Читать книгу Driving Eureka! - Doug Hall - Страница 45

I had just returned home for the Christmas holiday from the University of Maine, where I was in my junior year studying chemical engineering. With a sense of urgency, my father, Merwyn Bradford (Buzz) Hall, sat me down in our family living room.

“I learned something amazing this fall from a statistician named Dr. Deming,” he explained. “With manufacturing, it is well understood that you have a choice. You can either have high quality or low cost. You can’t have both. This fall I’ve learned that you can have both if you apply system thinking to manufacturing.”

To be honest, my mind at the time was more on spending time with my high school girlfriend, whom I would soon marry and spend my life with, than on hearing about some statistician.

But Dad was not to be stopped. With an uncharacteristic passion he said, “Doug, this is really important for you to understand. It’s going to change the way companies are run. Deming’s done it. He is the reason why the Japanese cars are so much better quality and Detroit is having so much trouble competing with them.”

The conversation with my dad got my attention. It made sense to me logically. But what really caught my attention was the emotion my dad expressed. As an engineering physics major, he was not prone to being emotional.

Over that holiday we talked more about what he had learned. He taught me the difference between special cause and common cause errors. He taught me about “Plan, Do, Study, Act” cycles of learning. I didn’t know it at the time, but that conversation would change the trajectory of my life and how I looked at the world.

Applying Dr. Deming’s teaching would be the secret to the success of my work at Procter & Gamble, my companies, my books, and even my approach to philanthropy.

Years later, thanks to Larry Stewart, one of the earliest Innovation Engineering Pioneers, I would have the honor of teaching Innovation Engineering in Powell, Wyoming, Dr. Deming’s hometown. In Powell, I told the story of how my dad had taught me that you didn’t have to make a choice; you could have high quality and low cost if you changed your system. I added, “I am here to teach you that, when it comes to innovation, you also don’t have to make a choice. You can have both increased innovation speed and decreased risk, if you change your system of thinking.”