William Edwards Deming Biography

William Edwards Deming

After studying electrical engineering at the University of Wyoming and mathematical physics at Yale, he began his career working for the Department of Agriculture. He developed statistical sampling techniques first used in the 1940 census, which he expanded for use in quality control, a subject on which he lectured in Japan after World War II. Japan's highest honor within the business community is named for him, and he is the 1960 recipient of Japan's Second Order Medal of the Sacred Treasure. American companies were slow to adopt his theories of statistical process control, but by the 1980s he was welcomed warmly at business seminars nationwide.