By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Support of top management is not sufficient. It is not enough that top management commit themselves for life to quality and productivity. They must know what it is that they are committed to — that is, what they must do. These obligations can not be delegated. Support is not […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Plot data over time In this segment of Ian Bradbury’s talk at the 2013 W. Edwards Deming Institute conference he discusses variation and using the control chart to aid improvement efforts. This last point went outside the control limits so it is a signal […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. In this segment of Ian Bradbury’s talk at the 2013 W. Edwards Deming Institute conference he looks at how your view of the system effects what solutions seem reasonable. If you only view part of the system the solutions you come to can often have negative consequences. And often […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. The Lean Enterprise Institute has published webcasts of discussions with James Womack, Dan Jones and John Shook exploring reflections on 25 years of lean which I think are quite good. This excerpt looks at learning from other communities of interest and ideas used by […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. This webcast continues Ian Bradbury’s Deming 101 presentation looking at the Theory of Knowledge and the PDSA Learning Cycle. Commenting on Deming’s presentation of the PDSA (plan-do-study-act) cycle in 1951 Ian says It is articulated as a learning cycle. A learning cycle in which you are trying to build […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. This is the first webcast excerpt from the 2013 Annual conference of The W. Edwards Deming Institute we have posted. This is from Ian Bradbury’s presentation: Deming 101. This is a system [of management] and within each of these areas there are powerful ideas […]

By John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. There are few managers today that would say their organization doesn’t focus on customers. It is fairly accepted that in order to proposer a business needs to convince customers to pay. But I find most organizations I interact with don’t do a decent job of […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. What is a leader? As I use the term here, the job of a leader is to accomplish transformation of his organization. He possesses knowledge; he himself has been transformed. He has personality and persuasive power. How may he accomplish transformation? First he has […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Andrew McKeon spoke at the annual Deming Institute conference this year on: Disruptive Sustainability and Deming. Quality Digest interviewed Andrew in webcast above. Andrew uses the 4 elements of Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge to look at climate change in the webcast and also […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Aerojet-Rocketdyne has been running group discussions of Dr. Deming’s book by phone for years. Beginning Monday, 4 November, 2013, and continuing from 3 – 5 pm Pacific time on the dates listed below, via phone we will be discussing The New Economics by W. Edwards Deming. The Aerojet-Rocketdyne course […]