Thinking About Quality: Progress, Wisdom, and the Deming Philosophy - Hardcover

Dobyns, Lloyd

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081292133X ISBN 13: 9780812921335

Publisher: Crown, 1994

Synopsis

An end to the misunderstandings of W. Edwards Deming's work--the book that finally provides a relationship between his ideas and the way businesses should be run.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

e misunderstandings of W. Edwards Deming's work--the book that finally provides a relationship between his ideas and the way businesses should be run.

Reviews

On balance, this book succeeds in condensing a fair amount of contemporary thinking on quality. The words of the authors, a former journalist and a producer at NBC News, are telling: "Originally, we had intended this book to be more about the Baldrige Award and less about the Deming method, but the more we tried to explain Baldrige, the more we wrote about Deming." Deming, however, is neither the first nor last word on the subject of quality. This work has two flaws. First, it adds little that is substantive to William W. Scherkenback's The Deming Route to Quality and Productivity (1960). Second, it is preceded by Vice President Al Gore's "Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less," a government document dated September 7, 1993, which addresses some key issues raised here. Thus, while the book is a good introduction to quality, it is an "also ran" for quality practitioners.
- Steven Silkunas, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, Philadelphia
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Dobyns may be best remembered for teaming with Linda Ellerbee a decade ago to coanchor the classy, irreverent NBC News Overnight and Weekend. Crawford-Mason has worked for NBC News and People as well as several Washington, D.C., newspapers. The two have collaborated with quality guru W. Edwards Deming on a 20-volume Deming Video Library. They also wrote Quality or Else (1991), which served as the companion book to IBM's public broadcasting series on quality. This latest work takes up where their earlier one left off, and it has the same feel of television about it, with chapters seemingly put together as video-newsmagazine segments. Dobyns and Crawford-Mason outline Deming's 14 points and profile the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award and its seven categories. They also contrast Zytec Corporation and the Wallace Company, two winners of the Baldridge Award, and analyze why Zytec has seen continued success, whereas Wallace has filed for bankruptcy protection. The authors also look at efforts to apply Deming and Baldridge quality concepts in education, health care, and the U.S. Navy and at the New York Times. Recommended for public-library business collections. David Rouse

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 081292133X
• ISBN 13: 9780812921335
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 280