He
hated waste, and he felt that America had become a wasteful country, not only
of its abundant natural resources but also of its human talents. It was a
nation, he believed, about to squander its exceptional blessings. He mocked
American management, finding it responsible for most of the nation's woes, and
he liked to tell audiences that the one thing this country must never do is
export its managerial class - at least to friendly nations. He had little
tolerance for fools (and he thought most American managers fools), especially
those who pretended to care about his principles but had no intention of
changing their ways. He was for most of his career virtually unknown in
America, a prophet without honor in his own land, but he was one of the most
important figures of the second industrial revolution, that is, the challenge
of East Asia to the West. As much as any man he gave the Japanese the system
that allowed them to maximize their greatest natural strength, their manpower.
His system for quality control provided them with a series of industrial
disciplines mathematically defined, and with a manner of group participation
that fitted well with the traditions of their culture. It was in essence a mathematical
means of controlling the level of quality on an industrial line by seeking ever
finer manufacturing tolerances.
?
What
Deming and the other leading American authority on quality control, Joseph
Juran, were telling the Japanese was that quality was not some minor function
that could be accomplished by having some of the workers at the lowest levels
attend a class or two, or by appointing a certain number of inspectors to keep
an eye on things. True quality demanded a totality of commitment that began at
the very top; if top management was committed to the idea of quality and if
executive promotions were tied to quality, then the priority would seep down
into the middle and lower levels of management, and thus inevitably to me
workers. It could not, as so many American companies seemed to expect, be
imposed at the bottom. American companies could not appoint some medium-level
executive, usually one whom no division of the company particularly wanted,
and, for lack of something better to do with him, put him in charge of
something called quality. The first thing that an executive like that would do,
Deming said, and quite possibly the only thing, was to come up with slogans and
display them on banners. If the company treated quality as a gimmick or an
afterthought, then true quality would never result. Above all, he was saying,
quality had to be central to the purpose of a company.
?
The
America of the fifties and sixties had scorned Deming and his teaching and in
effect driven him abroad to find his students. America in those years was rich
and unchallenged, the customers seemed satisfied, and in most important fields
there were few competing foreign products against which a buyer might judge the
quality of an American product and find it wanting. The theory of management
then asserting itself in American business was a new one: managers should no
longer be OF the plant. They should come from the managerial class, as it
arrived from the best colleges and business schools, and they should view
management as a modern science. Their experience should not be practical, as it
had been in previous generations, but abstract. Practical experience was, if
anything, a handicap. They were not men who knew the factory floor, nor did the
people on their boards of directors know it either. ?Later, after Japan became immensely
successful, too much was made, Deming thought, of the fact that an ordinary Japanese
worker had a lifetime contract with his company; too little was made of the
fact that the Japanese manager had a comparable contract – he would stay the
course, remain absolutely loyal to the company and thus to the product, and his
restraint on his ambition might be its own reward. Too little was also made,
Deming believed, of that fact that the Japanese manager's roots were typically
in science and engineering, as were those of the men on the board of directors
that judged him, while the American manager came from a business or law school,
as did the board that judged HIM.
?
Nothing
appalled Deming more than the idea of the interchangeable manager. "What
is the motivation and purpose of men like this?" he would say with
contempt. "Do they even know what they do anymore? What do they
produce?" All about was numbers, not product. All they thought about was
maximum profit, not excellence of product. The numbers, of course, he added,
always lied. "They know all the visible numbers, but the visible numbers
tell them so little. They know nothing of the invisible numbers. Who can put a
price on a satisfied customer, and who can figure out the cost of a
dissatisfied customer?" One of Deming's American disciples, Ron Moen, said
it was as if Deming saw work as a kind of zen experience. "What he is
really asking," Moen pointed out, "is 'What is the purpose of life,
and what is the purpose of work? Why are you doing this? Who truly benefits
from what you do other than yourself?' Those are not questions that many people
in American business want to answer anymore."
?
David
Halberstam "The Reckoning" (1987)
