Statistical thinking is so hard for managers to accept, that there is a temptation to treat it as a barrier to quality rather than the essential foundation. Statistics in quality is nothing new. Statistics even at this level, used thoughout industry and commerce, would lead to very useful gains. These gains are nothing to those which come when statistical and scientific thinking are used to study complete systems, and management itself. The changes that brought these about were based on statistics, which is why Florence Nightingale was one of our founders.
Quality management has more to do with people than with machines.
People are the most variable, least predictable, and most important part of any system. Managers struggling with complex problems usually feel that science and statistics can not help them. It is easy to see why. Few have ever known statistics as anything but the routine collection of figures, or the application of text-book formulae. These are useful, but very limited in what they can do.