W. EDWARDS DEMING

'Quality' means what will sell and do a customer some good - at least try to.

The big problems are where people don't realise they have one in the first place.

If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.

American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan. But they don't know what to copy.

Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.

People don't like to make mistakes.

Customer expectations? Nonsense. No customer ever asked for the electric light, the pneumatic tire, the VCR, or the CD. All customer expectations are only what you and your competitor have led him to expect. He knows nothing else.

I predicted in 1950 that in five years, manufacturers the world over would be screaming for protection. It took only four years.

Hold everybody accountable? Ridiculous!

The emphasis should be on why we do a job.

Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival.

You should not ask questions without knowledge.

You can not define being exactly on time.

Declining productivity and quality means your unit production costs stay high but you don't have as much to sell. Your workers don't want to be paid less, so to maintain profits, you increase your prices. That's inflation.

Whenever there is fear, you will get wrong figures.

The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work.

Quality is everyone's responsibility.

When a system is stable, telling the worker about mistakes is only tampering.

In Japan, a company worker's position is secure. He is retrained for another job if his present job is eliminated by productivity improvement.

Innovation comes from the producer - not from the customer.

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

The result of long-term relationships is better and better quality, and lower and lower costs.

Lack of knowledge... that is the problem.

I am forever learning and changing.

We are here to make another world.