248 Quotes by W. Edwards Deming

People with targets and jobs dependent upon meeting them will probably meet the targets - even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it.

Innovation comes from the producer - not from the customer.

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.

No one knows the cost of a defective product - don't tell me you do. You know the cost of replacing it, but not the cost of a dissatisfied customer.

Lack of knowledge... that is the problem.

Export anything to a friendly country except American management.

The prevailing - and foolish - attitude is that a good manager can be a good manager anywhere, with no special knowledge of the production process he's managing. A man with a financial background may know nothing about manufacturing shoes or cars, but he's put in charge anyway.

Research shows that the climate of an organization influences an individual's contribution far more than the individual himself.

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.