Deming, W(illiam) Edwards (1900–1993)

US statistician and management consultant, who was a leading exponent of total quality management. A physicist by training, he developed statistical sampling techniques to formulate quality control methods in manufacturing. He was a statistical adviser to the US Bureau of Census (1939–45) before becoming a professor of statistics in 1946.

Deming's ideas were first put into practice in Japan during the 1950s, where they were considered to have contributed significantly to the country's industrial resurgence since World War II. It was not until the 1980s that the US business community began to adopt his ideas and accept the principle that it was the executive function to ‘manage quality’.

Deming was born in Sioux City, Iowa. He received an electrical engineering degree at the University of Wyoming and a master's degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Colorado, before receiving a PhD at Yale in mathematical physics in 1928. He then went to work as a mathematical physicist for the US Department of Agriculture, where his work on the theories of measurement errors led him into statistics. Moving to the Bureau of Census in 1939 as head statistician and mathematician, his sampling techniques were first used in the 1940 US census. During World War II he also taught at Stanford University, advocating the use of statistical analysis to improve the quality of US production, before becoming professor of statistics at New York University Graduate School of Business in 1945.

At the same time, Deming became a research consultant, refining his ideas into his famous Fourteen Points to ensure quality production and success; he argued that quality control was a strategic activity which should be led by senior management using statistical control techniques with the cooperation of the workforce. In 1947 the US Supreme Command Allied Forces invited Deming to Tokyo to lecture Japanese industrialists on his new methods. His ideas were adopted eagerly by Japanese companies; his influence was so strong that by 1951 the Deming Award was instituted by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers as Japan's highest honour in business, and in 1960 Deming was awarded Japan's Second Order Medal of the Sacred Treasure.

Major US companies were slow to recognize the value of his techniques. Senior managers did not accept Deming's ideas until the 1980s, when US corporations sought to compete more effectively against foreign competitors, particularly in Japan, by implementing his methods. Working into his eighties, Deming continued to conduct quality management seminars at the New York School of Business and the University of Columbia until shortly before his death.

His publications included Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position (1982) and Out of the Crisis (1988).