S4 E2 - Derek Lewis - Legacy of Quality Control Pioneers

I have a great discussion between Derek Lewis and John Willis, focusing on the historical and philosophical underpinnings of quality control and those who were paramount to the movement including Walter Shewhart, W. Edwards Deming, and Joseph M. Juran. The dialogue includes anecdotes, critiques, and appreciations of Shewhart and Deming's work, including a dramatic rendition of a critique by Juran. 

Additionally, we touch on the dynamics of recognition and credit within the field, highlighting the broader system thinking introduced by Deming to Japanese industries and contrasting perspectives on their contributions to quality control.

Transcript

John Willis: [00:00:00] Hey this is gonna go up on profound but I gotta, we're gonna have some real fun today. I I got Derek Lewis with me. So those who have read my book, it says with Derek Lewis, he's been my partner in crime for how long we've been together now? At least three years. Three years. Yeah. Yeah. So you know, Derek I met Derek through Gene Gene's old editor, Todd, and, and you know, we just mind melded on how to collaborate, and we've been working together on a couple of books, and we're shortly announcing some new book we're working on, but we've got a couple more in the queue, so we're kind of going nuts here, but but what a couple things, so the for those of you who may remember before Deming's Journey to Profound Knowledge came out Derek and I did sort of a three chapter dramatic version and, and Derek read it like amazingly well, he knew the material so well, because we, we had gone through the material over and [00:01:00] over, you know, like, like, we had, I think, eight revisions on the book.

Right. And every time you would do a loud out loud read, we'd sit together. We'd go through it like we take all the input and we'd say, all right, well, we can fix that. And I, at that point, I was like, man, you should, I get you to do a rendition here. So we had a little bit of fun. Last week Alan Scott on LinkedIn I'll put his profile here and the show notes, but He posted you know, we, we had talked about in why don't you tell how we talked about the the memo that shocked the world that we talked about in in Deming's Journey to Profound Knowledge.

Yes. 

Derek Lewis: So, you know, Walter Shewhart is the father, the founder, the the originator of statistical process control. And we, you know, in the, in the book we say, you know, whenever something amazing happens, you think there should be a parade and yeah.[00:02:00] You know, parade and going down through through Main Street, but there was there was no fanfare.

There was no, the world didn't know what it had just. Received the gift that it had been given when Walter Shewhart submitted a one page memo to his boss and 1 3rd. Sorry, 2 3rd of the page was actually a diagram, a simple diagram of of anybody would recognize statistical process control. And and there we, you know, we call it the memo that changed the world.

John Willis: Yeah. Yeah. No. And you know, and I think, you know, I mean, we were pretty clear in the book of like, and Deming, you know, to his credit, I think, you know was you know, just always giving praise to Shewart. And I think that, you know, I can't think of, you know, again, I think our research has been pretty, pretty vast in the last three years about Dr.

Deming and Shewart and all that. But, but I'm sure people [00:03:00] there are, there are definitely people who have way more experience in this. It'd be hard pressed to find somebody who could say something negative about Dr. Shewart. So with that, I this Alan Scott had found not only the the, the, the article that where this one page memo, the one page, the control chart, the third, you know, like a two thirds of the page control chart, and then a short memo, you know, the one page miracle.

And And in that though, you know, that was great to find the, I, I'd found like a diagram of it, but this was actually, you said it was the what was the publication, this issue of industrial quality control, gratefully dedicated by the board of directors of ASQC. I'm assuming that's the American society 

for quality control.

Yeah, so 1967. So in this edition, they were this, you know, yeah, this publication they did tribute to Walter Shewhart. So some really great stories. [00:04:00] I mean, I, I, I know there's a really interesting story by Van Hyra Busch. And, but some of the people, you know, you want to rattle, some of the people we mentioned in our book, are really big parts, are, are sort of have these, like, really awesome tributes to Shewhart.

Yeah, I was actually a 

Derek Lewis: little jealous or envious, I guess, whenever we got this. I wish that we would have had this one. No kidding. We're in Deming's journey to profound knowledge because there's a career Ishikawa, which was our totally awesome guy out of the University of Tokyo. There was Harold Kellogg that he worked with whenever he was on the the war production board for standards 

John Willis: and quality.

I mean, I mean, most people know, but when Deming worked with him. Yeah. Yeah. 

Derek Lewis: Yeah. Yeah. When, yeah, when Deming worked with him and then here's Olmstead, same thing. E. G. D. Patterson was a [00:05:00] famous mathematician that both Shewhart and Deming studied with in Britain. I mean, it's just, it's a treasure trove of who's who in Deming's life.

John Willis: Yeah, yeah. And then there's J. M. Jurand. Never met a fellow he liked. Yeah, it's interesting, you know I've, we, we tried to stay away from all this you know, who created the miracle in Japan and Shoreshin, I guess I always pronounce his name wrong, but, and, and, you know, we don't talk much about Juran a little bit, but it seems like there's always this sort of Juran is really sort of trying to downplay the Deming influence and, and you know, and then, you know, some of the other people that went over there, I think there's a little jealousy and Deming got probably, you know, I mean, when you look at some of the books, the miracle maker, the miracle, you know, you know, we were clear to say, you To try not, even though we are sycophants for Demi, we, we tried in the book to really not, you 

Derek Lewis: know, 

John Willis: [00:06:00] there you go.

We pretend. That's right. But we did say, you know, Deming didn't create the miracle in Japan, the Japanese created the miracle in Japan. Like we, like we made a clear distinction about that. And, and I don't know that I never saw or heard, you know, I guess two meta points is that one is I don't. I don't think I've ever heard Deming really talk ill of anybody, including Juran or anybody else, but boy Juran just probably didn't like Deming, and so in this, like, glorious list of amazing people who have basically praised Shewhart, Juran goes on to talk about 

Derek Lewis: Go ahead.

The names that I just mentioned. Yeah, I have to say they have all written tributes in memoriam to Walter Shewhart for Walter Shewhart's special memorial issues. So he's dead and this is like a global, you know, confab of here's our praise and here's our take on Walter Shewhart's [00:07:00] life. 

John Willis: So, you know, and so I'm going to do is ask you to read in the very dramatic style that we did the three chapter of Deming's Journey of Profound Knowledge and.

And I think we're gonna have a little fun. I think you're gonna have a little fun when you get in point. I will, the only thing I will say is every time you hear the word Shewart, assume he really meant Deming. All right, roll up your sleeves, my buddy, let's go.

Derek Lewis: My association with Shewart goes back to the mid 1920s. I was then a young engineer at the Hawthorne works of Western electric company and a charter member of the tiny newly formed statistical. Quality Control, Department of the Inspection Branch of that huge works. Shewart, a mathematical statistician, was a member of a newly created Bell Telephone Laboratories team, which had been given responsibilities to provide the various telephone companies an assurance of the quality of Western Electric products.

This team, whose intellectual leader was [00:08:00] the late T. J. Quarles. 

John Willis: There you go. Bang. Yeah. Yeah, but go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it gets better, folks. 

Derek Lewis: Who's intellectual leader was emphatically not Walter Shewhart. 

John Willis: Again, I got to inject here. I don't think in any of our research we've ever found and anybody I've ever talked to have ever said anything but like pure accolades about 

Derek Lewis: Walter Shewhart.

And I've never come across anything that brought the question of who created statistical process control into doubt. Oh, yeah, yeah. There you go. Yeah. 

John Willis: It was Walters. Yeah. Okay. There we go. Good. Here's 

Derek Lewis: intellectual leader was the

late D. A. Quarles. not only to measure and r They also made creative p controlled methodology, q sampling theory, control the same time she would p [00:09:00] executives the image of a some flashes of brilliant but mainly impractical and unintelligible. 

John Willis: Sure, unintelligible, yeah, okay. 

Derek Lewis: At this outset, I tended to share this view.

What is it, Joe?

When it fell to me. To pilot Shewhart on his maiden voyage through a large assortment of factory operations, it was at once evident that his ignorance of such matters was quite extensive. Yet there was a youthful exuberance about him. Now, of course, Juran is younger than Shewhart. Yeah, at the 

John Willis: time. There you go.

Okay. 

Derek Lewis: Yeah. There was a youthful exuberance about him, a keen inquiring curiosity. So this is his positive 

John Willis: part of the, like he had to somehow get a little bit of positive in the two sentences between the 100 sentences. Or he's tearing them to shreds, but okay. Yeah, sure. Yeah. 

Derek Lewis: Yeah, this, this is his this is as close as, as he [00:10:00] comes to a tribute of Walter Shewhart after his death.

Yeah. After his death. Good point. A keen inquiring curiosity leading to imaginative questions and proposals relative to application of control charts and sampling. So, according to, to Juran, Walter Shewhart had a curiosity about control charts. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was, 

John Willis: yeah, so he had a couple of these, yeah, yeah, it's going on, but yeah, you know, also was sort of interested in this thing that he created the one page memo, but go ahead.

Derek Lewis: Over the years, my image of Shewhart came to change radically. I came to feel that his contributions were of two very different kinds. One, a conceptual approach to the theory of control. This was mainly philosophical in nature, presented in general language, embellished with mathematical models, and largely beyond the grasp of the unsophisticated reader or listener.

Two, some specific practical tools [00:11:00] for control, of which the most widely known is the Shewart Control Chart, that elegant, perpetual taste I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I can't get over it. That elegant perpetual test of significance. So there, there, there is a positive word, elegant. It actually is, you know, it says the one page memo is elegant.

And here's where it gets good. This is, this is his positive spin on 

John Willis: it. A tribute after the man died, but go 

Derek Lewis: ahead. In memoriam. Shewhart was, in addition, a competent promoter. His inventions of practical, elegant tools gave him the aura of a doer, and thereby made him immune from curt dismissal as a pure theorist.

In addition, he possessed a mystique derived from the then novel use of conceptual models. Moreover, he had no reticence about speaking or writing so that he was [00:12:00] increasingly in demand. I mean, he makes him sound like P. T. Barnum. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. He's just running his own circus on a snake oil salesman.

Moreover, he had no reticence about speaking or writing so that he was increasingly in demand. Because that, of course, is the, the only way that you get offered and, and, you know, again, 

John Willis: Like he is really talking about Dr. Deming here, but go ahead. He just, you know, 

Derek Lewis: Deming, Deming. Wasn't dead yet. So Gerome, this was his one.

John Willis: He knew he couldn't do this for Deming. So he figured, well, you know what, I'll do it on, on short. I don't know what's really about Deming. 

Derek Lewis: And Deming will read it. Deming will read it and he'll know that it's really about Deming. That's right. That's right. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. However, the invitations, and they were international, came from the world of the intelligentsia.

Rather than [00:13:00] from the world of managers. In dealing with managers, he had neither the operating experience nor the vocabulary to communicate effectively. This same lack of communication necessarily limited the dissemination of his concepts. Now, I'll just 

John Willis: hold off for one second there, right? You know, again, I, I, I think what Juran is done here is being an absolute jerk.

 Now, and, you know, Juran was a brilliant person, there was some, like, you know, I mean, one day I think we'll write a book about Juran, although I think we'll have a bit of a different perspective of that, of how the arc of his profound it will be, but, but based on this, but, and, and some of this bears truth, it's just that, you know, the way he has to go about it, you know, I mean, I think there was, You know, the control charts were complex. 

You know, mid-level managers did have problems. So I think if people, some people were reading this going, Hey, you guys don't even know. I mean, we do know, I mean that, like, you know, some of the sort of fallout and, and when you get [00:14:00] into the mid fifties, 1950s and Japan was, there was some complexity of what Deming was teaching to the higher level people than the mid-level.

And, and EnJurant had. Real success there. So like, again, I give Juran his due for his impact on Japan, and some of this is true, but just the way he has to go about this and, you know, and just be humble and accept that you were, you know, a contributor to modern management. But, all right, I just wanted to get that in here.

So. Well, 

Derek Lewis: and you know, the other thing for me with with Juran and, and, and Shewhart is that well, you know what, I'll just, let me, I've only got one paragraph left and then

it's a good one. Shewhart's work remains very much among us. The tools which bear his name and which are in such widespread use would by themselves be enough to give his name an immortality. The effect of his more philosophical concepts is far more [00:15:00] difficult to appraise. I do not happen to subscribe to the belief that in this respect, Shewhart marked the beginning of a new era.

He did indeed probe into the concepts of control, as did his predecessors and contemporaries. Some of these became more immediately effective because of their greater ease of communicating with practicing managers. Now, he just got finished saying that that Shewhart couldn't communicate with, with managers.

And now he's saying that, you 

John Willis: know. But again, you just see the subtle he's talking. Absolutely. I think, I think you could substitute the word chew it with Deming everywhere, but here he's talking about Deming. Yeah. 

Derek Lewis: And then this, this is the, this is the last sentence. And this is, I mean, if we were building a metaphorical coffin, this would be the last nail.

At best, it seems to me, Shewhart's philosophical concepts have joined the numerous streams which collect and flow into our consciousness so thoroughly co mingled that we cannot [00:16:00] trace the sources.

John Willis: Yeah, I mean, okay, you. You stuck the knife in. He wasn't dead yet. You twisted it. He was dying. You literally twisted it again. He died. You buried him, and then your last sentence was to spit on his grave. 

Derek Lewis: Yeah, you know what, he probably did contribute, but I mean, you know, there are so many contributors, who can really tell how much of this was short.

John Willis: The thing was, the reason I wanted to do this, right, is when I showed this, I had a call, me and Derek had a call last Friday, and I was showing him this, and he's reading it out loud, and he is laughing. Twice as hard as he did this time and tell you they're all genuine laughs. Right? But you know, and I'm like, we got to do this 

Derek Lewis: live, but I was out of breath.

I was, I was a staff. I mean, whenever you sent this over to me, I printed it out and then he said, do you see the, the, the tribute from Jorana? No. And so I, you know, quickly rifled through the pages here. [00:17:00] And then I. I was expecting it to be effusive. I was not expecting it to be. And good riddance. 

John Willis: Yeah, really.

Yeah. Yeah. Like that would have been like, like just much easier. That's right. Like we didn't need them anyway. Thanks. You know, but, but. It's like the thing you said I thought was like worth like sort of noodling over just a little bit here is Oh, what the hell did the editors let him print this? I mean, did they not read it?

I mean, did they like oh, you know what? We'll just put it in. Oh, shoot after we published it We probably shouldn't have done that. I mean like it's a tribute a memorial. 

Derek Lewis: Well, you know what let me let me look real quick What what was? When did Walter Shewhart die?

Alright, so he died in March of 1967. This is the August issue. So if it's the August, if they had to distribute it in August, they probably printed it in [00:18:00] July. So that means that You know, they, after she died, it was probably determined after the fact, oh, we should dedicate the next issue. Yeah. Yeah. To industrial quality control to the father of industrial 

John Willis: quality.

And they, they, you know, there's probably a window where they had to reach out and then, you know, they, they didn't have email and Gmail, you know, so. 

Derek Lewis: I mean, there's just page after page here of tribute and tribute, and you have to take out. Here's the here's 1 from Leslie Simon. We're talking about Deming at Aberdeen.

He was a major general of of the US Army. Then, you know, so all of all of these. In addition to you know, the content that actually goes in there, it would be very easy for me to believe that some junior editor, you know, quickly skimmed over it, didn't see any bad words, said, Oh, this is Joseph Juran. Of course, it's going to be great.

And 

John Willis: not to have Juran in this, you know, he's one of the major, you know, but yeah, it's gotta be that nobody, [00:19:00] nobody actually read it, you know. Anyway, I thought we'd have some fun. Just a short little you know, just it's, it's hard to sort of like you know, it's hard to sort of figure out like, you know, who Joseph, I mean, you know, from what I've read, an amazingly hard scrabble life as well.

It's an interesting story of how he came over and I don't want to get into that right now. And, and, you know, pulled his bootstraps up like that, I mean, became a major influencer in, in, in how the world thinks about leadership management and the way we do many things you know the, the Pareto effect was sort of not invented by him, but sort of used from original Pareto you know, just things like major contributions, but I just, You know, there are these bitter people and you know, I just like, you know, how you're going to be, you know, like people will know about [00:20:00] Juran in a hundred years from now.

And I just, well, you know, when it, when the coins flipped, I would have rather been Deming than Juran, regardless of who won the stupid race. You know what I'm saying? In that, how people think about, Who I was as a human, and this just doesn't reflect 

Derek Lewis: well, you know, it strikes me that that Jurand had the opposite mindset of Deming.

So one of the, you know, the things that we point out in the, in the book is that Deming got the, the Japanese industry. To think not of their companies as a system, but as the entire Japanese economy as one giant 

John Willis: system. System thinking, I mean all of that, 

Derek Lewis: yeah. Right, where whenever he came back to the, to the U.

S. he, he criticized Ford and Chrysler and GM for thinking about how do we get, I think his quote with a quote we [00:21:00] used in the book was, how do we get a bigger piece of the pie instead of asking how can we make the pie bigger? Yeah. Juran, there's only so much credit that can go out, so he has to try to get his, increase his share of the pie of credit instead of just saying, you know what, there is enough goodwill and enough praise to go around for everybody.

John Willis: Yeah. No, I, I, you know, I think, you know, I think it takes, you know. I correct me again why I always say Soroson's last name wrong, but with the Saroson or with the, you know, the original guy, McArthur went over 

Derek Lewis: there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the TWI guy who wrote in for TWI Sordenson. Sordenson, he, you know, he got the lights on.

John Willis: Like, so, like, there's a whole, like, debate about, like, Soroson versus Deming, Juran versus Deming, just nonsense, right? But, but like, you know, when I talk to people who challenge me about Soroson, I'm like, [00:22:00] yes. There was somebody that had to get the lights turned on, they had to go into factories, they couldn't do theoretical stuff, they weren't in the cheerleading mode, and I'm not saying Deming was a cheerleader, but like, they were literally, you know, you know, in our book, we're very clear about what he did, and then when Juice decided it wasn't what they needed.

Why they look for alternatives, right? But to that point, you needed somebody to get the basic factory needs up, right? And then you got Deming who puts in this, like, Like, light of like, we can do this. Let's cooperate. The Mount Harkani presentation, like all of that, right? With 80 percent of the controlling wealth is in this meeting.

And he says, you will be, and we talk about this, right? And, and, you know, and, you know, I've talked to leadership people who who literally would, when I was in my Japan study trip, there was a gentleman who Lillie Harden in [00:23:00] 1963 worked alongside Ono said Deming's impact is incalculable, told me, to Toyota, right?

So like, so like the, the status quo control, his, the way he thought about data, that all affected. By about 1955, from my research, some of that stuff didn't flow down as evenly down to mid level managers. Dran came in, and to some of his points here, he spoke directly to mid level managers, was less theoretical, much more practical probably had more practical experience in these factories than both, well, sure, it had plenty of experience, but, but Deming was, you know, more, it was, it was reasonably academic, a lot of consulting so yes, like all three of them But like, but why the other two have to just take such a negative approach can stemming still confounds me.

Derek Lewis: So, and, you know, history, it's very rarely that history is black and white. [00:24:00] The things that we wanted to do in the, in the book was to, to make sure that we stayed. to the truth. As, as you, you know, continually got it. Cause I, I wanted to drink the, the Deming Kool Aid. You continually love, we've, we've got to be objective.

We can't be, you know, so I went through my early 

John Willis: phase of Deming sycophantia. You were coming on board and I was like, I know where you're at, man. I've been here. Let me, let me just sort of slow you down. Like, you know, so yeah. Yeah. 

Derek Lewis: But You know, and that, that's, so we, we traced it, you know, did you know, did Deming really deserve the, the credit that, that he got?

And we traced back, Juran, we traced back Soen and TWI, and we traced back Deming. And I mean, I think we, I hope that we make a compelling case just by presenting the facts with, you know. Pretty decently well documented sources that this a plus B plus C [00:25:00] step 123. This is this is how it happened. And yes, Deming had, like you just said, incalculable impact, but one of the things I loved that that you made sure that we put in there was that nobody had really told the Japanese side of the story.

Right. So none of this would have happened without juice and juice wouldn't have happened without Kenichi Kenichi Koyanagi. 

John Willis: And that story was, you know, we knew that story had not been told. I mean, we're going to get into the depth of this, but, you know, the whole Curious Case of him, the Kenichi, you know, it was like, there was nobody, it was like, it was like this whole gap in his biography before him.

Yeah. He met Deming and then, you know, sort of after Deming was out of Japan, you know, there's like one note of him showing up, you know, in a conference in the United States and no obituary, right? And even the book I published the when we published the, the [00:26:00] letter I sent to Juice. So, surely you guys have, the guy who was the founder of your movement, in our book we point out the gamification he did, like, to, like, manipulate, to get Deming into this situation and play against MacArthur's rules, and for, it's like, we cover that really well, this guy, he, you know, if there's any real, real, and we say this, and I think you, you wrote a good part of this, which is, you know, if there's any real genius here, it was Konyagi.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and, and, and again so that mixture there of Deming and him and he knew and all that stuff you know, like, again, I, you know, I, I think it's, I don't let people, I, you know, very rarely will I let somebody warning me and just having to defend Deming's impact. I did have, I was given a presentation once and some guy in the audience and during the QA, and it was a big forum too, but he front row and he, he was clearly, he [00:27:00] knew his Deming stuff and he, and, and he basically.

Challenged me. He said, you know, and this is the one of the things that come up a lot, you know, Deming was not Soroson's first choice, it was Shewart, and Shewart was sick, and Deming came, and like, you know, well, okay, there's multiple stories of that, you know, there is the one where, you know, you wrote him a letter, you know, asking him to come, but like, okay, let's just flip a coin on that.

But I, I turned to him and I said, you know, let me ask you this, you know, you seem to know Deming pretty well. Do you think the outcome of what happened in Japan would have been different if Deming didn't go and Shewhart went? And he just looked at me with a blank stare and the headlights there and says, it would have been hugely different.

Right. Yeah, 

Derek Lewis: I'll say this and then I will, I'll try to turn off my, my Deming Kool Aid. But I personally, I feel that half of the good that Deming did came from his [00:28:00] It's inspiring encouragement of the Japanese and nobody thought they could do anything. They didn't think that they could do whenever he stood before that, you know, that, that group of industrialists, like you said, the 80 percent or so wealth represented in the nation.

And he told them that they could be a great manufacturing country again. We put it in the book, they, they thought it was crazy, but they didn't. You know, embarrassed. They wanted to save face, so they went along with it, but they didn't even believe in themselves. And Deming, year after year, time after time, I can't remember, it was at 12 or 13 different trips he made to Japan, not counting all the trips that Japanese executives made to Bramstone and D.

C. And always it was encouragement and inspiration and telling them that they could do it and tell him pointing out whenever they had done a great job. He, he, he [00:29:00] believed in the Japanese whenever they didn't believe in themselves. Yeah, 

John Willis: no, no, no. And I think that's You know, the, the stories you hear about him, we heard about him from Doris Quinn and all is that, you know, he, he was, he was on the side of the worker.

Like, if you wanted to learn, if you were willing to roll up your sleeves, you wanted to work, you wanted to, you know, you were sort of like, you know, he was brutal on leadership, you know, the tyranny of the modern, you know, prevailing systems, right. But of management, but yeah. But like, you know, the, the thing that you could see really clear was when he knew people genuinely wanted to learn or try to solve problems or in positions that were sort of stuck under, you know, the, the, the tyranny of the prevailing management systems, whatever the, his quote was, like, he, you know, he was, you know, he was your champion.

So anyway, I wanted to get this one on On tape. I thought we'd have some fun. I think you all will enjoy this. You know, maybe someday we'll write something [00:30:00] more extensive about Juran. But, you know, and just like we tried to be balanced on our positives with with Debbie, we'll try to be, we'll try to balance our negatives of the J.

M. Juran. 

Derek Lewis: Thanks, Derek. Always a pleasure, John.