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Kelly Allan of Kelly Allan Associates, a member of the board of trustees of the nonprofit The W. Edwards Deming Institute, talks to Quality about Deming and quality.

Michelle: For listeners who might not be familiar can you give us a little rundown of the key points of the Deming methodologies?

Kelly: Yes. Sure. One of the first things I think – I’ll give you one line – which is we talk about it as the Deming lens, that collection of methodologies. And the aim there is to optimize a system with the aim for everybody to win. So that's kind of a one-line version.

If I go into more detail and, I think give this a little context, which is the Deming lens, also known as the System of Profound Knowledge or the Deming Management method, it includes the famous 14 points. Some people may be unfamiliar with that. It's not just about delivering high quality products and services. It's also about running a high-quality organization.

So, the decisions that are made, the policies that are in place, the way people are treated, all those things are part of that Deming lens. And we use it, not only for solutions, but also for diagnosis. So, it may be helpful if I just go through each of the   four parts of that Deming lens.

I want to start with the first one, which is, what does it mean? What do we mean when we say, the aim of, trying to improve win-win-win solutions for everybody in the organization and to make sure that the organization is being responsible, etc.

So, a system can be a family. It can be an organization, it can be a church, a county, a school, a hospital, any of those things. So, it's not just talking about products and services, per se. So, I like to talk about the first four elements, which is just really a variation. And the key there is understanding the different types of variation, because once you understand that that helps with the diagnosis of what's really going on, of how you want to improve or manage people.

It also helps then with knowing what to do, because the type of variation that you have determines the kinds of actions you want to take. And if you don't understand what the variation is and you just take actions, you might actually be making things worse, causing the system to degrade. So, the next part of this, the four parts of the lens is understood as appreciation for a system.