A theory of management for improvement of quality vs a quality improvement plan, which helps us more?

What can we learn from comparing Deming’s 14 Points for Management and Crosby’s 14-Point Quality Improvement Plan? Which will help us more to improve quality?

W. Edwards Deming first presented his 14 Points at a conference in 1978 in Tokyo[1] and published his 14 Points for Management in 1982[2]. Philip B. Crosby published his 14-point Quality Improvement Plan in 1979[3]. I have not found anything to suggest that their both having 14 points/ steps is anything but a coincidence.

Deming’s 14 Points for Management [2]

Crosby’s 14-Step Quality Improvement Plan [3]

1. To create constancy of purpose towards improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business and to provide jobs 2 .Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.  3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. 4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimise total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item., on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust. 5.  Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs. 6. Institute training on the job. 7. Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people … do a better job.  8. Drive our fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company. 9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales and production must work as a team. 10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce..such exhortations only create adversarial relationships. 11. Eliminate management by numbers..substitute leadership. 12. Remove barriers that prevent people from taking pride in their work 13. Institute a vigorous programme of education and self-improvement. 14. Put everyone in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s work.

1. Management Commitment –  to make it clear where management stands on quality 2. The Quality Improvement Team –  to run the quality improvement programme 3. Quality Measurement – to provide a display of current and potential nonconformance problems in a manner that permits objective evaluation and corrective action 4. The Cost of Quality – to define the ingredients of the cost of quality and explain its use as a management tool 5. Quality Awareness – to provide a method of raising the personal concern felt by all personnel in the company toward the conformance of the product or service and the quality reputation of the company 6. Corrective Action  – to provide a systematic method of resolving forever the problems that are identified through previous action steps 7. Zero Defects Planning – to examine the previous activities that must be conducted in preparation for formally launching the Zero Defects programme. 8. Supervisor Traning – to define the type of training that supervisors need to actively carry out their part of the quality improvement programme 9. Zero Defects Day – to create an event that will let all employees realise through a personal experience that there has been a change. 10. Goal Setting – to turn pledges and commitments into action by encouraging individuals to establish improvement goals for themselves and their groups. 11. Error Cause Removal – to give the individual employee a method of communicating to management the situations that make it difficult for the employee to meet the pledge to improve. 12. Recognition – to appreciate those who participate 13. Quality Councils – to bring together professional quality people for planned communication on a regular basis. 14. Do it over again – to emphasise that the quality improvement program never ends

What do Deming’s points and Crosby’s steps have in common? 

• both aim to help businesses improve the quality of their product or service
• both were part of the Quality Movement
• both aim to prevent errors
• both view quality as management’s responsibility

What are the key differences between Deming’s points and Crosby’s steps?

•  Deming described his 14 Points as a “theory of management for improvement of quality, productivity, and competitive position”[4]. In contrast, Crosby’s steps are a quality improvement program comprising 14 steps.
• Deming’s 14 points are a coherent philosophy, each point of the 14 points is implicit in all the other points. An example would be training (point 6) will be ineffective unless barriers that prevent people from taking pride in their work are removed (point 12). Crosby’s plan is a series of steps rather than points that are implicit in each other.
• The role of management is different:
  •  Deming’s points include instituting leadership so that the role of a manager ”is a coach and counsel, not a judge”[5]. In contrast, Crosby’s plan has a more traditional hierarchical view of management’s role in which it is management who runs the Quality Improvement Programme. 
  • The manager’s role in Deming’s Points includes driving out fear, this means that managers take responsibility for psychological safety. Staff working in a company using Crosby’s plan would probably need to use the Error Cause Removal step to raise issues relating to psychological safety.
• Deming’s points include developing people’s potential through education and training for all staff, whereas Crosby’s plan only requires training for supervisors.
• In Deming’s points the whole company, including its suppliers, is seen as a system in which everyone should cooperate, and the manager’s role is to help everyone work effectively. Crosby’s plan puts responsibility on individual members of staff, for example, on Zero Defects Day individual staff are asked to sign pledges to improve quality.
• Deming’s Points include cooperating across company departments and between the company and its suppliers to improve quality. Crosby’s steps do not include cooperation.
• Crosby‘s plan sets goals and looks at costs, whereas Deming’s points ask for constant improvement.
• “Building quality in” instead of “inspecting quality in” is covered by Deming’s point 3. Crosby has a step on Corrective Action to resolve problems.
• Crosby aims for Zero Defects, whereas Deming aims for continual improvement.
• Deming’s 14 Points for Management are the roots of DevOps[6] and so are part of innovation in the twenty-first century. I am not aware of any twenty-first century innovation based on Crosby’s 14 Steps.

We should note that Deming also used his System of Profound Knowledge, and the plan-do-study-act cycle to help businesses. Crosby also used a Quality Management Maturity Grid.

Deming’s ideas are powerful “on cooperation and human potential”[6]. We need cooperation and the realisation of human potential to improve quality and I wouldn’t want to work anywhere that was very different to Deming’s 14 Points for Management.

References

[1] Quality or Else by Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason (1991, p102)

[2] Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming (1982, p23)

[3] Quality is Free by Philip P. Crosby (1979, p137)

[4] Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming (1982, p19)

[5] The New Economics by W. Edwards Deming (1994, p126)

[6] Deming’s Journey to Profound Knowledge by John “Botchagalupe” Willis with Derek Willis (2023, p163)

Additional Resources

• Deming NEXT – eLearning from the Deming Institute with a free two-week trial
• Deming’s Journey to Profound Knowledge by John “Botchagalupe” Willis with Derek Willis  –  Chapter 19 gives contemporary true-to-life examples for each of Deming’s 14 Points.