People Profile: Edwards W. Deming

Deming is a man who taught us about quality. His work and its significance has rippled across the world. He is worthy of our attention as "quality" becomes the next revolution in economic development worldwide. Who was this man who had to prove himself to the Japanese first before American business paid attention to his ideas?

Edwards Deming was a statistician and management consultant, who was born in Sioux City, Iowa He studied electrical engineering at the University of Wyoming, worked briefly at Western Electric's Hawthorn plant (outside Chicago), took a PhD at Yale in mathematical physics (1927), and then went to work for the US Department of Agriculture. He developed statistical sampling techniques that were first used in the 1940 US census. He served as a consultant to the US War department during World War 2, and by the end of the war had begun to develop broader concepts of efficient management. In 1947 the American occupation authorities brought him to Japan to lecture the Japanese on this subject. He made such an impression that in 1950 the Japanese business community invited him back, and from then on he became a constant visitor to Japan, preaching the gospel of quality control through the statistical control of manufacturing processes. He is considered to have contributed significantly to that country's industrial resurgence after World War 2. Since 1951 the Deming Award has been Japan's highest honour for the business community, and in 1960 he was awarded Japan's Second Order Medal of the Sacred Treasure.

Although he taught occasionally at New York University and Columbia business schools, major American companies were slow to recognize the value of his techniques, but starting in the 1980s he found himself giving countless seminars to many American businesses. Although he has been called the ‘messiah of management’ and ‘curmudgeon of quality’, his business-card read simply, ‘Consultant in Statistical Studies’.

Source: Biography.com