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Statistical process control after W. Edwards Deming

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Re: Statistical process control after W. Edwards Deming

#11

Post by akolbe »

djur wrote: post #9
key_stroker wrote: post #2

This is a cool write up, I think since his death people did not carry the legacy, and when I look at ai and machine learning it feels like the opposite of SPC. There's a podcast I listen to by the Deming institute, the presenters talk about his legacy and work and rarely about new applications or techniques. Feels like the world of data driven management is heading in the wrong direction.

I've always been interested in Deming and his ideas (my dad was kind of obsessed with him when I was younger) and every time I want to find some good material on him to get other people interested I have trouble. A lot of the websites, books, videos, etc. out there are clearly sales vehicles for individual consultants, and when you get past that a lot of the remaining material has a kooky, almost cultlike quality. An…

Certainly there was an entire cottage industry of well-paid consultants popularising these ideas around the 80s and 90s and yes, there was something distinctly cult-like about the scene and the Six Sigma Green Belt and Black Belt trainings that grew out of them.

That's not the fault of the ideas though, many of which are just common sense.

I was involved in the production of interactive video training courses on SPC and related topics in the late 1980s and early 1990s ... the first ones still used 12" laserdiscs; the DVD and the internet hadn't been invented yet. :))

Re: Statistical process control after W. Edwards Deming

#13

Post by dataflow »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #8
cardosof wrote: post #4

I've used Deming's ideas to optimize ads and it did work way better than bayesian ab testing or ML-based approaches. However, management did not like that I was using something so old, so I had to rebrand it, but it was Deming still.

ISO 9001 and most of ISO 27001 are Deming through and through. If you tell some people you are going to use the principles of some old guy from the 1980s they laugh and dismiss you. Frame the same thing using some ISO numbers and throw in words like "compliance" and "best practice", and they go moist with glee. The shallow anti-intellectual fakery of some "management" sickens me.

> ISO 9001 and most of ISO 27001 are Deming through and through.

Huh, why am I reading the opposite here https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/how-does-iso-90012015-stack-u...?

ISO 9001 has never much embraced Deming, despite them saying so. In fact, most of the requirements of ISO 9001 directly contradict Deming, as well as Juran, Crosby and other quality gurus.

Re: Statistical process control after W. Edwards Deming

#14

Post by Zigurd »

dataflow wrote: post #13
nonrandomstring wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISO 9001 and most of ISO 27001 are Deming through and through. If you tell some people you are going to use the principles of some old guy from the 1980s they laugh and dismiss you. Frame the same thing using some ISO numbers and throw in words like "compliance" and "best practice", and they go moist with glee. The shallow anti-intellectual fakery of some "management" sickens me.

> ISO 9001 and most of ISO 27001 are Deming through and through. Huh, why am I reading the opposite here https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/how-does-iso-90012015-stack-u... ? ISO 9001 has never much embraced Deming, despite them saying so. In fact, most of the requirements of ISO 9001 directly contradict Deming, as well as Juran, Crosby and other quality gurus.

I would explain it as a "no true Scotsman" thing. Deming has a very strong influence on the creation of ISO9000 and related standards, but it's like "manifesto Agile" people saying Scrum is heresy.

Re: Statistical process control after W. Edwards Deming

#15

Post by kqr »

deterministic wrote: post #12

If you are interested in this you might also like the book “The Goal”. It is a business novel introductions TOC (the Theory of Constraints) which IMHO is the #1 most efficient way to run a company/team/process/…

The problem with the theory of constraints is that it, from my understanding, uses inner constraints to determine boundary ingress rates. This causes higher variation than necessary. When a bottleneck is introduced, you will have a lot of crap backed up in front of it because you ran upstream processes at high rates into the bottleneck – even though you knew the bottleneck was there. When the bottleneck is lifted, you instead have upstream processes starved waiting for the flow from the boundary to come.

A better alternative in the face of some variation is local signalling like kanban. This will run upstream processes at just the right rate all the way back to, and including, boundary ingresses.

Re: Statistical process control after W. Edwards Deming

#17

Post by maxerickson »

dataflow wrote: post #13
nonrandomstring wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISO 9001 and most of ISO 27001 are Deming through and through. If you tell some people you are going to use the principles of some old guy from the 1980s they laugh and dismiss you. Frame the same thing using some ISO numbers and throw in words like "compliance" and "best practice", and they go moist with glee. The shallow anti-intellectual fakery of some "management" sickens me.

> ISO 9001 and most of ISO 27001 are Deming through and through. Huh, why am I reading the opposite here https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/how-does-iso-90012015-stack-u... ? ISO 9001 has never much embraced Deming, despite them saying so. In fact, most of the requirements of ISO 9001 directly contradict Deming, as well as Juran, Crosby and other quality gurus.

What does "Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change." mean? Be precise.

It can be possible that his points don't entirely express the useful aspects of his vision.

Re: Statistical process control after W. Edwards Deming

#19

Post by jimmygrapes »

dataflow wrote: post #13
nonrandomstring wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISO 9001 and most of ISO 27001 are Deming through and through. If you tell some people you are going to use the principles of some old guy from the 1980s they laugh and dismiss you. Frame the same thing using some ISO numbers and throw in words like "compliance" and "best practice", and they go moist with glee. The shallow anti-intellectual fakery of some "management" sickens me.

> ISO 9001 and most of ISO 27001 are Deming through and through. Huh, why am I reading the opposite here https://www.oxebridge.com/emma/how-does-iso-90012015-stack-u... ? ISO 9001 has never much embraced Deming, despite them saying so. In fact, most of the requirements of ISO 9001 directly contradict Deming, as well as Juran, Crosby and other quality gurus.

The essence of both Deming's legacy and of ISO 9001/27001/45001 etc is "Plan, Do, Check, Act" which is rephrased a thousand ways but boils down to the same thing in the end. Figure out the current situation and decide what changes need to happen; implement the changes as best you can; document the results and evaluate them against expectations and past performance; re-evaluate needs based on evaluation results and repeat the cycle.

To say that those ISO standards are in contradiction of the Deming cycle is surely just some PR attempt to pretend it was an original concept developed by highly specialized committees who absolutely need to be treated as experts, rather than common sense.

Re: Statistical process control after W. Edwards Deming

#20

Post by wsh »

dsr3 wrote: post #16

If I am interested in learning Deming ideas and theory, what is the textbook/book that I should read? Any recommendation?

For Deming’s own ideas, such as the 14 Points, see his book Out of the Crisis (1986), reprinted by MIT Press.

For the practical application of control charts and other techniques (due originally to Shewhart and others), see the Statistical Quality Control Handbook (Western Electric, 1958) or, for a more up-to-date treatment, the NIST/SEMATCH e-Handbook of Statistical Methods:

https://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/index.htm

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