Quotes by W. Edwards Deming

Does experience help? No! Not if we are doing the wrong things.

Putting out fires is not improvement of the process. Neither is discovery and removal of a special cause detected by a point out of control. This only puts the process back to where it should have been in the first place.

Experience teaches nothing without theory.

numerical goals set for other people, without a road map to reach the goal, have effects opposite to the effects sought.

management by numerical goal is an attempt to manage without knowledge of what to do, and in fact is usually management by fear.

People are entitled to joy in work.

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

The merit rating nourishes short-term performance, annihilates long-term planning, builds fear, demolishes teamwork, [and] nourishes rivalry and politics. It leaves people bitter, crushed, bruised, battered, desolate, despondent, dejected, feeling inferior, some even depressed, unfit for work for weeks after receipt of rating, unable to comprehend why they are inferior. It is unfair, as it ascribes to the people in a group differences that may be caused totally by the system that they work in.

Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.

No defects, no jobs. Absence of defects does not necessarily build business… Something more is required.