Building The Machine: Why Deming was so wrong for American business
Posted by overmanwarrior 10 years, 5 months ago to Business
I have looked, but not seen anything from Ayn Rand about Deming. I would think that she would not care for him. What do you guys think?
Time to market for arguably HP's most successful printer (the HP LaserJet II) was more than five years. The reason: they wanted a product that was rock-solid. The follow-on lines for the IIP, III, and IV saw similar development times and similar marketplace success. Their performance and quality have been unmatched since.
Now, the typical ttm for a low-end printer is 8-12 months. Granted, they are using a common code base and prototyping is much faster, but I can speak personally about the quality of the engineers and the rigors of testing and they do not compare favorably with what they once were because of cost- and time-constraints (and a change in the market to disposable electronics).
Go back further to when HP made disk drives. They used to have such a high standard of quality that they offered an unprecedented FIVE-year warranty. I was a summer intern there when they were building those things and the people on those lines took great personal pride in doing things right. It didn't hurt that they were incentivized by quarterly profit-sharing down to even the janitors! When HP folded up that division (my dad was right in the middle of it if you want the story), you saw the average warranty drop to a single year and the overall industry took a dive in quality they never recovered from.
Go back even further to HP's vaunted calculators: the must-have for every engineering student. My dad still has a VERY old one that does RPM (reverse-Polish notation) and it still works like a charm 30 years later.
I would argue that having an invention is important, but true market value comes in providing a product that customers can rely on day-in and day-out.
But "she who must not be named" K, wants me to tell the story of how a crow tried to steal my HP45?? calculator one summer on the way home from taking circuit theory I. I was walking down the beautiful tree lined streets of Manhattan KS (Home of the K-state Wildcats) deep in thought about Kirchhoff's Laws when a crow jumps in front of me maybe 15 feet and caws at me. I think it is just a stupid bird so I keep walking, but the crow becomes belligerent, not will to give its ground and flies at me. I turn my head and duck and my (relatively new) HP calculator falls on the cement sidewalk as I back away. I am stunned as the crow lands on the sidewalk and picks up the calculator by a loop in the case and tries to fly away. I can't afford to lose my calculator so I run at the bird waving my hands and shouting. The crow got the calculator 3-4 feet off the ground before I startled it. I picked up the calculator happy to find it still worked and determined to defend it from all birds, bitches, or other vermin.
Another example of the manufacturer attempting to dictate form and function that actually decreases utility and thus decreases value and quality (in my opinion).
Of course Win 7pro is just great and has been since I built those computers.
So why am I in the camp that likes Win 8.1? "Application". That computer is mounted beside my bed with the monitor hung from a large swing arm so that I can position for use when I'm bedfast and can't sit in my wheelchair at my desk or in my media room or in my studio. In all those places where I'm using a computer with win 7, each has a monitor with a conventional VGA Monitor. As time passes and these computers are replaced and/or upgraded, I plan to equip each with a touch screen and upgrade the monitor to a touch screen monitor.
The price on these were prohibitly expensive in the past. but today they are available under $300, for a monitor that's been flawless for a year. Will they replace the monitor on a gaming machine? No, but the problem is the need for a keyboard, not the use of the monitor.
Running Win 8 or 8.1 on a system with a conventional monitor is a exercise in frustration, at best. I found running the computer in this configuration not at all enjoyable. There are menus that are awkward with just a mouse. It seems like you need two mouses (or mice?) and the on-screen keyboard will pop up when you least expect it and like the mouse, the built-in keyboard carries a couple functions that you'll like on a touch-screen, but is a pain with a regular monitor.
The point it, Win 8.1 is designed for a touch screen monitor. Useing it any other way strips it of it's power.
And I acknowledge the battery problems with the iPhone with the note of how quickly they got it fixed.
As for quality being a lack of function, that depends. Perhaps the customers should not have opted to "upgrade." I haven't and won't for as long as possible for my laptop. I have a tablet that I only use for reading and movies that has Win8. It's fine for that, but I'd never use it for a basic desktop interface. Win7 is great - stable and pretty good security. Just because something exists, doesn't mean that it is right for every customer. Same thing for my iPhone. I'm still on 4S. I have too much invested in the technology and the 5 offers too little added benefit for the costs. So, the customer has to evaluate the added utility and decide whether it is right for them. Buying something and then complaining that it isn't what you wanted isn't a problem with the manuf or prod but rather with the customer choosing the right product.
The feedback about a product to me is just as sure a measurement of quality as the number of defects per 1000 units. Both are measures of how well the unit performed to expectations are they not? One is an internal measure, the other external. As such, I would argue that both are entirely valid measurements of quality. The external ones just also reflect not only the quality of the product, but of the marketing. ;)
This has probably gotten to esoteric for this board.
For those not familiar, Agilent was the divestiture where HP's medical devices and measuring instruments were tasked. HP (or HP Invent as Carly put it) held on to the more consumer electronics end: printers, PC's, servers, storage (after that worthless merger with Compaq), etc.
"A substantial portion of growth in Agilent Technologies’ life sciences and diagnostics business came from the Dako diagnostics business it acquired in mid-2012. And Agilent continues to be excited about diagnostics and pharmaceuticals markets, as well as food and energy, CEO William P. Sullivan recently told analysts.
After growing through acquisition, Agilent is poised to get smaller again with a split in two planned for later this year. Keeping the Agilent name, one company will have the better-performing life sciences, diagnostics, and applied markets businesses. The other piece, to be called Keysight Technologies, will be made of Agilent’s electronic measurement business. It saw revenues decline in 2013, although it should see a boost from economic growth anticipated in the second half of 2014, Sullivan said."
I will say this: they certainly couldn't have done better by keeping the HP management philosophies pushed by Lou Platt, Carly Fiorina, or that schmuck who replaced her...
One also assumes that the manufacturing line is also a static beast with no room for innovation. The manufacturing company I worked for for a time abjured such a closed mindset and actually developed and patented a new production technique for its niche business based on re-engineering their internal manufacturing processes. They weren't inventing a new product for sale as much as simply innovating the way they built their products, but I know they saved a lot of money in scrap and waste and time by using the customized process. Those weren't product-generated profits, but manufacturing-originated cost savings that equated to profits by lowering the variable (and fixed) costs of production. I can't help but think that part of Hank Reardon's genius wasn't JUST the invention of Reardon metal, but the processes by which he manufactured it. Dagny Taggart was constantly manipulating her rail lines so as to keep things running - a "manufacturing"-based effort at efficiency but certainly not an invention.
However, I disagree that companies don't make money on manufacturing. That has been my work for the past 15+ years. Finding ways to improve efficiency and throughput so as to be the lowest cost producer. When you produce at a lower cost than your competition, you make money from manufacturing. It is a never ending quest, as competition is fierce and relentless and incremental improvements do not last long. Which is good for me, as it has tended to keep me in business.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/201...
Basically the contention is that investors are growing increasingly short-term focused. If the investors are focused on the short-term, that pressures upper management (usually focused on short-term goals for bonuses) to follow suit.
Companies such as Toyota move ahead while others such as GM fall into bankruptcy. Toyota did implement Deming's TQM ideas while GM paid lip service to it.
Nothing I saw in my study of TQM would have inhibited innovation. There are examples of where it encouraged it. As with many great ideas, the failure is in the implementation.
Deming is wrong for American business so long as business leaders are part of the 'old boys network' rather then being actually competent in their field of work. Sam Walton built a company that just about put Sears, K Mart, etc. out of business. Walton was his own man while Sears, etc are managed by 'professional' good old boys who can not stand the competition from anyone who thinks.
The Seven Deadly Diseases can be summarized as:
1. Lack of constancy of purpose to plan products and services.
2. Emphasis on short-term profits.
3. Personal review systems for managers and management by objectives.
4. Job hopping by managers.
5. Using only visible data in decision making.
6. Excessive medial costs.
7. Excessive costs of liability driven up by lawyers that work on contingency.
Read more: http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/mana...
The cycles get leapfrogged whenever there is revolutionary rather than evolutionary development. Revolution comes from out of the box, or foundationally re-thinking the how's and why's of the process.
Not all improvement processes are reasonable for every situation.
ALL process can use re-thinking. Staying with the status-quo if there isn't a reason to change is an appropriate answer (reduces risk and cost of change) but staying with the status-quo just because of being afraid of change is not a solution for fixing processes or procedures either.
I have yet to find a process that can't be improved, but not all processes show the amount of improvement that will pay for the change cycle effort.
Typically I find evolutionary change to result in 1 to 3% improvements, but revolutionary changes are typically disruptive and require 10 to 500+% improvement to be worth the effort.
Ironically, the Koreans may be even better students. Dr. Deming never taught the Koreans directly, but they read his books and have internalized his teaching. Companies like Hyundai and Kia are starting to eat even Toyota's lunch. The Koreans are who the Japanese are worried about - not America, not Europe, not China (at least not yet - heaven help us if the Chinese learn Deming's methods).
That has NOTHING to do with thinking in or out of a box. It has nothing to do with radical innovation or invention. It has nothing to do with politics or epistemology except to advocate that our decisions be driven by data rather than intuition.
And what this all has to do with Common Core really escapes me.
To go right to the point, this sentence is absurd on many levels: "Deming is the man responsible for all the ridiculous attempts at Total Quality Management which has tied the hands of American business by putting engineers essentially in charge of the management of company resources so to hamper proper productivity." That could only be written by someone who never worked in manufacturing and who is unqualified to have any opinion whatsoever on the subject.
What does that sentence even mean? Industrial engineers have always been put in charge of company resources. Management teams have always included engineers or those with engineering backgrounds. Would it be better if they were all lawyers or salesmen? And since productivity has been steadily increasing (at least until the last few years) I don't see any basis for claiming that modern manufacturing methods have hampered anything.
An automobile is an extreme example. But when you have thousands and thousand of parts that have to come together properly for the final product to work, how do you suppose you do that? It is an amazing feat of modern industrial engineering that makes that possible. Deming's teachings are among the tools that engineers and managers use to make our panoply of products possible at an affordable price. Before Deming, many products had to be repaired at the end of the manufacturing line to replace defective parts or parts that didn't properly mate with other parts.
Yes, our country became an industrial giant without Deming. We did it without computers too. Does that make the computer an unnecessary tool? The fault of modern management is not Deming. It is, if anything, the notion that management is a general skill and doesn't have to be tied to a particular industry, that the guy who ran the phone company can just as easily run the chemical plant or the auto manufacturer. We have come to learn that industry specific experience should not be discounted.
But, please, to mark Deming as some kind of a Satan is simple minded. His work wouldn't be popular among those who are desperate to make a buck if it didn't help in some way.
Seriously can you see Howard Roark going through an MPR roster? Or John Galt working with a Value Stream Manger to mass produce his engine?
Let me say first that THERE S NO BOX!!!, Just think and solve the problem.
Deming provided a framework to identify and fix quality issues. Look at GM and the many, many millions of recalls. Had they applied even a fraction of Deming's quality control they would not be losing billions, along with customer loyalty.
The entire concept that providing a solid framework to identify quality issues prevents innovation, and keeps companies from progressing rapidly and "keeping up" is a fallacy.
Deming was asked by a reporter, "Is experience important?" Deming's reply. "Not if you're doing it wrong."
I have spent several years inside General Electric, who use Six Sigma and Deming's framework almost to a fault. I my opinion they take this to an extreme, and yes in my opinion they do not necessarily move as quickly as they could, but take away the quality control framework, and you would be looking at a behemoth corporate conglomerate that would cave in on itself from recalls and faulty products.
Take away all quality control and replace it with "Agile" Ad-Hoc BS, and you would still not be able to move quickly simply due to the enormity of the company.
The Rule of 7's.
1.Cause and effect diagram (fishbone, Ishikawa) - creative way to look at possible problem causes.
2.Control charts - shows how a process behaves over time; plots results against control limits (usually +/- 3 sigma). Data within limits indicate the process is in control, but watch for rule of 7: 7 consecutive results on one side of the mean could indicate a problem. X bar is the average of a series of measurements; R is the difference between the highest and lowest values for a period, R bar is the average of all the R values.
Sigma: Another name for standard deviation; indicates how much of the curve is within control limits. 1 sigma = 68.26%, 2 sigma = 95.46%, 3 sigma = 99.73%, 6 sigma = 99.99985%.
If you strive for 6 Sigma, imagine GM again.
It's only May, but automakers have recalled 22.3 million vehicles in the United States. That's already more than last year — and it's on pace to shatter the previous record set in 2000: (http://www.vox.com/2014/5/21/5738204/rec...)
GM sold since 1998 61,475,860 cars. They have recalled 22.3 million. where is that on the Six Sigma quality chart? Not even 1 Sigma. How much did that Cost GM? How much is that going to cost GM?
Ayn Rand is a proponent of and please remember this "RATIONAL SELF INTEREST." Self interest is in producing a product that provide value for the monetary or "consideration" provided. Ayn Rand I believe would say oh well, the market just took out another bad company who did not apply Rational Self Interest" properly. Rational Self interest is providing a product that is not going to blow up in your face causing your customer base to leave you and/or sue you out of business. I am waiting for another Government bailout of GM at our expense that Ayn Rand would certainly oppose with every fiber of her being.
She would say Let GM die.
Note that this applies to government.
Both are applications of the cesspool principle: The big chunks float to the top.
I learned a lot about robots and vision systems, and almost as much about how NOT to run a company.
So what's the point of this system? The idea is to prevent the original patent holder from using their invention unless they are also willing to license its use. In effect, the initial patent is good for extracting a fee - but not for preventing competition. One of the more bizarre patent cases involves the Kilby patent for integrated circuits. IIRC, it took the Japanese patent office nearly 30 years to issue the patent!
BULLSEYE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2) My current employer was part of the original group at Moto. When they took ss to GE, the military type org there ate it up and implemented it without understanding where it is applicable and where it isn't. Luckily, it is more applicable than not, so they err on the good side.
3) The values you cite for being within the sigma levels should be (+/-), just to be precise.
4) The value you show for 6 sigma actually includes the mythical 1.5 sigma shift (which is a fallacy, by the way). The actual value for +/- 6 sigma is 0.999999998027
5) When looking at the GM recalls, there are many reasons for conducting a recall, not all of which are directly quality related. Even those that are driven by quality are often larger than absolutely necessary. That said, they clearly have had issues (not surprising from my previous interaction with them).
6) AR would not have batted an eyelash at the demise of GM, as you say, and would decry the moocher bailouts.
7) This entire discussion started with Dr. Deming. From what he wanted to do, I liken him to Hugh Akston, and believe that she would hold him in very high regard.
When GM and Chrysler weren't allowed to die a natural death is where Ayn Rand would disagree with what the USGov did.
I agree with Ayn, but the nanny state says they 'saved' jobs by stealing the ownership of GM & Chry from the legal owners, and not letting those guys go bust by their own devices.
Far too often it is viewed as the be all and end all of quality and it is not.
In the end it all comes down to the people using the processes. You can have the tightest most efficient and elegant manufacturing process in the world but that does not guarantee a quality product.
If your people using the process do not care about what they do, if they just go along to get along, your entire quality assurance process will spend its time addressing errors, and never have a chance to spend the thought and effort to achieve improvements.
If you had a workforce and management team consisting of John Gaults that would not be true because they would all be doing the best job they possibly could.
Unfortunately that doesn't happen in the real world. What you wind up with is something between a Gault level product and utter crap, and a responsible company that wants to stay in business tries to get that product as close to the Gault level as they can.
So Deming and all the other QC programs/processes/pick a term, are an effort to bring the end product up to a standard. Meanwhile the money people try to save money wherever they can and often QC is an easy target.
Almost never do they, either QC or the company as a whole, attempt to either exceed or raise the "standard" of the product being produced.
Quality Control is probably one of the most frustrating segments to work in there is.
During my time working as a QA manager for one of the world's largest on-line retailers, we had exactly two Sev-1 errors. In the first case, a dev changed the software AFTER it had been QAed and did not resubmit it for test before pushing his rev on line. The second case, the devs were behind schedule and under pressure for an "on time" release. While the software was still being reviewed, they pushed the code live - and it failed in spectacular fashion. Both are examples of how QA is frequently disregarded, when in fact it can be the most important means of saving the company from derision, loss of trust, loss of capital, failure. It's the conscious decision between "do it fast" and "do it right".
There is never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.
Said with a cynical eyeroll after the warnings were ignored
1) To perform a 100% inspection of all units produced and reject those that fall outside the spec limits or
2) Try to eliminate defects before they occur by testing statistically
A) Whether the raw material can be manufactured within spec limits.
B) Whether the machinery can form the raw material into a finished product within spec limits
C) What effect the machines operator has on the finished product.
Is there a third way to manufacture anything? I've employed SPC successfully during my career. I'm afraid I don't understand the objections to it.
Do you really think that Hank Reardon would have scoffed at Deming when producing Reardon Metal? I wot not. I think Dagny Taggart would have loved to have been able to get her hands on the parts she needed that had been rigorously QC'd using Deming's methods so she wasn't constantly jury-rigging or cannabilizing things!
"MIss Taggart this new process is innovative. It leapfrogs all existing technologies."
She examined the equations on her iPad while reading the blueprints before her. "So you are telling me that my 100-car trains will leapfrog a 1000-foot gorge?"
The men looked at each other. "We think that 80% of them will, probably."
"Probably," she said.
"This is a new technology. It is lightyears beyond anything ever done before. It is a radical departure based on a new theory."
"Does it come with a new theory of gravity? I only ask because of the passengers in the cars leapfrogging the 1000-foot ravine."
"You cannot expect to constrain a business by measuring decimal points!" the youngest of them asserted. "We represent the investors. We are not just a bunch of engineers here."
Dagny said, "Well, clearly, because, you know, most engineers would have about three decimal places of certainty before they opened their mouths."
The oldest woman present scoffed. "We are not tied down by repetitious conformity, Miss Taggart! We are entrepreneurial visionaries!"
"I, too, am getting a vision of a train leapfrogging a 1000-foot chasm 80% of the time."
"Oh, no, Miss Taggart! 100% of time, but 80% of the cars... we think..."
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The question is complicated. I have worked for Kawasaki as an employee and for Honda as a contractor. I have had Ford and GM for customers. I was on a DoD project that won a DoDIG Quality Award. I have worked for innovators and copycats. All in all, generalizations fail because each case is unique. "Unique" does not mean unknowable or ineffable or unquantifiable or mysterious. I found Deming's tools to be highly useful and greatly profitable. But no one feature defines a complex process.
W. Edwards Deming offered 14 key principles for management to follow for significantly improving the effectiveness of a business or organization. Many of the principles are philosophical. Others are more programmatic. All are transformative in nature. The points were first presented in his book Out of the Crisis. Below is the condensation of the 14 Points for Management as they appeared in the book.
1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to 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. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimize 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 (see Point 12 and Ch. 8). The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company (see Ch. 3).
9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.
•Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
•Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
11. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
12. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective (see Ch. 3).
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.
Based on these 14 points, I think that AR would find Deming quite a kindred spirit. Be the best that you can be, and management should help that to come about.
Examples, GE, Lockheed Martin, Pratt and Whitney, Bell Helicopter---oh and the Boeing plant in Wichita that is no longer there--because of their need to downsize. What do they all have in common? You might want to check into it before saying that I'm "uninformed."
Do you know what statistical process control is about? What is a standard deviation? Do you know any of the tests for special cause variation? And if they are violated is that an absolute identification of an out of control process?
Face it, you speak from ignorance. Deming's criticism of management was that they acted like oligarchs and not managers. Managers help to get the best out of their people, including using the knowledge that those workers have to improve the systems. Oligarch tell the workers to shut up, check their brains at the door, and do what they're told.
I think that AR would support the methods espoused by Dr. Deming.
I'm no ignoramus with his head stuck in the sand believing what doesn't have supporting evidence.
As a practitioner of Design for Six Sigma, I am acutely aware of the needs of innovation (in fact I have gathered and trained several dozen approaches to innovation including TRIZ), as well as the deficiencies in DMAIC six sigma in addressing innovation.
What is it that you don't buy in to? That you can identify for a group of customers what is an acceptable level of variation that still provides an acceptable level of satisfaction? That you can measure those critical to customer variables and statistically determine whether you are within a range that is going to provide a product that is going to satisfy a certain percentage of customers?
Please elucidate me, oh wise one.
There are some useful tools, done get me wrong. But the general philosophy allows the lackluster management types, and employees to feel they are equal to the innovator--and this just isn't the case. The introduction of a system put in place to remove the need for top down visionary leadership is a false one.
Besides management not understanding anything other than counting beans, the other issue is acolytes of this philosophy or that for quality and continuous improvement. They develop their hammer and drive everything with it as if every problem were a nail. Not every problem is the same - some are merely waste and a simple Lean approach will be most effective, some are a function of excessive variation creating unacceptable losses where DMAIC six sigma is most appropriate, some require understanding where the real constraint is in the system and a TOC approach is required, and some just aren't capable of being satisfactory to the customer with the current offering and a DfSS approach is needed. As an engineer first, problem solver second (or really first as that's all an engineer really is), I'm not wedded to any particular approach, rather to whichever will solve the problem the best. Dr. Deming didn't teach much about developing something new, he was too appalled that organizations couldn't make what they already had developed in a cost effective/high quality manner and he focused on that. But, what he did focus on helps me every day to see that I need to understand the real customer requirement in quantifiable and verifiable terms, understand the processes that will be used to create those parameters that can be measured and capability assessed, and to ensure that my systems of measuring are proper and capable for the type of evaluation that I need to use to ensure that I can properly judge the quality.
Dr. Deming was a great and brilliant man. If Detroit had listened to him in the 50's he never would have gone to Japan. The American auto industry would be the beacon of manufacturing excellence and since it casts a very wide shadow, so would the rest of American industry. We would be competing today on quality and efficiency unmatched throughout the world. Instead, we have MBA bean counters chasing cheap labor around the world. What a waste.
To address the rest of your post, I would add that you need BOTH innovation and execution to be successful in business. You have to have the ideas that provide value AND the vehicle of delivery. Deming's expertise was not in innovation, but rather in delivering quality products.
The thing to keep in mind is that even quality improvement is an iterative process subject to diminishing returns and it works best when you have a product that changes only slightly over a very long period of time so you can collect a catalog of improvements. For a short-lived product such as clothing fashions and consumer electronics, quality often takes a backseat to innovation because the value of the offering is in its timeliness to market (Apple's iPod and iPhone are exceptions, being both innovative AND quality products). Contrast this with the automobile industry where lives are at stake (see GM's recalls because of faulty starters or hearken back to the Firestone tire debacle) and the industry is mature and developed: quality jumps to the top of the value hierarchy. I think it would be incorrect to assume that every business or market adheres to the same sets of value propositions.
The AR purists will run you out of town
I think that Rand would congratulate Deming in his efforts to objectify the inherently subjective!
Better said, every individual consumer has their distinct expectation for what they consider "quality." However, when you collect all these expectations together you can establish an expectation of "quality" that satisfies x% of the overall customers. This makes the subjective on an individual level objective on a market basis. And those expectations can be measured and evaluated statistically.
I don't disagree that American business management is totally screwed up, but it has nothing to do with Deming or anything that he taught about quality management and improvement. If anything, it is a manifestation of finance and sales fields dominating management.
I defy you to find one American company lead by an engineer and following Deming principles that is producing poor products or not making profits.
GE and HP once were the pinnacle of their industries - under leaders that understood manufacturing, product development, and quality control. Once they lost that leadership they began to falter.
Deming was all about quality management and control - that is different from innovation. That said, there are ways to apply statistical methods in the design realm that aid and speed up innovation and product development.