By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. The Birth of Lean is an valuable book from the Lean Enterprise Institute. It collects the thoughts of those leading and working with the Toyota Production System in the early days: Taiichi Ohno, Eiji Toyoda, Michikazu Tanaka, Kikuo Suzumura and others. The book doesn’t talk about Dr. Deming directly […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. The Leander Texas Independent School District (LISD) has been applying Dr. Deming’s ideas to education for years with guidance from David Langford. One of the sections of The W. Edwards Deming Institute website provides views of organizations efforts to apply Deming’s ideas today. Here […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. In this episode of the Deming Podcast (download), Steven Haedrich, President of New York Label & Box Works, talks about the Deming journey at the company. Steven also talks about the relevance of the Deming teachings today and the keys to long-term success using the Deming method. Steven Haedrich: […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). This post continues with some thoughts prompted by the Read Bed Experiment Lessons post. Another aspect the Red Bead Experiment can’t replicate is the long term impact of working in a system that frustrates your desire to do great work. The importance […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. In this clip from volume 14, Understanding Profound Knowledge, of the Deming Library, W. Edward Deming discusses the problem with people putting forth their best efforts. Deming theorem #2 We are being ruined by people putting forth their best efforts. Brian Joiner quoted Dr. Deming as follows: Best efforts […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). In this episode of The W. Edward Deming Institute Podcast (download) Andrea Gabor begins by discussing her book The Man Who Discovered Quality: How W. Edwards Deming Brought the Quality Revolution to America – The Stories of Ford, Xerox, and GM. And […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. The supposition is prevalent the world over that there would be no problems in production or service if only our production workers would do their jobs in the way that they were taught. Pleasant dreams. The workers are handicapped by the system, and the system belongs to the management. […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Response to a question on the Deming Institute LinkedIn group: let’s say Dr. Deming wanted to sit down with his boss to negotiate a compensation increase. What grounds would he use to justify the request? I believe he would explain how the value he brought to the system was […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. W. Edwards Deming is remembered for many things; one of those touchstones was the Deming Four Day seminar. Those 4-day seminars changed the lives of many people. And many of those people went on to change their organizations and the lives of those working […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Fred Warmbier, owner of Finishing Technology (based outside of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA), and Kelly Allan are writing a blog on the New York Times exploring how Deming’s management ideas are put into practice at Finishing Technology. A comment Fred posted to the blog (The New York Times choses to […]