial bombardments, and 668,000 citizen haad died. The nation's industrial base was in ruins; agricultural production was off by a thrid. The once-prosperous populace had first gone without consumer goods, then without food for the wartime effort. Now there was little of either. The cities had been destroyed; many Japanese had scattered to the countryside. Morale had collasped. They had lost confidence in themselves and in their leaders, which perhaps explains why they greeting the Allied occupation forces with so little hostility.
Under US General Douglas MacArthur, SCAP made priorities of dismantling the military goverment and establishing a constitutional regime. When Dr. Deming arrived, two years into the occupation, little physical recovery was yet in evidence. He toook note in his diary of the suffering: 'Practically all the area of heavy industry between Tokyo and Yokhama and in every big city is a complete blank, some concrete and twisted steel left. New wooden homes are springing up like mushrooms everywhere over the seared areas. The debris is practically all cleared away; what is not being built on is in winter wheat or garden. Food was scarce. A tearoom in those days , he would later say, was exactly that-no more than tea was served. Rice, which was also in short supply, could not be served in restaurants. People were forbidden to sleep in the Tokyo train station, because so many had died, not from cold, but from hunger. He carried candy from the Army PX with him on his travels because no food was available.
The plight of the children moved him the most. On one occasion, an American captain took him to the railroad yards where twenty or thirty homeless men slept on rice mats. He saw and old man and a young boy huddled around a charcoal burner with scarcely a flame. Teh boy told the captain that he had been in an institution but the adults ate all the food so he ran away. Deming wrote in his diary, 'At 11:30 I crawled into my beautiful bed, wondering why some of the people have so many good things, while others are sleeping on mats in rags and hungry. Another time he visited and institution: "Miserable wretches in rags, most of them dying of hunger. Human being wasting away. Curous mixtures of the sick with the well, old and dying. Crazy people in dark cells, no windows because they would escape. But who said they were crazy, and who wouldn't be? He used whatever authority he had to urge that the superintendent be fired.
Then in years to come, he did not closet himself with the American colony that sprang up in post-war Japan. He delighted himself in invitations from Japanese hosts, and sought to familiarize himself with the culture, frequently attending Kabuki theater and Noh plays, exploring markets and shops, visiting temples and shrines. 'My method of learning is to become, so far as posssible Japanese, he wrote in 1956. His longtime secretary, Cecelia Kilian remembers him studying Japanese by records late at night in his Washington study."
Dr Deming went to Japan as a census worker. He was effected by the plight of people. The motivating force that tranformed him was PEOPLE. It changed him from census bureau employee to corporate consultant extrodinaire. It gave him a single mission over decades. And it was in this role he would have a most profound impact on the nation of Japan. Thirty years later (early 1980's) America would finally have their eyes opened to see the results of this transformation. The results being high quality, high market penetration and profitability. It was these results America for the most part wanted and desired. Give us the results they said without taking the time to understand the motivating force: PEOPLE.
And so US companies went to Toyota and other Japanese companies and attempted to learn and imitate their systems of "lean manufacturing" they called it. Lean manufacturing is the result of the Deming Management Method applied correctly over years. US companies imitated and developed statistical science which eventually evolved into their own brand, called Six Sigma, which goes directly in the face of Dr Deming's advice, eliminate numerical quotas. Statistics is a important part of the Deming Management Method, but a part nonetheless. They picked and chose portions of the whole in an attempt to bring about the results in as short as time as possible. Their results were usually not sustainable or evolved into the next fad. It is now assumed that management fads are a necessary part of management. You have to have fads to loook at your company a different way, they say. Go to most companies and look on the managers' desk for the book on the current fad. The sustainability of quality is directly proportional to the commitment to PEOPLE: the employees, managers, customers, community, nation and even the globe in a large multinational corporation. When I speak of the sustainability of quality I am speaking about quality that lasts more than one generation, 30 years. This is my benchmark. This does not mean being in business for a long time, but setting a standard for quality in the industry that a company participates. Honda Motors, the number one internal combustion engine manufacturer in the world, meets this requirement now and stands out above the rest. This is my benchmark for quality in industry. But the past is not a guarantee of the future. Look at Toyota for an example of this. They have damaged their reputation considerably by practicing numerical quotas: be the number one auto manfacturer by volume in the world or "beat GM". They have lost marketshare and Some profitability, had many recalls and opened themselves up to considerable liability. But despite this, they have not stumbled so far as US auto makers have i.e. bankruptcy, mergers and buyouts. There is still an element of sustainabilty of quality in Toyota, US automakers are attempting to achieve. Remember we are looking in the 30 year range. US automakers have just begun to attempt to achieve world class quality. They are in their young adolescent years in terms of quality.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)