By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. The Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) has announced the 2013 Deming Prize winners. The companies awarded the Deming Prize this year are: Komatsu Shantui Construction Machinery (China) – Japanese parent company received the 1964 Deming prize. Advics (Japan) Sanden Corporation, Retail Systems […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Improvement of Quality and Productivity, to be successful in any company, must be a learning process, year by year, top management leading the whole company. W. Edwards Deming page 139, Out of the Crisis Understanding the importance of learning is often one sign of the maturity of the improvement […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog Update: as new online resources are added this blog post is not. See the current list of online Deming management system resources. There are many online resources for those looking to improve the practice of management in their organization in a way consist with […]

Guest Post – Chatterbox by Lou Tribus I teach a Year 4 class in a small private primary school in central London. That would be the equivalent in the USA, by age of a 3rd grade class or academically of a 4th grade class. One of the benefits of a small private school is small […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. In, New Principles in Administration for Quality and Efficiency (speech by W. Edward Deming in Manila, Philippines, July 2, 1971) Dr. Deming laid out 19 principles. The full list of principles is included in The Essential Deming, page 176-178. Two I find particularly insightful […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Prediction is the Problem, Ron Moen’s presentation at the 2012 Annual Deming Conference. “Planning requires prediction. Prediction requires a theory.” In the video Ron Moen talks about the Associates for Process Improvement model for improvement. The enhanced PDSA cycle includes an explicit focus on prediction in the planing phase […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. W. Edwards Deming wrote that most of the results are due to the system and blaming people for those results was not effective. He also wrote that sometimes employees were outside control limits (evidence of a special cause existed). When those employees were failing […]

Guest post by John Hunter, founder of the CuriousCat.com. From Out of the Crisis, page 121: the most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable (Lloyd S. Nelson, director of statistical methods for the Nashua corporation), but successful management must nevertheless take account of them. We need to manage systems even […]

By John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. Peter Scholtes on understanding people and why they behave as they do; from his presentation at the 2008 Deming Institute conference in Madison, Wisconsin. In the presentation he discussed the 6 leadership competencies from his book, The Leader’s Handbook, which is based on Deming’s ideas […]

Guest Post by Sami Bahri As a way to improve operations, manufacturers reduce inventory levels at all steps in a value stream. Taiichi Ohno, inventor of the “Toyota production System,” said that inventory conceals operational waste the same way water in a lake hides underlying rocks. Ohno advised reducing inventory levels to uncover waste. In […]