Productivity with a Human Face
Maccoby, Michael
Productivity with a Human Face Long practiced in Japan, the management ideas of Edward Deming arefinally starting to catch on here, too by Michael Maccoby Ao ther countries’ rigid...
...Managers become coaches, encouraging all members to constantly improve...
...But it is Deming who made the most impact on the Japanese-and on those select Americans who now understand what intrigued the East 40 years ago...
...Managers are seldom indifferent to Deming, for his is a demanding religion-a fact Gabor illustrates particularly well...
...The chapter on Xerox (called “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back”) shows how hard it is for even the best-managed American companies to maintain advances in quality...
...While American companies hardly noticed Deming’s innovations, in 1949 he was invited to Japan by industrial leaders to lecture on quality...
...Workers are well trained and motivated by pride...
...Cooperation rather than competition dominates relations within the company and even, to a degree, between competitors...
...It does not do away with hierarchy, but replaces the megamachine with a humanistic social system...
...Americans Joseph Juran, Armand Feigenbaum, and Homer Sarasohn also lectured to the Japanese on the subject...
...they still believe that global competitiveness will be maintained by low labor costs, a cheap dollar, and protectionist policies...
...Putnam, $21.95...
...low-tech, repetitive jobs for the many-it nevertheless fits a world of mass production of simple products made with basic tools...
...Both Gabor and Walton paint a credible picture of Deming’s visionary corporate structure...
...While Gabor mentions the participation of the United Auto Workers in change at Ford and GM, she tells us little about the union’s key role...
...While Taylorism contains some striking inequitiesgreat wealth for the few...
...This philosophy is Demingism, and its 90Michael Maccoby is a visiting senior scholar of the Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government...
...That’s a tall order, certainly, but the industrial model already exists...
...So he trained managers and engineers to address the human factor, too, exposing superficial reasoning and faulty logic and making qualitative improvements in the way a company runs...
...Demingism requires hands-on leadership from the top: Don Peterson of Ford, John Hudiberg of Florida Power and Light, Thomas Frist Jr...
...Even when work is drudgery, as it sometimes must be, people need to see the importance of it and have a sense of a positive future...
...Deming was not alone in leading the quality revolution...
...the outcome will determine the competitiveness of American industry...
...Part of the answer lies in the cases reported by Gabor and Walton...
...Deming Management at Work...
...A few years ago, as a member of a National Academy of Engineering committee on the international competitiveness of the U.S...
...But neither gives us a full sense of Deming’s forcefulness as an innovator and management prophet...
...By the late eighties,” she writes, “the Deming Prize competition began to come under fire by some Japanese who viewed its do-or-die approach to both competition and TQC as a distortion, and sometimes even a liability...
...These include a short-term focus emphasizing the quarterly dividend, management mobility, lack of deep knowledge of the business, and lack of loyalty to the company...
...W. Edward Deming, is Iowa-, not Tokyo-born...
...After so many years at the front lines of the revolution, Deming has become not just a management scientist, but an adept psychologist as well...
...Lyle Stewart, $I 9.95...
...He believes that the American love of individualistic competition undermines cooperation within companies, among companies, and with suppliers...
...So integral was Deming to Japan’s resurgence as an industrial power that the country’s highest national award for quality is called the Deming Prize...
...Deming would do away with performance evaluations and merit ratings altogether-in fact, he’s already done that in several sections of GM, replacing the ratings with a system of coaching and mutual support...
...Productivity with a Human Face Long practiced in Japan, the management ideas of Edward Deming arefinally starting to catch on here, too by Michael Maccoby Ao ther countries’ rigid definitions of class, for 80 years our notion of industrial organization has been distinctly feudal...
...Deming: The American Who Taught the Japanese About Quality...
...tal Quality Control (TQC) system...
...Under Taylorism, the reigning “assembly-line” model of corporate culture (named after Frederick Winslow Taylor, the founder of scientific management), front-line workers perform discrete, simple tasks that are coordinated and controlled by several strata of managers, all of whom answer to one big brain at the top-the CEO, king of the corporate machine...
...A more complex world of constantly changing products and services requires highly motivated employees who want to work together to satisfy customer needs...
...The most lively, The Man Who Discovered Quality by Andrea Gabor, describes Deming’s exploits in Japan and provides inside knowledge about how American companies like Ford, GM, and Xerox grapple with the new philosophy...
...Unfortunately, the system has outlasted its context...
...If we view corporations as social systems and recognize that everyone must be involved in the quality revolution, it is necessary for leaders to create an environment where people want to change...
...Mary Walton...
...Some executives contend that even competing for the Deming Prize can sometimes be unproductive...
...He has particular contempt for managers who “hope for instant pudding”--quick-fix formulas or ready-made examples-instead of mapping their company’s unique route to quality...
...The fervor shown by proponents of Total Quality Control is exactly like that seen in adherents of some religious cult,’ says one company executive...
...Yet, unlike many mathematicians, he was acutely aware that work systems have human as well as technical parts...
...Yet a member of the committee, a vice president of IBM, reported that Shimizu had won a contract to construct a new solid state lab, beating out American competitors, including Bechtel...
...Deming’s vision is not only of new management systems, but of a different spirit for American industry...
...Mary Walton’s Deming Management at Work is a more straightforward report on companies and government agencies that have applied Demingism, with significant success...
...Most American companies are a long way from such fanaticism...
...The winning advantage was not in wage differentials or government help...
...He recently said to me: “People are entitled to have fun, to have joy in learning and work...
...Andrea Gabor...
...For example, Shimizu Construction, which won the Deming Prize in 1983, spent so much time and effort chasing it that the same year its financial results showed a clear drop from the year before...
...It was in quality and competence...
...What keeps American companies from getting the message...
...Walton does not even note that Florida Power and Light first ignored the Intemationa1 Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in implementing quality changes-but later found that the union’s support was crucial to improvement...
...Faiichi Ohno created the Toyota system of small-lot production and just-intime inventory control, and Kaoru Ishikawa developed quality circles and worker participation in a To*The Man Who Discovered Quality: How w. Edward Deming Brought the Quality Revolution to America...
...This prize is the model for the Baldridge Award, recently established by Congress, for which practically all major American companies now compete...
...People are entitled to self-esteem,” he added...
...A revolution is currently taking place in the field of management...
...In his own country, Demingism is just now catching on in management science-a fact that explains the simultaneous appearance of three new books* on his ideas and his life...
...Rafael Aguayo’s Dr...
...From then on, the invitations kept coming...
...construction industry, I heard complaints about high American wages and lack of government support...
...Walton reports Deming’s notion of the seven deadly diseases that weaken American industry and short-circuit the quality revolution...
...Rafael Aguayo...
...Managers are responsible for rooting out poor quality and improving systems so that workers can do a better job...
...Our system crushes it out...
...If this new corporate culture sounds soft and idealistic, consider this: it has galvanized Japanese business for more than 40 years...
...of Hospital Corporation of America...
...Interestingly, Deming also condemns the excessive costs of employee health care and warranties4xpenses he blames on lawyers who work on contingency...
...An addiction to winning, fed by grading systems at school and work, leaves many “losing” Americans humiliated and unmotivated to learn...
...Deming: The American Who Taught the Japanese About Quality simply outlines Deming’s 14 points for the transformation of management, adding little that cannot be found in the other two books...
...Not even the best quality methods and statistical techniques will produce the desired results unless people are free from fear and respected for their contributions to continuous improvement...
...Deming, with faint praise Trained in mathematical physics at Yale, Deming first saw the managerial relevance of his ideas at Bell Labs, where he examined the causes of variation in quality in order to improve manufacturing systems...
...Random House, $21.95...
...year-old creator...
Vol. 23 • March 1991 • No. 3
