{"id":8120,"date":"2026-07-07T01:00:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T07:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/?p=8120"},"modified":"2026-06-05T11:49:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T17:49:37","slug":"deming-on-total-quality-management-tqm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/deming-on-total-quality-management-tqm\/","title":{"rendered":"Deming on Total Quality Management (TQM)"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I took Deming&#8217;s workshop back in the 1990s. When asked about Total Quality Management (TQM) Deming said&#8230;<\/p>\r\n<p><em>Download my free ebook, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/pdf\/Agile-Process-Innovation.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Agile Process Innovation &#8211; Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1163317020?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Hi, I&#8217;m Jay Arthur, author of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Lean-Six-Sigma-Hospitals-Improving\/dp\/1259641082\/\">Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals<\/a>\u201d and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/demo\/\">QI Macros [software]<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Back in the 1990s when I was first getting involved with Quality, I went to one of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/W._Edwards_Deming\">[W. Edwards] Deming<\/a>&#8216;s four-day seminars. Somewhere in there, somebody asked him about <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Total_quality_management\">Total Quality Management<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Deming said, \u2018I have no idea where the word \u2018total\u2019 came from. That&#8217;s just wrong. It&#8217;s Quality Management. You manage the things that need to be managed, not everything.\u2019 Right?<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;If you think about <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pareto_principle\">Pareto\u2019s rule, the 80\/20 rule<\/a>, 20% is causing the problem. If you think about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qualitymag.com\/articles\/99351-arthurs-4-50-rule-identifying-the-small-fraction-that-drives-the-biggest-impact\">my 4-50 rule,<\/a> you narrow that way down. 4% of what you&#8217;re doing is producing over half the mistakes and errors. That&#8217;s not TOTAL quality, we just need to manage the 4% that&#8217;s really eating our lunch.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;So stop thinking about Six Sigma as something that has to be done everywhere all the time by everyone, and everybody has to be trained\u2026 that&#8217;s a giant waste of time and energy. Narrow your focus. Fix what&#8217;s really broken. Worst first, then the next worst, then the next worst, then the next worst, and eventually everything smooths out.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s my Improvement Insight. Let&#8217;s go out and improve something this week.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I took Deming&rsquo;s workshop back in the 1990s. When asked about Total Quality Management (TQM) Deming said&hellip; Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation &ndash; Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results. &#65279; &ldquo;Hi, I&rsquo;m Jay Arthur, author of &ldquo;Lean Six Sigma For Hospitals&rdquo; and QI Macros [software]. &ldquo;Back in the 1990s when I was first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[365,299,168,170,673,586],"class_list":["post-8120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvement-insights","tag-4-50-rule","tag-deming","tag-qi-macros","tag-six-sigma","tag-total-quality-management","tag-tqm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8120"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8383,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8120\/revisions\/8383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}