Deming in Lean Event Featuring Mike Taubitz on January 13, 2012:

MLC Session: Deming – The Foundation for Lean

Speaker(s): Mike Taubitz, FDR Safety

Date: January 13, 2012

Location: Lansing, MI

Key Points of Session:

F. Edwards Deming was a PhD statistician often recognized as one of the fathers of the modern quality movement.

Deming assisted Toyota and other Japanese companies after WWII, guiding them in systems thinking, understanding variation, leadership and employee engagement.

When the book, The Machine that Changed the World, was published in 1991, the introduction of "lean production" describing Toyota's Production System brought the word “lean” into existence.

In the 1980s, Motorola adopted “Six Sigma” as a result of lessons learned from a Japanese company acquired by Motorola. This was yet another Japanese company that had benefited from Deming’s teachings about understanding variation in the workplace.

Before "Six Sigma" there was only the concept of statistical process control (SPC) where management and workers attempted to understand and minimize variation in the workplace.

Deming did not teach lean or Six Sigma. His 14 Points laid out a philosophical basis that could best be summarized as enabling leadership to facilitate engagement of all employees for organizational transformation.

Deming’s foundation for continuous improvement is Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA)

Having workers track variation in the workplace will help address "common cause" issues that are a result of the system.

Deming, and other system thinkers, understand that errors and waste are typically the result of the system, not the behavior or actions of workers.

Engaging workers to identify variation is fundamental to providing the metrics necessary for management to identify and eliminate waste

Six Sigma is more valuable if used by the entire workforce to gain profound knowledge of existing systems and their variation.

Fujio Cho, retired chairman of Toyota, in a 2004 interview commented that many fail trying to copy Toyota. He further noted that Toyota has two fundamental questions that are summarized as:

1) identifying and 2) eliminating waste.

Lean and Six Sigma can be of significant benefit if...

Practitioners follow Deming's teachings

Respect for people and enabling, demonstrated leadership is the foundation for organizational transformation

Companies can achieve continuous improvement following Deming, but trying to implement Lean and Six Sigma without Deming will often lead to failure...

Read the Word version of this summary with photos...

For more information about the MLC and upcoming benchmarking events, visit www.michiganlean.org.

The mission of the MLC is to offer a diverse network of knowledgeable lean professionals who come together to share innovative practices. The organization aims to create a lean culture in Michigan to ensure sustainable competitive advantage, which could translate into healthier businesses that offer more job opportunities leading to economic growth in the state.

The charter members of the MLC include: Amway, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, DTE Energy, Johnson & Johnson, The Lean Learning Center, Northwestern Michigan College, the Oakland University Pawley Lean Institute and the Michigan Shingo Prize through The Right Place. For more information, visit www.michiganlean.org.