Yearly Archives: 2004

2004 Deming Prize Awardees

2004 Deming Prize announcement – JUSE (Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers) This year again provided impressive showings by India and Thailand: of the 6 awards 3 went to Indian Companies and 3 went to companies in Thailand. And this … Continue reading

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Taguchi Loss Function

Topic: Management Written in response to this post on the Deming Electronic Network (DEN) [broken link removed]. The responses on this topic show the strength of the DEN. 1) thoughtful responses that should help the person posting the original message … Continue reading

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Management Improvement Articles

Topic: Management – Library Additions The Curious Cat Online Management Improvement Library includes hundred of online documents that have been individually selected as worthwhile for those interested in improving performance. Many of the documents we include are new, but many … Continue reading

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NYC Travel Photos

In August I spoke to the Fordham University Deming Scholars MBA Program. I spent the weekend with my brother’s family in Brooklyn. The photo to the left shows my nephew at the Statan Island Children’s Museum. The photo accurately conveys … Continue reading

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How to Create Unethical, Ineffective Organizations That Go Out of Business.

Comment on How to Destroy Morale #1 from the excellent Agile Management Blog.If you want to learn to be more like Morris the Deming Institute has a seminar for you: How to Create Unethical, Ineffective Organizations That Go Out of … Continue reading

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Six Sigma and Deming Philosophies

My oversimplified view is that the Deming philosophy aims to improve the system and Six Sigma is about improving within the current system. I think several Six Sigma efforts over the past 10 years have improved upon what many organizations tried with TQM, in large part by

1) putting substantial effort (significant training and application) into using statistical tools to improve

and 2) more focus on results (especially short term results) Continue reading

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Management Improvement History

I do believe we need to improve our practice of Quality (and to do that we need to understand what happened in the past and why it was not more successful). The idea that Design of Experiments (DoE) was at the core of some Quality Movement to me is not at all accurate. In my experience only a few Quality professionals today understand what it means and how it should be applied. The idea that it was common place in the 40’s I seriously doubt (though I don’t have first hand knowledge of this). I find it difficult to believe we would have decided to stop using DoE if it was commonly done previously. The understanding I have from those that should know (like George Box and previously my father – Bill Hunter) is that it was not at all common practice and still is not outside of a few industries and even there it is isolated in the domain of a few experts. Continue reading

Posted in Deming, Design of Experiments, Lean thinking, Management, Popular, Process improvement, Quality tools, Six sigma, Statistics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Curious Cat Article Connections

We have added a new section to our web directory, Curious Cat Cool Connections. Curious Cat Article Connections provides focused topical collections of articles, reports and web sites on topics including: investing, management, health care and technology.Since the topics included … Continue reading

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New Management Improvement Library Articles

The Curious Cat Online Management Improvement Library includes hundred of online documents that have been individually selected as worthwhile for those interested in improving performance. The articles, reports, files, handbooks and guides touch on many areas of management improvement including: … Continue reading

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Dangers of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data

We use data to act as a proxy for some results of the system. Often people forget that the end result is not for the number to be improved but for the situation to be improved. We hope, if the measure improves the situation will have improved. But there are many reasons this may not be the case (one number improving at the expense of other parts of the system, the failure of the number to accurately serve as a proxy, distorting numbers, etc.). Continue reading

Posted in Data, Deming, Management, Popular, quote, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments