Understanding Variation

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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, […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Manage Costs, Variation, and Waste – Mind the Choices

By Bill Bellows / August 18, 2017 / 0 Comments

Post by Bill Bellows, Deputy Director, The Deming Institute. As noted in my June 26th post, “It Depends…”, when asked in February 1990 about the trend towards reducing the number of levels of management in organizations, Dr. Deming answered, in his usual Socratic fashion: “Why have more levels than you need?” Now, consider what Socratic questions might […]

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Application of Statistical Methods in 1940

By John Hunter / March 13, 2017 / 0 Comments

By John Hunter, author of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog (since 2004). Dave Nave found an interesting forward from a set of 1985 standards on Control Charts. It describes how those standards were created as part of the World War II war effort, with Dr. Deming on the committee. Subsequently the standards were transfer […]

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