W. Edwards Deming's revolutionary management ideas brought about a complete turnaround at companies like Ford, Xerox and General Motors. His name is legendary in Japan for the role he played in reinvigorating their industries after World War II. But American managers, many of them looking for a quick-fix recipe for success, undertook the Deming method as if it were a simple management plan. What they failed to recognize was that the Deming method is a philosophy - and calls for radical changes in how we think about everything we do. It represents a holistic worldview and not the fragmented, analytical approach westerners are most comfortable with. In Thinking About Quality, Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason, who worked with Dr. Deming for over a dozen years and are the authors of Quality or Else and its companion PBS series, take readers through the basic tenets of Deming's ideas, which for the first time are interpreted as much more than a list of things to do. They describe the changes that must be undertaken in order to practice Deming effectively; they show managers how to view the Deming method, how to interpret it and use it - and, most important, how to think about it. The authors' extensive research and investigation of companies and agencies using Deming has helped them isolate the "devils" that prevent American managers from fully integrating the kind of radical change required by philosophies such as Deming's. They address the core of Deming's beliefs, what he called Profound Knowledge, as the authors write, "until you are acquainted with Deming's philosophy, you have little or no hope of understanding what he is doing or why he's doing it, or, how your organization might improve." Dobyns and Crawford-Mason also explore how Americans have historically viewed systems and help managers place the Deming method within their own understanding of this concept. And they draw the most useful connection so far between Deming's famous 14 Points and the seven criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige Award, on which the federal government's effort to reinvent itself will be based, business contestants are judged, and future educational reform may be modeled. Using examples ranging from a New York inner-city high school to the U.S. Department of the Navy, they show how Deming's ideas can work in areas such as education, health care, government and the press. . Thinking About Quality is an in-depth discussion of one of the most important thinkers of our time.
Setting / LocationNew York City
Story EraWWII Era
Protagonist / CoreThinking about quality Lead Character
"In the past man has been first. In the future the System will be first," predicted Frederick Winslow Taylor, the first efficiency expert and model for all the stopwatch-clicking engineers who stalk the factories and offices of the industrial world. In 1874, eighteen-year-old Taylor abandoned his wealthy family's plans for him to attend Harvard, and instead went to work as a lowly apprentice in a Philadelphia machine shop, shuttling between the manicured hedges of his family's home and the hot, cussing, dirty world of the shop floor. As he rose through the ranks of management, he began the time-and-motion studies for which he would become famous, and forged his industrial philosophy, Scientific Management. To organized labor, Taylor was a slave-driver. To the bosses, he was an eccentric who raised wages while ruling the factory floor with a stopwatch. To himself, he was a misunderstood visionary who, under the banner of Science, would confer prosperity on all and abolish the old class hatreds. To millions today who feel they give up too much to their jobs, Taylor is the source of that fierce, unholy obsession with "efficiency" that marks modern life. The assembly line; the layout of our kitchens; the ways our libraries, fastfood restaurants, and even our churches are organized all owe much to this driven man, who broke every job into its parts, sliced and trimmed and timed them, and remolded what was left into the work of the twentieth century.
Why has Hawaii, from the times of Polynesian antiquity to the present, enjoyed the highest material standard of living in Oceania? How did changes in the social structure of pre-Cook Hawaii affect that standard? What happened to the islands' economy as western dominance took place, as land ownership was created, as technology was imported, as plantation workers immigrated, as World War II broke the social mold of the islands? These are some of the basic questions raised by Thomas Hitch in "Islands in Transition," the first book-length economic history of Hawaii to be printed in a generation. The book is divided into two sections. The first, "From the Record, "traces the development of Hawaii's economy from the moneyless, sharing, tribute, and barter system of the native culture to a plantation economy controlled from Honolulu and dominated by the Big Five. In the second section, "As I Saw it," Dr. Hitch describes the further development of Hawaii into a high-tech service economy, heavily based on tourism and military expenditures, increasingly involved in the multi-national global economy. He appraises the recent past and projects the future from the vantage point of his long career at Honolulu business community, first as director of research for the Hawaii Employers Council and then as Senior Vice President for Research at First Hawaiian Bank, until his death in August, 1989. This volume is written for the general reader, but appendices address questions of particular interest to economists and business analysts. These include measuring the cost of living in Hawaii, estimating the growth rate of the state economy, and appraising its sensitivity to the national business cycle.
"What does it mean to be an American? What are American ideas and values? American Enterprise, the companion book to a major exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, aims to answer these questions about the American experience through an exploration of its economic and commercial history. It argues that by looking at the intersection of capitalism and democracy, we can see where we as a nation have come from and where we might be going in the future. Richly illustrated with images of objects from the museum's collections, American Enterprise includes an early Thomas Edison light bulb, a wheat thresher, a Barbie doll, a Google server, and many other goods and services that have shaped American culture. Historical and contemporary advertisements are also featured, emphasizing the evolution of the relationship between producers and consumers over time. Interspersed in the historical narrative are essays from today's industry leaders--including Sheila Bair, Adam Davidson, Bill Ford, Sally Greenberg, Fisk Johnson, Hank Paulson, Richard Trumka, and Pat Woertz--that pose provocative questions about the state of contemporary American business and society. American Enterprise is a multi-faceted survey of the nation's business heritage and corresponding social effects that is fundamental to an understanding of the lives of the American people, the history of the United States, and the nation's role in global affairs"-- "American Enterprise is a dramatic exploration of how the United States transformed from a small dependent nation into one of the world's most vibrant and trend-setting economies. This companion book to the National Museum of American History's exhibition of the same name argues that the American experience has been shaped by economic and commercial philosophies. Founding ideals of capitalism and democracy fostered national values of competition and innovation. These values in turn became the building blocks of American business and sparked a tradition of constant creative destruction. The ongoing transformation of the marketplace has provided opportunities for many, benefits for some, and hardships for others. This powerful book explores the perspectives of both producers and consumers and illustrates the complex interplay between these two groups throughout history. It does so through four major eras: Merchant (1770s - 1850s), Corporate (1860s - 1930s), Consumer (1940s - 1970s), and Global (1980s - 2010s). The goods, machinery, advertisements, and business leaders of each era are brought to life with objects from the Smithsonian's unparalleled collections and explanations by the exhibition's curators. Each era concludes with two essays by famous and influential business leaders who play off the history to pose provocative questions about the state of contemporary American business and society. American Enterprise provides an understanding of the nation's business heritage and corresponding social effects that is fundamental to the lives of the American people, the history of the United States, and the nation's role in global affairs"--
Who caused the Great Recession? We did. In Disequilibrium, economist Steven Ricchiuto traces how destructive changes in our economic systems have created our present unbalanced economy. He expertly shows how today's disequilibrium between supply and demand came from decades of misguided economic policies made in response to the Great Inflation of the 1970s and 1980s. Ricchiuto then goes even further, investigating how economic forces created in the World War II era laid the groundwork for this destructive shift. Ricchiuto's timely book offers a method for assessing macro economic credit quality and suggests policy makers alter their behavior to handle new macro dynamics. Today's economic framework cannot be counted on to protect us forever. In Disequilibrium, Ricchiuto shows us where we went wrong in the past so that we can work to get the future right.
Thinking about quality by Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason | Literally Just Books
