By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. There are many different ways to start applying W. Edwards Deming’s ideas on management. There isn’t a cookbook on what should be done first. This is helpful in that you can avoid trying things that would be very difficult given the current state of your management system. However, it […]

Fred and Kelly discuss the Deming journey of Finishing Technology, a leader and innovator in metal finishing services and technology.

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Here is a list of the 11 most popular posts on this blog last year (as measured by views counted by our analytics applications). We published our first blog post on October 1st 2012. W. Edwards Deming Called for the Elimination of The Annual Performance Appraisal (2012) We Need […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). In this podcast Bob Mason and Clare Crawford-Mason discuss meeting W. Edwards Deming and creating the NBC white paper – “If Japan Can, Why Can’t We?” They also discuss the decades of pursuing and promoting Deming’s management ideas, including their work co-creating […]

Guest Post by Jack Hillerich More than 50 years ago, I started working in our family business, Hillerich & Bradsby Co., maker of the Louisville Slugger® baseball bat. It was the early 1960’s and I had just graduated from Vanderbilt University. I was 21. When my father passed away in 1969, I was suddenly promoted […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. On the Use of Theory is an article W. Edwards Deming published in 1956. It is one of many of his papers we have posted on our web site. Though 58 years old the ideas in the article are very useful today and yet many organizations still have not […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Here are a few of the photos taken by Judy Cahill at The W. Edwards Deming Institute Conference this year. See many more photos in The W. Edwards Deming Institute photo albums.

Guest post by Michael Ballé (repost from his Gemba Coach column on Lean.org) Dear Gemba Coach, For product development you need creative (maybe even chaotic) people. Are those people suited to follow such a structured method as lean? Like trying to achieve one-piece-flow in product development? Thank you. What an interesting question! As a writer […]

By John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. Minimal Viable Product is an important concept. The idea is to learn from customers (users) using the product/service as soon as possible. Having customers direct experience available as soon as possible allows those designing and creating the product to learn as early as possible from […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Paula Marshall, the CEO of the Bama Companies, discusses her adoption of Deming principles at Bama Companies. In the podcast she discusses going to see a Dr. Deming 4 day seminar in 1990 and then working with him for 3 years on bringing new […]