W. Edwards Deming Quotes

I wonder sometimes if manufacturers of foolproof items keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things.

It is in Toyota's DNA that mistakes made once will not be repeated.

I would have tested the furniture if they'd asked me.

It's impossible to have zero defects.

No one knows the cost of a defective product - don't tell me you do. You know the cost of replacing it, but not the cost of a dissatisfied customer.

I am hands-on in any project that I am associated with. I just don't want to put my face or name and lend it to a product that I'm not behind a hundred percent.

No organization, whether it's police or physicians or whatever, wants to have its errors held up to the light of day, but it's wrong, as is coming out so well.

We concluded that one thing we can do is to just go through the locker room and make sure that if anybody is using anything, it's a product from one of the approved manufacturers.

I don't micromanage, but I do care deeply about every product we make. Every one goes through me, and I try most of our products before they go to market, including our John Paul Pet flea and tick shampoo. If I don't like it, it's not coming out.

I'm a control freak. If you're going to slap my name on something, I would like to control it.

I just figure if it has my name on it, and I want to make people feel good about wearing it, I can't pass it off.

A failure will not appear until a unit has passed final inspection.

Companies need to understand that the quicker they report product safety problems to CPSC, the quicker we can take action together and protect consumers from injuries.

If you're putting your name on something, it's really important to be a part of it, or else people will just do whatever they want with it. And then it's not really you, and it won't be true.

It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.

Developer testing is an important step towards accountability. It gives developers a way to demonstrate the quality of the software they produce.

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

Testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!

Build to a standard, not a price.

Recognizing past mistakes is a far cry from making reparations for them.

I wouldn't put out anything that I didn't want to ride to.

Consumer accountability drives quality and efficiency.

Maybe it's my age that makes me very conscious of loose threads, but I don't think that's an earmark of a fine product. And whenever I have a deep-seated feeling like that, I convey it to the person who made it. Sometimes they curse me, and sometimes they thank me.

There is a higher degree of operational excellence and rigor demanded of Stripe than of most companies.

I'm 100 per cent involved in everything that happens with my name, and I think if you're not, then there's something wrong.