“The prevailing – and foolish – attitude is that a good manager can be a good manager anywhere, with no special knowledge of the production process he’s managing.”

You know the cost of replacing it, but not the cost of a dissatisfied customer.

A bad system will beat a good person every time.

You should not ask questions without knowledge.

Research shows that the climate of an organization influences an individual’s contribution far more than the individual himself.

Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.

Hold everybody accountable? Ridiculous!

Quality is the responsibility of the top people. Its origin is in the boardroom. They are the ones who decide.

Declining productivity and quality means your unit production costs stay high but you don’t have as much to sell.

Export anything to a friendly country except American management.

Quality is pride of workmanship.

I predicted in 1950 that in five years, manufacturers the world over would be screaming for protection. It took only four years.

Rational behavior requires theory. Reactive behavior requires only reflex action.

If you don’t understand how to run an efficient operation, new machinery will just give you new problems of operation and maintenance.

American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan. But they don’t know what to copy.

I am forever learning and changing.

The big problems are where people don’t realise they have one in the first place.