Deming, W Edwards

Deming, W(illiam) Edwards

(born Oct. 14, 1900, Sioux City, Iowa, U.S.—died Dec. 20, 1993, Washington, D.C.) U.S. statistician, educator, and advocate of quality-control methods in industrial production. He received his Ph.D. in mathematical physics from Yale University, and he subsequently taught at New York University for 46 years. From the 1930s he employed statistical analysis to achieve better industrial quality control. In 1950 he was invited to Japan to teach executives and engineers. His ideas, which centred on tallying product defects, analyzing and addressing their causes, and recording the effects of the changes on subsequent quality, were eagerly adopted there and eventually helped Japanese products dominate the market in much of the world. In 1951 Japan instituted the Deming Prize, awarded to corporations that win a rigorous quality control competition. Deming's ideas were taken up by U.S. corporations in the 1980s, particularly under the rubric of Total Quality Management.