Overview
On June 24, 1980, NBC aired the documentary "If Japan Can... Why Can't We?" which featured W. Edwards Deming prominently and brought him to American attention at age 79. Almost overnight, the obscure statistician who had transformed Japanese industry became the most sought-after management consultant in America. Ford, GM, and other major corporations sought him out. He developed his famous four-day management seminar format, refined the system-of-profound-knowledge, and published his two major books: out-of-the-crisis (1982/1986) and the-new-economics-for-industry-government-education (1993). His key papers from this period include transformation-of-western-style-of-management and drastic-changes-for-western-management, which articulated the philosophical case for management transformation, and his testimony-to-congress-on-quality, which carried the quality message to policymakers. In 1987, he received the national-medal-of-technology from President Reagan — twenty-seven years after Japan's imperial honor. He died on December 20, 1993 — an event marked by deming-s-death — at age 93.
The NBC Documentary
The documentary explored why Japanese industry had surpassed American industry in quality and productivity. Its most dramatic segment featured Deming — an elderly American statistician who had been teaching the Japanese for thirty years while being ignored in his own country. The broadcast created immediate demand for Deming's services. The irony was not lost on Deming: American industry turned to him only when crisis forced them to, exactly as wartime production had temporarily embraced statistical methods during his usda-and-census-bureau-1927-1946 years. The pattern of adopting his ideas under crisis and abandoning them when pressure eased would continue to frustrate him.
The Ford Engagement
Before Ford, nashua-corporation had already engaged Deming in 1979 — making it the first major American company to adopt his methods. Nashua's CEO William Conway appeared in the NBC documentary as living proof that Deming's approach worked in American industry. But the most significant corporate engagement of this period was with ford-motor-company, which began working with Deming in 1981 under CEO Donald Petersen. Ford was in serious financial trouble — losing billions of dollars annually — and was willing to listen. Deming's influence at Ford contributed to the development of the Ford Taurus, which became the best-selling car in America and demonstrated that American manufacturers could compete on quality when they adopted the right management philosophy. Ford's transformation provided concrete evidence for the arguments Deming would make in out-of-the-crisis.
The Four-Day Seminars
Deming developed a signature four-day seminar format that he delivered to thousands of managers during the 1980s and early 1990s. These seminars included the Red Bead Experiment (demonstrating that worker performance is determined by the system, not individual effort) and the-funnel-experiment (demonstrating that tampering with a stable process makes it worse). The seminars were Deming's primary vehicle for reaching American managers, and they were legendary for his blunt, confrontational teaching style. He did not suffer management fools gladly, and attendees often found their assumptions about management demolished by the elderly statistician.
The Final Synthesis
The last years of Deming's life saw him articulate the System of Profound Knowledge as the unified framework integrating appreciation for a system, knowledge about variation, theory of knowledge, and psychology. This synthesis, presented most fully in the-new-economics-for-industry-government-education, represented the culmination of a career that began with walter-a-shewhart's statistical process control during the education-and-early-statistical-career-1900-1927 and evolved through the japan-and-the-quality-revolution-1947-1960s into a comprehensive philosophy of management. Deming continued teaching and consulting until weeks before his death, driven by the conviction that American management still had not understood the depth of transformation required.