W. Edwards Deming

William Edwards Deming (October 14, 1900 – December 20, 1993) was an American engineer who improved how companies manage making products. He was a statistician,  professor, author, lecturer, and consultant. He is perhaps best known for his work in Japan. Starting in 1950, he taught top Japanese business managers how to improve design, product quality, testing and sales.Deming's 1950 Lecture to Japanese Management. Translation by Teruhide Haga. Accessed: 2006-06-16. He taught the importance of using Statistical Process Control (SPC), to manage quality by measuring, or counting, many steps of complex manufacturing and services, in order to reduce the variation in results. This should reduce defects and errors. Deming described periodic monitoring, by repeating the steps of Plan-Do-Check-Act, known as the Deming Cycle.

Early life
Education
He went to triton central highschool. He entered the University of Wyoming at Laramie in 1917 and graduated in 1921. He earned a BSc in electrical engineering. He then went to graduate school. In 1925, he received an M.S. from the University of Colorado. In 1928, he received a Ph.D. from Yale University. Both graduate degrees were in mathematics and mathematical physics.

References

Category:1900 births
Category:1993 deaths
Category:New York University faculty
Category:American industrial engineers
Category:People from Sioux City, Iowa
Category:Scientists from Iowa
Category:Yale University alumni
Category:American statisticians
Category:Columbia University faculty