Improvement efforts should focus on systems, processes, and methods, not on individual workers. Those efforts that focus on improving the attentiveness, carefulness, speed, etc., of individual workers — without changing the systems, processes, and methods — constitute a low-yield strategy with negligible short-term results

Peter Scholtes

Fix specification errors early. To fix later, they will cost:

- 500% more at design stage

- 1,000% more at coding

- 2,000% more at unit test

- 20,000% more at delivery

Barry Boehm

In spite of appearances, people seldom know what they want until you give them what they ask for.

Gerald M. Weinberg

If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

Gerald M. Weinberg

There’s a way to do it better – find it.

Thomas Edison

Don’t automate, oblirate.

Michael Hammer

Quality is the result of a carefully constructed cultural environment. It has to be the fabric of the organization, not part of the fabric.

Phillip Crosby

Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.

Peter Drucker

What I want to do has no end, since I am on the endless frontier of a branch of knowledge. I can go on as long as the years are granted to me.

Joseph Juran

Without a standard there is no logical basis for making a decision or taking action.

Joseph Juran

It is most important that top management be quality-minded. In the absence of sincere manifestation of interest at the top, little will happen below.

Joseph Juran

When you buy bananas all you want is the fruit not the skin, but ou also have to pay for the skin also. It is a waste. And you the customer should not have to pay for the waste.

Shigeo Shingo

If a problem is left unsolved and the supervisor in uninformed, neither kaizen nor cost reduction can be applied. When there is trouble, stopping the machine means also identifying the problem. Once the problem is clear, kaizen becomes possible.

Taiichi Ohno

You cannot be Lean, you can only become Lean.

Masaaki Imai

When you are out observing on the gemba, do something to help them. If you do, people will come to expect that you can help them and will look forward to seeing you again on the gemba.

Taiichi Ohno

The first step in exceeding your customer’s expectations is to know those expectations.

Roy H. Williams

Without standards, there can be no improvement.

Taiichi Ohno

The more inventory a company has, ... the less likely they will have what they need.

Taiichi Ohno

The ideas of control and improvement are often confused with one another. This is because quality control and quality improvement are inseparable.

Kaoru Ishikawa

Kaizen is about changing the way things are. If you assume that things are all right the way they are, you can't do Kaizen. So change something!

Taiichi Ohno

The Kaizen Philosophy assumes that our way of life -- be it our working life, our social life, or our home life -- deserves to be constantly improved.

Masaaki Imai

There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.

Roger Staubach

Unless you have 100% customer satisfaction, you must improve.

Horst Schulz

Kaizen is like a hotbed that nurtures small and ongoing changes, while innovation is like magma that appears in abrupt eruptions from time to time.

Masaaki Imai

The purpose of any activity must be to provide value to someone else. That is the justification for a human organization. Whether it's a government or a school, or a company.

James P. Womack

Er kan geen controle of verbetering plaatsvinden als je niet over de feiten en accurate gegevens over de werkvloer beschikt. Het is de taak van het middenmanagement en de managers hieronder om ervoor te zorgen dat hun gegevens accuraat zijn zodat het bedrijf de werkelijke feiten kent.

Kaoru Ishikawa

Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.

Steve Jobs

There should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety.

Augustus Welby Pugin

That’s what all we are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else.

Charlie Chaplin

It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn how to draw it in a few seconds.

Paula Scher

Design is the concious effort to impose a meaninful order.

Victor Papanek

Preaching quality won't help.

Michael Hammer + James Champy

Excellence is in the details. Give attention to the details and excellence will come.

Perry Paxton

We have 50,000 moments of truth out there every day.

Jan Carlzon

Self-generated quality control is more effective than inspector-generated quality control.

Tom Peters

Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

Steve Jobs

We try to solve very complicated problems without letting people know how complicated the problem was. That's the appropriate thing.

Jonathan Ives

The defining qualities are about use: ease and simplicity. Caring beyond the functional imperative, we also acknowledge that products have a significance way beyond traditional views of function.

Jonathan Ives

Technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.

Steve Jobs

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that.

Steve Jobs

Every good product I've ever seen is because a group of people cared deeply about making something wonderful that they and their friends wanted. They wanted to use it themselves.

Steve Jobs

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. … Our inner balance, and even our very existence, depends on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to our lives.

Albert Einstein

If no problem is recognized, there is no recognition of the need for improvement.

Masaaki Imai

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.

Tom Peters

All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing the time line by reducing the non-value adding wastes.

Taiichi Ohno

When you buy bananas all you want is the fruit not the skin, but you have to pay for the skin also. It is a waste. And you the customer should not have to pay for the waste.

Shigeo Shingo 

The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognize.

Shigeo Shingo

First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.

Leo Rosten

Eenvoud is niet het kenmerk van de beginner. Het is de duur bevochten stempel van de meester.

Godfried Bomans

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

Epictetus