[MD] The need for quality

Andrew Chu andrew.chu at gmail.com
Tue Sep 12 12:29:56 PDT 2017


Hi Wes, I don’t dispute the importance of Deming and his impact.  In fact, his merging of concepts of quality with industrial advancement is very much in line with Pirsig’s reflections on his motorcycle and the nascent fear of technology in our culture in that similar time frame of post war america.  

I suppose my thought is that when those metrics of quality reach a theoretical peak, as they did in your prior example and as they largely have in modern manufacturing today, what then?  The observable improvements start to flatline and what was once dynamic in nature becomes static.  At the same time what once gave meaning as an indicator of a trend towards dynamic quality now becomes weighed down as simply being a placemarker for static quality.

We now can manufacture prolifically with little to no deviation in quality.  But then what do we choose to do with that power?  We then devalue the goods themselves, devalue their design and the thought put into them to create endless landfills of plastic widgets, disposable goods, one-time-use knick-knacks.  What was undoubtedly a trend towards a higher dynamic quality has now enabled some broader systemic issues of lower static quality.  

The point on japan is well taken.  I respect the Japanese culture a lot and in particular their attention to quality and thoughtfulness.  But even their receptiveness and empirically superior adoption of Deming’s teachings has had side effects.  For so many years, they saw positive results with their adoption of quality controls that becoming a productive part of the well-oiled machine, i.e. the Sony’s the Honda’s and the Mitsubishi’s, became a key indicator of success for much of the culture, it became a status symbol.  

Now, these very same giants find themselves struggling to innovate because the system has become so engrained (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japanese-entrepreneurs-face-a-special-challenge-the-wife-block/2016/06/21/1df476ca-324c-11e6-ab9d-1da2b0f24f93_story.html?utm_term=.f56192a1be5a), mechanically, organizationally, socially.  They must now reverse their prior thinking and priorities to revalue innovation, to revalue deviation so as to compete in a faster moving, more innovative world where thoughtful deviation from the mean is what allows for new creations and discoveries.

So what was once dynamic quality as indicated by six sigma, has now, in some ways, enabled certain systems of lower static quality.  Proving, at least in my mind, that any quantitative measure for quality must be taken at face value and continuously revisited in the context of the larger movements and systems in place, in the context of our unique place in the ever-changing environment.  

From: WES STEWART
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2017 2:54 PM
To: moq discuss
Subject: Re: [MD] The need for quality


Hello Andrew and Ardie and All; 

This is not my theory its Deming's and it is widely accepted. Douglas MacArthur head of the Allied command at the end of World War II , assigned Deming to teach the Japanese about quality. Deming traveled all over Japan giving 4 day seminars on how to build quality into products and service. He had the attention of the leaders of Japanese industry such as Sony, Mitsubishi, Toyota, and Honda. The message from Deming was the importance of the control chart, honesty, fairness, respect, equality, teamwork and listening to your employees. 

They religiously followed Deming and they named the annual award for quality the Deming prize. From his seminars they translated them into Japanese and created management manuals from them. They offered Deming money for them he refused and told them take the money for yourselves, you need it more than me. 

No country ever in the history of warfare had recovered so quickly as Japan, economists were claiming their economic recovery was unprecedented, it was out of control and going upward at an astronomical rate, it began rapidly claiming markets, that others had a monopoly on. Every year they flew Deming in for the awards presentation, Deming was revered and a household name in Japan, yet no one in America had heard of him. 

During the forties and fifties while he gave his 4 day seminars in Japan he was often handed gifts, he would walk the streets of Japan, looking for the most destitute and give the gifts he was given to others. Deming lived a modest life in Washington, a statistician and a night school teacher at a university. It was in the 1980s when Japan bashing started and Ford motors was losing 1 billion dollars every year, that ABC did a special on quality calling it "If Japan can do it why can't we?" 

ABC News always heard the Japanese talking about the Deming prize, and how Deming had taught them everything about quality. They were startled when they discovered Deming was an American and living in Washington. When the news team pulled up in front of Deming's modest house, with his grand children's plastic wading pool on the front lawn, they could not believe this incredible story. 

The ICAO (International Civil Aviation Authority) SMS manual recommends every state, monitor incidents and accidents using a control chart. 



From: "Andrew Chu" <andrew.chu at gmail.com> 
To: "moq discuss" <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2017 11:05:27 AM 
Subject: Re: [MD] The need for quality 

Hi Wes and Adrie, 

The original story as laid out by Wes does actually strike me as an example of quality or dynamic quality as it were. In my parlance, the key quality is the relationship the narrator has to his work. This work could be described as quality / safety manager or it could perhaps be more accurately described as the narrator’s relationship to the factory “system” or “environment”. 

In my mind, the high quality is most directly and clearly expressed before the statistics show it. The high quality is a function of the narrator getting lost in thought around the system and the problem at hand. His thoughtful progression into the system and into the problem is where the dynamic quality lies. The statistics provide a measure of this, but they are symptomatic and indicative. In this case, the statistics are a clue to dynamic quality but can never be deterministic in nature. 

For example, if someone took this solution at face value and went to another factory next door and said “we should buy boots for all the workers.” This may or may not result in a lower occurrence of injuries. If it does result in lower injuries is that indicative of dynamic quality? I would argue not really because there was no true thought around the process, there was no deep relationship between the observer, the problem solver and the observed, the problem/system/environment in that case. It could very much be attributed to dumb luck that boots for the second factory worked. 

So for me statistical improvements are a great tool, and can show improvement in quality, but like the stock market, these signals can be easily misinterpreted and causality can ultimately be difficult to define/prove. 

As an example, quality companies in my opinion show the greatest opportunity for stock price accretion but this is over the long term and over the course of that period there may be sharp rises and sharp declines which would be difficult to tie back to a particular level of quality be it static or dynamic. 

The point on systems of thought being the key element to change is undoubtedly true. I wholeheartedly agree. What I have found in my own experience in dealing with my son’s school for example, is that implicit and explicit racial segregation, for instance, is driven primarily by systems of thought around value, quality and excellence. Statistics are then drawn into the discussion as an after thought to provide supporting evidence for the underlying systemic thought. You can change the basis of statistical measure. You can tear down the school, factory or rebuild a new one, but as long as the system thought is still in place, then this is as much an edifice as the original building itself. 

From: Adrie Kintziger 
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2017 12:37 PM 
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org 
Subject: Re: [MD] The need for quality 

Hi, all , Wes. 

I took a snip of your proposal/story 

" 

I will build a story, that gives you an idea of Deming, and how his 
philosophy enhances Pirsig, and how Pirsig's philosophy enhances Deming. 
This is a simple story. 

The story begins with let us say; I am a new quality /safety manager for a 
company with 500 employees that work outdoors. 
A senior manager comes to me and tells me the workers injury compensation 
payments are too high. He tells me to do something about lowering injuries. 
He also adds its costing him on around $3000 dollars per injury, because an 
employee sits on average 4 days before recovering from their injury. 

I have some statistical data of injuries from the previous 36 months. It 
appears that ankle injuries are the most frequently occurring injuries. I 
add up the ankle injuries for the 36 months, I then divide by 36 and come 
up with a number of 41. So on average this organization has 41 ankle sprain 
or fractures that occur every month. 

I want to do something because it is a moral thing; lowering that average 
will also reduce the number of people who suffer pain and injury each 
month. Would someone say my moral thinking is subjective? A psychopath 
might. 

At this point I calculate standard deviation of 1, and come up with an 
upper limit of 47 ankle injuries and a lower limit of 35, I calculate 
standard deviation of 2 upper limit 53, lower limit of 29. I calculate 
standard deviation of 3 upper limit of 59 and a lower limit 23. 

Next month I can forecast the ankle injury rate with 99% certainty will 
fall between 59 and 23. I can also say that 68% of the time it will fall 
between a standard deviation of 1, from 47 to 35. 

Pirsig would call this a static pattern, Deming would say it is in a state 
of statistical process control. Pirsig would say it's a system that will 
not change unless there is "dynamic quality" added to it. Deming would say 
there has to be some "special cause" variation in order for change to 
happen, the static pattern he see's is "common cause" variation, it's a 
normal distribution curve, it is a normal pattern that occurs in nature. 

Let's say I do some research and visit 50 employees out in the field, and 
startled to find that 48 of them wear low cut running shoes, only two of 
them were wearing something with good solid ankle support 

I go to several work boot suppliers, ask them for advice and I am impressed 
with one of them having so much knowledge on what good ankle support is in 
a workboot. What's average better and best, in both comfort and support, 
then he shows me the longest lasting, high quality boot with those 
attributes. 

At a company meeting, I explain my rational and ask upper management to 
reimburse every employee for boot purchase from that one supplier. I add in 
that boots are personal protective equipment, and OHS regulations require 
us to reimburse our employees for this. Maybe there is a large debate, 
maybe the accountant says, "the guys out in the field are all idiots, they 
just have to be more careful." Maybe at the end of the meeting the CEO 
steps in and says "We have not been able to lower that rate in 3 years, in 
spite of threats of termination and terminations, we have lost lots of our 
most productive employees." He then agrees to go with my recommendations. 


I have done something to change the system, we wanted to see that average 
of 41 ankle injuries per month drop, and if we make the next month 
measurement and find, that it is below 23 (standard deviation of 3) , it 
may mean something. It may mean that the process of how ankle injuries 
occurr is no longer a stable process, something has changed in the system. 
As more people purchase boots we see, it drops to 20 then the following 
month it goes to 15, thats a trend, because in the past 3 years it never 
went below 23. Thats improvement in the quality of the working environment 
for employees out in the field, thats something that is measureable. 

I measure the ankle injury rate for another 36 months, after the changes, 
and see that the average is now 13 with the Upper control limit is 21 and 
the lower control limit is now 0, thats real, we can see those numbers. Now 
that is an improvement in the quality of the working environment of 68%, 
specific to ankle injuries. 

Maybe the CEO talks with me about those 0 ankle injury months, and tells me 
upper management has decided that they want them all to be 0 ankle injury 
months. I try to explain to him about human beings and variation. "Common 
cause variation in rain, wind, heat, terrain, stress, fatigue, having a 
baby, and worried about keeping your job all fix those static patterns of 
quality, from 0 to 21. Even the support of an employees direct manager 
affect those numbers along with cooperation and teamwork from fellow 
employees. Threats of firings or lay-off's do not help, after all, who can 
think clearly when they are agitated, because distractions cause those 
ankle sprain injuries." 

I tell him to expect the average to remain the same around 13. I tell him 
the 0-21 variation from month to month is a normal distribution pattern 
that is seen in nature. I state to him matter of factly, that business men 
cannot really make demands on nature or science to change. Both safety and 
quality will always see these normal distribution patterns, and for that 
reason it will never reach 0 every month. I say to him that I will try to 
come up with some other ways to improve the quality of the working 
environment for our employees, but expect it not to move until I come up 
with some ideas and we implement those changes...... 

------------------------------- 

(Adrie) 
This is not so very different from the story earlier on,in wich case you 
proposed a mechanism swinging around a hinge of variables. 

I did re-read it several times to reconsider, but i have to come back to my 
first comment.It is not critisism but common sense. 
I can tell the story with fewer words and lesser vocabulary pitch.But it is 
an example to make something clear.Not to ridicule you. 

Ok, lets say a guy comes at the banks of the Amazon, finding a statician at 
the waterline collecting statistical depth table's.As he likes to go to the 
other side,he asks to the statician,"can i safely pass the stream here?", 
...Yeah you really can the statician says, the average depth here is around 
knee depth only.So the dude starts walking to the other side,only to drown 
in a part of the river that has some greater depth.Statistically very 
normal of course. 

What i can see in your model , Wes , is that you create story's like this to 
make something clear by adding complexity to the model.If i compare my 
example with yours, the case is the same, but you will introduce say like 
the speed of the stream, the position of the rocks in the riverbed,the 
rotation of the earth,the lenght of the guy, can he swim or not?;;;;;etc, 
but!, models like this 
wil tell us nothing, at all,about philosophy.They fail to predict 
reality.Or morality. 



2017-09-11 5:44 GMT+02:00 WES STEWART <wesstt at shaw.ca>: 

> 
> Hello Dan, Andrew and X-Acto; 
> I have responded to your question towards the end X-Acto. 
> Thanks for the response Ardie; 
> 
> Yes these are old ideas, concepts that are approaching 90 years, yet they 
> still work for quality. 
> 
> I will build a story, that gives you an idea of Deming, and how his 
> philosophy enhances Pirsig, and how Pirsig's philosophy enhances Deming. 
> This is a simple story. 
> 
> The story begins with let us say; I am a new quality /safety manager for a 
> company with 500 employees that work outdoors. 
> A senior manager comes to me and tells me the workers injury compensation 
> payments are too high. He tells me to do something about lowering injuries. 
> He also adds its costing him on around $3000 dollars per injury, because an 
> employee sits on average 4 days before recovering from their injury. 
> 
> I have some statistical data of injuries from the previous 36 months. It 
> appears that ankle injuries are the most frequently occurring injuries. I 
> add up the ankle injuries for the 36 months, I then divide by 36 and come 
> up with a number of 41. So on average this organization has 41 ankle sprain 
> or fractures that occur every month. 
> 
> I want to do something because it is a moral thing; lowering that average 
> will also reduce the number of people who suffer pain and injury each 
> month. Would someone say my moral thinking is subjective? A psychopath 
> might. 
> 
> At this point I calculate standard deviation of 1, and come up with an 
> upper limit of 47 ankle injuries and a lower limit of 35, I calculate 
> standard deviation of 2 upper limit 53, lower limit of 29. I calculate 
> standard deviation of 3 upper limit of 59 and a lower limit 23. 
> 
> Next month I can forecast the ankle injury rate with 99% certainty will 
> fall between 59 and 23. I can also say that 68% of the time it will fall 
> between a standard deviation of 1, from 47 to 35. 
> 
> Pirsig would call this a static pattern, Deming would say it is in a state 
> of statistical process control. Pirsig would say it's a system that will 
> not change unless there is "dynamic quality" added to it. Deming would say 
> there has to be some "special cause" variation in order for change to 
> happen, the static pattern he see's is "common cause" variation, it's a 
> normal distribution curve, it is a normal pattern that occurs in nature. 
> 
> Let's say I do some research and visit 50 employees out in the field, and 
> startled to find that 48 of them wear low cut running shoes, only two of 
> them were wearing something with good solid ankle support 
> 
> I go to several work boot suppliers, ask them for advice and I am 
> impressed with one of them having so much knowledge on what good ankle 
> support is in a workboot. What's average better and best, in both comfort 
> and support, then he shows me the longest lasting, high quality boot with 
> those attributes. 
> 
> At a company meeting, I explain my rational and ask upper management to 
> reimburse every employee for boot purchase from that one supplier. I add in 
> that boots are personal protective equipment, and OHS regulations require 
> us to reimburse our employees for this. Maybe there is a large debate, 
> maybe the accountant says, "the guys out in the field are all idiots, they 
> just have to be more careful." Maybe at the end of the meeting the CEO 
> steps in and says "We have not been able to lower that rate in 3 years, in 
> spite of threats of termination and terminations, we have lost lots of our 
> most productive employees." He then agrees to go with my recommendations. 
> 
> 
> I have done something to change the system, we wanted to see that average 
> of 41 ankle injuries per month drop, and if we make the next month 
> measurement and find, that it is below 23 (standard deviation of 3) , it 
> may mean something. It may mean that the process of how ankle injuries 
> occurr is no longer a stable process, something has changed in the system. 
> As more people purchase boots we see, it drops to 20 then the following 
> month it goes to 15, thats a trend, because in the past 3 years it never 
> went below 23. Thats improvement in the quality of the working environment 
> for employees out in the field, thats something that is measureable. 
> 
> I measure the ankle injury rate for another 36 months, after the changes, 
> and see that the average is now 13 with the Upper control limit is 21 and 
> the lower control limit is now 0, thats real, we can see those numbers. Now 
> that is an improvement in the quality of the working environment of 68%, 
> specific to ankle injuries. 
> 
> Maybe the CEO talks with me about those 0 ankle injury months, and tells 
> me upper management has decided that they want them all to be 0 ankle 
> injury months. I try to explain to him about human beings and variation. 
> "Common cause variation in rain, wind, heat, terrain, stress, fatigue, 
> having a baby, and worried about keeping your job all fix those static 
> patterns of quality, from 0 to 21. Even the support of an employees direct 
> manager affect those numbers along with cooperation and teamwork from 
> fellow employees. Threats of firings or lay-off's do not help, after all, 
> who can think clearly when they are agitated, because distractions cause 
> those ankle sprain injuries." 
> 
> I tell him to expect the average to remain the same around 13. I tell him 
> the 0-21 variation from month to month is a normal distribution pattern 
> that is seen in nature. I state to him matter of factly, that business men 
> cannot really make demands on nature or science to change. Both safety and 
> quality will always see these normal distribution patterns, and for that 
> reason it will never reach 0 every month. I say to him that I will try to 
> come up with some other ways to improve the quality of the working 
> environment for our employees, but expect it not to move until I come up 
> with some ideas and we implement those changes. 
> 
> Maybe the accountant meets me in the hallway moments later and says, " We 
> can have a 0 ankle injury month, and if you cannot do it every month maybe 
> we should hire a quality/ safety manager that can." 
> 
> Hello X-Acto, I will keep to Pirsigs or Demings description of a SYSTEM, 
> because both of them talk about corruption, you can review Pirsigs full 
> description in Chapter 8. 
> Pirsig is extremely artful in his description because he has a Doctorate 
> in Creative Writing; Deming a physicist, mathematician, and statistician, 
> sometimes outwardly states they are corrupted by their greed. I think that 
> the systems theorists description that you sent me was well thought out of 
> what it should be; but naive as to what happens in real life, a SYSTEM can 
> create the Iraq war and unknowingly produce an ISIS, but was it really an 
> intelligent move? 
> 
> Here is some of what Pirsig states in Chapter 8; 
> 
> "But to tear down a factory or revolt against a government....because it 
> is a system is to attack effects rather than causes, and as long as the 
> attack is against effects, no change is possible. The true system, the real 
> system is the construction of systemic thought itself, rationality of 
> thought, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality of thought which 
> produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce 
> another factory." 
> 
> "If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the same systematic 
> patterns of thought are left intact, 
> then those same patterns will repeat themselves in succeeding 
> governments." From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert 
> Pirsig 
> 
> In this imaginary story "the real system is the construction of systemic 
> thought itself, rationality of thought" of the capitalist system 
> which is based wholly on greed and self interest, which is a part of 
> government just as much as it is part of business. The rationality of the 
> CEO and the accountant in this made up story is the real system, "the 
> construction of systemic thought itself, rationality of thought",is not 
> science its disturbed and biased and will always make poor decisions 
> concerning quality because of self interest, self importance and greed. 
> 
> From: "X Acto" <xacto at rocketmail.com> 
> To: "moq discuss" <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org> 
> Sent: Saturday, September 9, 2017 11:23:21 AM 
> Subject: Re: [MD] The need for quality 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone 
> 
> > On Sep 7, 2017, at 11:35 AM, Andrew Chu <andrew.chu at gmail.com> wrote: 
> > 
> > From: "WES STEWART" <wesstt at shaw.ca> 
> > To: "moq discuss" <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org> 
> > Sent: Wednesday, September 6, 2017 10:15:27 PM 
> > Subject: Re: [MD] The need for quality 
> > 
> > Hell Dan and All; 
> > 
> > I get a lot of my philosophy of quality, not from Pirsig but from 
> William Edwards Deming. It was back in the twenties when Walter Shewhart 
> and Deming were searching for ways to improve the Quality of transmission 
> lines at Bell Labs. They had defined Quality as a SYSTEM that is in a state 
> of continuous improvement. Shewhart and Deming looked at all SYSTEMs then 
> used their intellect or reason to search for ways to improve the SYSTEM. 
> > 
> > Martin Luther King also used his intellect for ways to improve the 
> SYSTEM, in which he paid the ultimate price that was delivered from 
> Biologically dominated human beings. 
> > 
> Ron interjects: 
> Hello Wes,Dan, All, 
> I've been following the thread off and on and I was curious about how Wes 
> defined the term "SYSTEM". 
> In system theory it is defined as 
> an entity with interrelated and interdependent parts; it is defined by its 
> boundaries and it is more than the sum of its parts (subsystem). 
> Positive growth and adaptation of a system depend upon how well the system 
> is adjusted with its environment, and systems often exist to accomplish a 
> common purpose (a work function) that also aids in the maintenance of the 
> system or the operations may result in system failure. 
> With the goal being isotelesis. 
> the intelligent direction of effort toward the achievement of an end. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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