Deming's 14 Points for Management

Deming has abridged his philosophy in a set of 14 principles for the transformation of an organization. Deming's fourteen principles are powerful, universal axioms based on the assumptions that individuals want to do their best and that it is management's job to enable them to do so by constantly improving the system in which they work. They are:
Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service.
Adopt the new [Deming] philosophy. We are in a new economic age.
Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality...Build in quality in the first place.
End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price alone. Instead, minimize total cost.
Improve constantly and forever [every process].
Institute training on the job.
Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people...to do a better job.
Drive out fear.
Break down barriers between departments.
Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets...for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial
relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
Eliminate work quotas, management by objective, management by numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
Remove barriers that rob people...of pride of workmanship.Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.
Put everybody in [the organization] to work to accomplish the transformation.
Deming's System of Profound Knowledge
Deming builds his 14 principles on four areas of "Profound Knowledge" concerning what people need to believe and know. Each [area] forcesone to confront what he or she accepts about people and processes in organizations with what they intuitively 'know'.One principle of profound knowledge - that workers are intrinsically motivated to do the best job possible (if only management systems permit them to do so) - calls into question the traditional top-down corporate management structure. Instead, TQM builds trust by empowering employees to implement change and to make improvements to products and services. Furthermore, TQM is based on the idea that those feeling the impact of the decision should be involved in making it.
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