Understanding Variation

Book Review – The Tyranny of Metrics

By Bill Bellows / June 11, 2018 / 0 Comments

Guest post by Michael Godfried: planner and policy analyst in Washington State and Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute Jerry Z. Muller’s The Tyranny of Metrics (2018) is a book that I believe Dr. Deming would have surely appreciated. This well-researched book gives an ever timely overview of the history and drivers behind the misuse of metrics […]

Read More

Understanding Variation and Appreciating Variety

By Bill Bellows / May 21, 2018 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter and Bill Bellows. Beginning in 1951, the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) has awarded the Deming Prize to honor organizations, and later, individuals, for extraordinary accomplishments in quality management. Recipients receive a prestigious medal, complete with an image of Dr. Deming, with his quotation, “The right quality and uniformity are foundations […]

Read More

Reliability: Another Dimension of Quality

By John Hunter / April 16, 2018 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, who founded curiouscat.com in 1996. 2015 ASA Deming Lecture by William Meeker – Reliability: The Other Dimension of Quality: William Meeker begins the presentations discussing his experience with W. Edwards Deming in relation to a paper by Meeker and Gerald Hahn. The core issue related to the issues around problems […]

Read More

Learning to Discern – Quality & Quantity

By Bill Bellows / December 15, 2017 / 0 Comments

Post by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute “The basic problem anywhere is quality.   What is quality?   A product or a service possesses quality if it helps somebody and enjoys a good and sustainable market.” W. Edwards Deming When our daughter, Allison, was about 3 years old, she joined me for a quick ride to the […]

Read More

Applying Quality as a Business Strategy at Hallmark Building Supplies

By John Hunter / December 4, 2017 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. This webcast shows Louie Paynter’s presentation, Hallmark Building Supplies’ Approach to Applying Quality as a Business Strategy, at the 2012 Annual Deming Conference. I have written about this presentation in 2013 with a few selected clips from the presentation. Now we have added […]

Read More

Utopia: Next Stop or Last Stop?

By Bill Bellows / November 16, 2017 / 0 Comments

Post by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute. Sir Thomas More was not the first person, nor the last, to disagree with King Henry VIII. His last serious conflict, refusing to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn as the Queen of England in 1533, was interpreted as a snub against Anne. From this episode, More’s […]

Read More

Wouldn’t It Be Nice?

By Bill Bellows / October 10, 2017 / 0 Comments

Post by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute. Long before Adele and Lady Gaga spoke their first words, The Beatles and The Beach Boys were music industry leaders in the US and UK, as well as worldwide airwave competitors. While neither group may have heard of Alfred Politz, a pioneer in the field of market research, […]

Read More

Understanding and Misunderstanding Variation

By John Hunter / September 18, 2017 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, author of Management Matters: Building Enterprise Capability. This webcast shows Mike Stoecklein’s presentation, Understanding and Misunderstanding Variation in Healthcare, at the 2015 Deming Research Seminar. The companion research paper that Mike wrote, Understanding and Misunderstanding Variation in Healthcare is packed with additional information on the topics he discusses and includes […]

Read More

Management by Extremes

By Bill Bellows / September 11, 2017 / 0 Comments

Post by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute. In the spirit of standardization that is growing in popularity in organizations around the world, is there room for diversity?   That is, is variety really the spice of life, or does it represent a non-value added effort, if not simply waste?    In other words, should variation always be […]

Read More

The Funnel Experiment with Brian Hwarng

By John Hunter / September 4, 2017 / 0 Comments

Guest post by John Hunter, founder of CuriousCat.com. This webcast shows Brian Hwarng’s presentation, The Funnel Experiment, at the 2015 Deming Research Seminar. As Brian says: The purpose [of the funnel experiment] is to demonstrate, by theory, the losses that are caused by tampering. Chapter 9 (“The Funnel”) of The New Economics is a good […]

Read More
Scroll to Top
Scroll to Top