Episode 150 - Deming

Hi, I’m David Veech and this is Elevate your performance.

Last week, I introduced the birth of the Quality Movement which followed W. Edwards Deming’s series of lectures with the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers in 1950.

Today, I want to tease out a few more details about Deming, and make the controversial point that PDCA is NOT an effective problem solving methodology.  It’s great for product development and for continuous improvements, but not specifically for everyday problem solving.

I don’t claim to be a Deming expert.  My friend Mark Graban has a far greater understanding of Deming and his key contributions.  Much of what I will share here today came from an article published in Quality Progress in November 2010 by Ronald D. Moen and Clifford L. Norman.  I’ll paste the link in the description box.  http://www.apiweb.org/circling-back.pdf

I have to start the Deming story with Walter Shewhart.  Shewhart earned his doctorate in physics from Berkeley in 1917 and joined Western Electric’s Inspection Engineering Department at the Hawthorne Works in 1918.  You can learn a little more about AT&T, Bell Labs, and Western Electric in my video episodes 134 and 135.

Deming earned his doctorate in mathematical physics from Yale in 1928.  This is around the time when Deming discovered Shewhart’s work and wanted to apply his statistical quality control principles to non-manufacturing processes.  Apparently, they built a close relationship.  In 1939, Deming served as editor for Shewhart’s book 

“Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control.”  This is where the “Shewhart Cycle” first appeared, thanks to Deming.  

This 3 step cycle consisted of “Specification - Production - Inspection” but what made it different was that Shewhart insisted that this was circular, not linear as in most production systems.  As Deming continued to evolve Shewhart’s work for non-manufacturing processes, he joined the US Census Bureau and applied his theories there.  

Deming's refined 4-step cycle included "Design – Produce – Sell (Get to market) – Redesign through Market Research.” Deming made this modification in Japan in 1950, at a meeting of the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers (JUSE).

It was JUSE who relabeled the steps as Plan - Do - Check - Act and published this widely through Japan.  I don’t know if this was a “lost in translation” thing, or an effort by JUSE to simplify the language, but Deming called this “the corruption.”

Deming eventually warmed to the idea, but insisted that Check was insufficient for a learning cycle and focused instead of Study, giving us the PDSA cycle.  

Toyota still uses PDCA as their main thinking process - to drive continuous improvement.  For problem solving, they built their 7-step problem solving process around the PDCA cycle but had to add more descriptions.

I taught PDCA for years and everyone always struggled with the Plan part.  That’s mainly why I think PDCA is an Launch Cycle and an Improvement Cycle, not a problem-solving cycle to tackle everyday problems.  With lots of help, I created the C4 process to focus directly on problem solving with 4 key steps:  Concern, where you focus on finding, understanding, defining, and breaking down a problem; Cause, where you find the root causes; Countermeasure, where you take action to correct the problem at its root cause; and Confirm, where you study the result, learn, and celebrate.

Here’s what I want you to be thinking about:  Japan initiated their quality focus in the 1950’s.  I grew up in the 60’s and Japanese products were cheap crap.  In the 70’s, Japanese products were cheap, but they were no longer crap, particularly with electronics.  

By the mid 80’s, US Electronics and Automobile manufacturers were collapsing under the onslaught of high-quality, affordable Japanese products.   Thanks to an old NBC News documentary called “If Japan can, why can’t we?” America “discovered” Deming and launched our own quality revolution in the 80s.

The Quality movement in Japan took 30 years to shake the market.  It was a generational change.  Lean is also a generational change.  It will not succeed if we decide to focus on “implementation” of our favorite parts and ignore the rest; or if we change initiatives with every new leader.

Next up, I have a few stories about Deming, Juran, and the Quality Circles movement of the 1960s in Japan.  Subscribe, like, and comment!

Have a great day and I’ll see you next time.

Episode 135 - The Telephone

I’m David Veech and this is Elevate Your Performance.

We’ve been looking at the historical progression from craft manufacturing to mass manufacturing and ultimately to lean manufacturing, and drawing connections to a variety of technology - and demand - issues that forced so many of these decisions.

Last time, we discussed the telegraph and the birth of Western Union.  Today, I want to share some discoveries about the telephone and the founding and growth of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company.  Within that story, we want to discover the birth and contributions of Bell Labs for research and development of new technologies, and Western Electric for the manufacturing of those new products and innovation in manufacturing processes.

Western Electric grew from a small shop in Cleveland, first acquired in 1856 by George Shawk to produce telegraph parts.  He partnered with Enos Barton, then sold his own shares to Elisha Gray around 1870.  Elisha Gray was working on a technology to transmit voices over telegraph wires.  Gray and Barton moved the business to Chicago in 1872 and incorporated under the name of Western Electric Manufacturing Company.

Alexander Graham Bell gets credit for inventing the telephone, making it work in 1876 with the now famous line “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.”  This was three days after his patent was issued on March 7, 1876 despite a caveat being filed in the Patent Office by Elisha Gray in 1875, the same year Gray sold his rights to Western Electric to Western Union.

During the summer of 1876, Bell and Watson demonstrated the telephone to the rest of the world at the Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia, alongside dozens of inventions that demonstrated the value of mass production.

Bell’s work had been funded by Thomas Sanders and Gardiner Greene Hubbard, the fathers of two pupils from his School of Vocal Physiology and Mechanics of Speech in Boston, where he taught deaf and mute children how to communicate.  Incidentally, one of his other students in 1872 was Helen Keller.

After Western Union refused to accept their offer to sell the telephone patent for $100,000, Sanders, Hubbard, and Bell incorporated the Bell Telephone Company in 1877.  In 1881, Bell Telephone Company acquired Western Electric and by 1886, over 150,000 telephones were in service.

As with every other invention of this magnitude, there were hundreds of claims contesting Bell’s patent, many from Western Union.  None was able to withstand the evidence and vigor brought by Bell Telephone, however, so the company continued to grow.

As lines expanded across the country, Bell’s management formed a new company to handle long distance, naming the company the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1885.  In 1899, in response to restrictive laws, the assets of Bell’s companies were consolidated under the AT&T banner, creating a monopoly called Bell System, affectionately known as Ma Bell.  

In 1905, they opened a new manufacturing facility in Cicero, Illinois and named it after the original name of the town - Hawthorne.  The Hawthorne Works became one of the largest single-site employers in the country, with over 45,000 employees at its heyday.  It also hosted dozens, if not hundreds of innovative studies in manufacturing processes and socio-technical systems, including the studies surrounding the famed Hawthorne Effect, which we’ll get to a little later.

More to follow!  I hope you stay with me as I try to keep up with these.  If you’d like to know more about how I use these history lessons to make practical improvements in today’s technology driven companies, book a call with me and let’s have a chat.  I’d be happy to hear about some of the problems you’re experiencing and how we might work together toward effective solutions.

Have a great day and I’ll see you tomorrow. 

134 - Communication Revolutions

I'm David Veech and this is Elevate Your Performance.

I intended to share some thoughts about the birth of aviation today, but I didn't want to neglect a very important late 19th century set of developments that rapidly accelerated the growth of the economy of the United States and fed a second industrial revolution that further enabled the success of Henry Ford and other automobile manufacturers at the dawn of the 20th century.

I hear a lot of talk today of disruptive technology.  But every useful technology has its own ability to disrupt the lives of people everywhere.  The one I want to focus on today is the telegraph.

Most of us are familiar with the name Samuel F. B. Morse.  He is the inventor of a particularly successful type of telegraph machine.  What's strange, though, is that up to this point in his life, he was an accomplished artist, having painted several portraits of prominent people in American history such as John Adams and the Marquis de LaFayette.

The story is interesting.  Apparently, while away from his Connecticut home, Morse received word, presumably through the Post Office, that his wife was gravely ill.  He immediately left to return home only to arrive well after his wife's death and burial.  The delay in receiving the message became a burning interest for him.

On a ship returning from Europe in 1832, Morse met Charles T. Jackson and shared conversations about electromagnetism and wire transmission signals.  From this encounter, Morse had the idea of the single-wire telegraph and got busy trying to make it work.  

Over the following few years, several inventors in Europe were developing telegraph machines and trying to figure out how to transmit signals over longer distances.  In 1837, working with Leonard Gale (a chemistry professor) and Alfred Vail (a wealthy and enthusiastic young man), Morse was finally able to array the right switches and relays to transmit a signal further than ten miles.

On January 11, 1838, they made their first public demonstration of the telegraph at the Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New Jersey to a small and mostly local crowd.  

Morse went to Washington DC  to try to get federal funding of a larger telegraph line, but it wasn't until 1843 that Congress granted funding of $30,000 to build a telegraph line from DC to Baltimore, Maryland, about 38 miles along the right-of-way of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad - What Monopoly game fans will recognize as the B&O Railroad. 

On May 1, 1844, the first impressive demonstration occurred when the results of the Whig Party Convention in Baltimore were transmitted to the US Capitol.  Henry Clay was their nominee for president.  

The Official opening of the line was on May 24, 1844 when, in the presence of VIPs, Morse transmitted the words "What hath God wrought" from the Supreme Court chamber in the basement of the US Capitol building to the B&O's Mount Clare Station in Baltimore.

Morse received a patent in 1840 for the electric telegraph, and a second patent in 1846 for local circuits, but these were aggressively contested by several parties, despite being renewed in 1848.  It wasn't until a supreme court case - O'reilly v. Morse in 1853 that definitively identified Morse as the inventor granting full royalties and license fees owed in the interval...a sum of almost $2 million dollars.

Over 20 companies raced to string telegraph cable across the northeastern US and further west.  In 1852, the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company began consolidating these companies and in 1856, acquired the bankrupt New York and Western Union Telegraph Company and created the new and current Western Union Telegraph Company.

By the end of 1861, telegraph wires ran from coast to coast and rendered obsolete the 5-year-old Pony Express (from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California) the US Postal Service had established.

About 15 years later, Western Union was offered a new technology for sale by a young inventor, but refused, leaving the rights to the Telephone to what would become the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, or AT&T.  More on the telephone tomorrow!

Have a great day and I'll see you tomorrow.