Deming's 14 points still matter for quality

Quality management is one of those topics that every business owner says they care about. And most of them do - in theory. But the gap between caring about quality and actually building it into how your organization works? That’s where things fall apart.

Dr. W. Edwards Deming understood this gap better than almost anyone. He was an academic, engineer, business consultant, and author who believed quality wasn’t some nice-to-have. It was the key to survival.

He created what we now call Deming’s 14 points. And honestly? They’re more relevant today than when he wrote them in 1982.

Here’s why that matters right now: Every organization rushing to bolt AI onto their operations without fixing the underlying process is just automating chaos. Deming would’ve had a field day with that.

If you’re serious about putting quality principles into practice, having the right process improvement tools makes all the difference.

What Deming’s 14 points are really about

Dr. Deming is credited with having a profound influence on Japan’s rise to economic prominence after the Second World War, and he’s still remembered through the Deming Prize for Total Quality Management. So what were these fourteen points? Let me walk through each one - because there’s more depth here than most people realize.

1. “Constancy of purpose” towards improvement

Deming believed that remaining competitive required “constancy of purpose” towards quality. He didn’t see this as a short-term commitment or a luxury. It’s a long-term philosophy that ensures business survival.

Reactive, short-term fixes can only have a short-term effect. That sounds obvious, but look around - how many organizations are still firefighting the same problems they had three years ago?

What’s needed is a more farsighted approach. Doing the same things better is great, but Deming believed businesses should also innovate, conduct research, and continually improve product design. Most importantly, he reminds us that the results of our activities are for the benefit of the people we serve - and therefore their needs should come first when making decisions.

Without the people you serve, no business can survive. Since their needs change over time, it’s up to us to prepare for new challenges.

2. Adopt a new philosophy

Producing quality requires much more than lip-service. The constancy of purpose must be supported by a buy-in to quality that runs right through the organization.

Achieving this requires more than traditional management. It requires leadership. That means staff should be inspired to support quality rather than needing to be forced.

In other words, Deming’s 14 points support building a culture of quality with commitment from every person. He predicted that moving from a traditional management focus to a leadership focus would be a change in the way we do business. That was back in 1982. Today, we’re seeing the truth of his prediction everywhere.

In our conversations with quality managers at mid-market healthcare and manufacturing companies, we’ve consistently heard that those who embrace this culture-first approach dramatically outperform those who just buy tools and hope for the best. One healthcare organization told us their biggest quality improvement came not from new software, but from finally breaking down approval bottlenecks that delayed patient care.

Just as we’ve got a vision for the future of our businesses, we should have a vision for the quality we want to deliver. Reactive changes made because of competitive pressure don’t necessarily result in improvements that put people first.

3. Build quality in - you can’t inspect it in

Deming wasn’t impressed by after-the-fact quality control. He encouraged businesses to stop depending on inspections to get quality. He pointed out that inspections can miss defects, that they’re costly, and that they don’t improve quality because all they can do is find poor quality.

Instead, he recommended building quality into every process a business undertakes. Finding faults may prevent harm, but it’s not good enough. We should track them down and change processes so that similar faults can’t happen ever again.

Those of us who aren’t fond of math might balk at Deming’s insistence on using statistical controls, but numbers don’t lie. If you’re not keen on learning how to generate valid statistics, don’t worry - smart software can do the number-crunching for you. Tallyfy’s built-in analytics are one example of this.

What are you aiming for with all this? Improving processes to eliminate errors is far better and less costly than trying to correct errors after they’ve already occurred.

4. Use single suppliers for any item

How often have you heard that a supplier is to blame for poor quality? Maybe you’ve experienced it yourself. You found a cheaper supplier only to discover that the quality or reliability was lacking.

You can blame your suppliers all you like, but at the end of the day, it’s your business’s reputation that suffers.

Deming points out that the relationship between a business and its suppliers should be mutually beneficial. The business should be willing to pay more for quality. When this happens, the supplier can meet needs because it’s got the resources to do so.

Build long-term relationships with suppliers. Focus on one supplier for each input, and there’s greater motivation for the supplier to meet your needs and even go the extra mile. You can also expect greater consistency. The more suppliers you work with, the more variation there’ll be and the harder it’ll be to manage quality.

From what I’ve seen, this is probably the hardest of all 14 points to get right.

5. Improve processes constantly - forever

Here’s where Deming gets relentless. He encourages businesses to continuously analyze and improve the way they perform processes. By improving productivity and training staff so they can deliver their best, a business also improves its profits.

For many busy managers, this might seem daunting. Just when you thought everything was perfect, it turns out something could be done better. It never ends.

But Deming points out that we can fix flaws in our business processes permanently. Once we’ve done that, we can move on to the next improvement, knowing the last issue won’t come back.

Back in the eighties, keeping tabs on every process would’ve been incredibly difficult. Today, Business Process Management software makes this far easier. When you need to tweak a process in Tallyfy, it’s as simple as editing the process you set up - the workflow automatically adjusts to the change.

Templates for Implementing Deming's Quality Principles

Example Procedure

Preferred Vendor Evaluation and Approval Workflow

1Audit current vendor inventory and active contracts

2Categorize vendors by spend volume and business risk

3Define vendor qualification and approval criteria

4Evaluate and score vendor candidates

5Publish approved vendor list and train employees

+1 more steps

View template

Example Procedure

Employee Onboarding

1HR - Set up payroll and send welcome email

2IT - Order equipment and set up workstation

3Office Manager - Prepare physical workspace

4IT - Create accounts and system access

5HR - Welcome meeting and company orientation

+3 more steps

View template

Example Procedure

Employee Performance Review & Evaluation Workflow

1Schedule performance review meeting

2Define employee goals and development plan

3Create training and development plan

4Executive approval for senior manager evaluations

5Collect performance data and 360 feedback

+4 more steps

View template

6. Training and leadership that actually works

Deming’s 14 points return to training on several occasions, but his emphasis is on-the-job training. The aim should be quality improvement - reducing variation and getting consistent, predictable results.

You don’t want all the knowledge of a process to rest with only one or two people. If you do, your business is at risk. Deming encourages knowledge-sharing, and he asks managers to let their staff see how they fit into a process rather than just giving them work to do.

We’ve got several ways to do this, beginning with the employee onboarding process. If people know where they fit into a team and how the team’s results depend on their work, they’re far more likely to care about what they produce.

Deming argued that managers and supervisors should focus on leadership rather than tight supervision and rigid structure. He encourages understanding, collaboration, and a coaching approach to management. Working to help people deliver their best is more effective than taking punitive action.

A well-led team will do more than just keep their heads down. They become part of your quality management effort. They ask for help, make suggestions, and point out stumbling-blocks you might not have noticed.

Setting and meeting targets is fine - but is your team meeting its potential? As a leader, you empower them to do so. You don’t just talk and expect others to “do.” You listen, you understand, and you act.

Driving out fear and breaking down silos

Were you ever a junior employee who was scared of the boss? Could you deliver your best under those conditions?

There were probably times when you had questions you were too afraid to ask and opinions you kept to yourself. And the more that boss reacted to your mistakes, the more mistakes you made. Then you’d try to cover them up, hoping they wouldn’t be discovered.

That’s what fear does. Fear kills quality.

You, your managers, and your supervisors need to share an understanding of the need to drive out fear. Your employees should feel free to report problems, own up to their mistakes without being asked, and know that you’re there to make things better without punishment.

At Tallyfy, we’ve seen that some of the best quality and process improvement suggestions come from the people doing the work - but if you don’t have open lines of communication, you’ll never hear those suggestions.

When people work as a team, they achieve more than they would alone. Although your company has departments, they can’t work in isolation. If product designers never work with production, and if production doesn’t work with sales, your organization is never going to reach its potential.

Deming recommends that departments recognize, communicate with, and serve the teams that receive their work - as well as keeping end-users of products or services in mind.

Quotas, slogans, and what really motivates people

Slogans sound nifty, but do they have any real effect? “We put people first” is a typical example. It sounds great, but what’s its practical meaning? How does it apply to every worker in your value chain?

Deming was alive to the resentments that generalized catch-phrases cause. He pointed out that any productivity or quality problems you face won’t be fixed with a slogan. Instead, you need to look into business process improvement. If your processes work well, then your business is already delivering good quality.

We also can’t expect generalized goals to become personal ones. Deming recommends setting individualized goals for every person, and along with the new goals, there needs to be a roadmap showing them how to achieve them.

It’s true that you need some numerical targets, but for too many companies, setting a quota becomes a replacement for good leadership. In Deming’s opinion, high production targets make quality suffer.

Think about it - if you’re a production line worker and you get paid per piece, you’ll finish as many pieces as possible. You’re working as fast as you can, but are you working as well as you can?

Do numbers go out the window? They don’t. But instead of measuring people with quotas, the numbers should evaluate the process. When you set a numerical target, are you encouraging shortcuts that affect quality? What behavior would you prefer to motivate?

Remember - what you measure is what you get.

Removing barriers to pride and enabling self-improvement

Deming believed that taking pride in one’s work is essential to quality. You’ve probably experienced this yourself. When you love what you do, you do it better. But if people are constantly criticizing you and comparing you to others, you stop enjoying what you previously loved. Process problems also cause frustration. You’re expected to deliver X output, but you need Y input, and Z tools would help. If you don’t have the right inputs and tools, delivering X becomes a daily nightmare. Are you to blame? No. The process needs fixing.

Let’s take this further. You’ve been struggling for a year because the process you’re working in is flawed. Come performance appraisal time, the numbers show your work is barely acceptable. Meanwhile, a colleague who constantly makes mistakes gets praised because the numbers look good. How much do you love what you do right now?

Deming makes a tough call on managers. Your job is to help other people do their jobs by creating systems that work. If someone falls outside of the system, you correct that. But if they’re working inside the system, you work with them to figure out where it fails.

While Deming talks about on-the-job training first, he also advocates personal growth through continued education. When people are learning things relevant to their jobs, their skills improve, and they’re better able to face the challenges ahead.

Just as exercise makes a body more agile, education helps improve our thinking. The better the quality of the skill-sets your business has at its disposal, says Deming, the better the overall quality you can deliver.

Making transformation everybody’s job

Dr. Deming points out that if you want to improve quality or productivity, you need to look at your systems rather than your people. But when it comes to finding solutions, he advocates getting as much input as possible from those who carry out the process.

He suggests using business process notation such as a flowchart to capture processes as they are. Next, we ask people to help us think about how we can change processes to improve the quality of their outputs. Since each step impacts subsequent ones, preparing for transformation becomes everybody’s job.

When the time comes to implement change, your team is ready to make it happen. They might spot a few extras that could work better - and they won’t be afraid to share their observations.

A mistake we made early on was assuming the quality department alone could drive transformation - but compliance-focused industries like financial services and legal taught us that the real shift happens when quality becomes everyone’s job, not just the quality department’s checklist. A law firm shared that replacing 100+ memorized process steps with systematic templates doubled their case capacity per attorney.

This is where modern tools make an enormous difference. With workflow software like Tallyfy, implementing the process changes that stem from Deming’s thinking becomes practical. There’s no need for staff to remember every change when they receive full instructions for process tasks through Tallyfy. And when you and your team decide that a detail could work more efficiently, making the change part of the way you always work is as simple as editing a process step.

Why Deming’s thinking matters more than ever

Here’s what I think most people miss about Deming’s 14 points: they’re not a checklist. They’re a philosophy. And in an age where every organization is racing to adopt AI and automation, this philosophy is more critical than it’s ever been.

I learned this the hard way at Tallyfy - if your process for handling quality issues is a mess of emails, phone calls, and tribal knowledge, automating that mess just means the mess happens faster. I’ve seen this pattern repeat itself across dozens of implementations.

The companies that truly internalize these 14 points - rather than treating them as something they read once and forgot - are the ones that sustain their gains year after year. They’re also the ones best positioned to benefit from AI, because they’ve already done the hard work of defining how things should actually run.

From a practical perspective, using Deming’s 14 points as an overarching philosophy will result in change - and it’ll be a change for the better. Start with one process. Define it. Improve it. Then move to the next one.

Deming’s 14 points move from theory to practice when you have the right tools, and continuous improvement becomes a reality - not just another slogan on the wall.