"There is not a day I don't think about what Dr Deming meant to us. Deming is at the core of our management" - Shoichiro Toyoda. Toyota director and chairman.
Meanwhile, companies in the West jump from worthless fad to fad, looking for magic bullets. There is no magic bullet to Quality. There is no avoiding the work that needs to be done. The key to Toyota's success is engaging everyone in the fundamentals of Quality. It is not difficult.
9 of Professor Deming's "14 points" relate directly to empowering workers, the real process experts. This is what Toyota does. By contrast, managers in the West live in fear of the work front. They even need a word in Japanese (gemba) to go near the workers, let alone speak to them and involve them in Quality.
To make things worse, managers in the West alienate workers by building divisiveness with colored belts of ignorance. Hacks with colored belts try to tell workers how to suck eggs. The result is disaster. For example, a long term study at Ford, showed an average of 1 in 5 parts defective after "improvement" across thousands of supposedly "successful" Six Sigma projects.
We have engaged over 500,000 workers in Quality, across hundreds of companies around the world, by making learning fun. We use 8 hours of self paced, interactive games, simulations and 3D exercises. As with our philosophy to learning, Professor Deming would start his seminars by saying: 'We are here to have fun, to learn, and to make a difference.'
The video capture shows a game based on a true story in process improvement. It teaches every employee from workers to management, what control charts are and the right way to use them. This game also teaches special causes, common causes, histograms and the importance of good communications between workers and management. Workers want to learn about Quality because they are having fun learning. They want to be involved. Q-Skills3D helps workers and managers communicate on the same level.
Involving the skills of the front line experts, requires changes in attitude. Barriers need to be broken down.
by Dr Tony Burns BE (Hon 1) PhD (Chem Eng)