By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. What topics would you like us to discuss on this blog? What questions would you like us respond to? One of the goals for this blog is to engage the community of readers in sharing there thoughts on the ideas we discuss. Please share your comments on the blog […]

By John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. The Essential Deming: Leadership Principles from the Father of Quality is filled with articles, papers, lectures, and notes touching on a wide range of topics, but which focus on Deming’s overriding message: quality and operations are all about systems, not individual performance; the system has […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. The title of chapter 5 of the New Economics is Leadership. From that chapter, page 116 As I use the term here, the job of a leader is to accomplish transformation of his organization. He possesses knowledge, personality, and persuasive power (chapter 6 [Management of People]). How may he […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). Masaaki Imai is a consultant, author and founder of the Kaizen Institute. The second edition of his book, Gemba Kaizen, was published this year. He agreed to an interview with The W. Edwards Deming Institute Blog. Question: Did you work with Dr. […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). The 19th Annual International Deming Research Seminar will be held 25-26 February 2013 in New York City The seminar will bring together people from around the world, and from a variety of specialties, to enhance, extend, and illustrate Dr. Deming’s theories. This […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog. Joe Dager, Business 901, has published an interview with me in a podcast: Dr. Deming on Lean in 2012. I hope you enjoy the podcast. Download podcast via the Business901 iTunes Store. I discussed some of my history with Dr. Deming’s ideas on management […]

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). The greatest waste in America is failure to use the ability of people. … Money and time spent for training will be ineffective unless inhibitors to good work are removed. Page 53, Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming The power […]

By John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. Inspection does not improve the quality, nor guarantee quality. Inspection is too late. The quality, good or bad, is already in the product. As Harold F. Dodge said, “You can not inspect quality into a product.” Out of the Crisis, page 29 Inspection can be […]

Guest post by John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). From Lean Thinking by James Womack and Daniel Jones (page 126): the management of Wiremold was soon enrolled in the Deming seminars. As Orrie Fiume notes, “Deming’s Fourteen Points were a perfect fit with our values and we loved the […]

By John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. Several speeches are mentioned in the various biographical sketches of Dr. Deming and his impact on Japanese management. In particular a talk he gave at the Mt. Hakone Conference center in 1950 seems to have been important. Attendees included the top industrial managers, representing an estimated 75% of the […]