Walter Deming’s legacy had an enormous impact on manufacturing, and I’d argue, on media operations. In 1950’s post-war Japan he preached the importance of process and workflow in improving manufacturing excellence. He is recognized as the key influence in transforming the Japenese economy into a model for quality – think Toyota. In fact, Japan created the “Deming Prize” awarded to those who have impacted quality control in manufacturing.
And what does that have to do with order management in media?
Among other things, Demings preached the importance of having a full knowledge of the end to end process in creating anything. And this is particularly important in our media business, because it’s complexity encompasses multiple platforms, from CRM to OMS, DMP, Ad Serving, Billing and Data Management. Understanding these “links in a chain” is a never-ending pursuit.
Demings advocated for the “appreciation of a system” including, among other things:
Understanding the overall processes involving suppliers, producers and customers.
Understanding how interactions between elements of a system and the rules that govern them force the system to behave as a single organism.
Think of this as workflow being a series of links in a chain.
Personally, I found Deming’s thought process inspiring early in my career. It helped in viewing ad operations wholistically from quote to cash, as the phrase goes.
I’d recommend looking at “Out of the Crisis” in which Deming elaborated on his theory of management and quality control, and detailed that in his “System of Profound Knowledge” – gotta love that understatement, right? Also, “Demings Journey to Profound Knowledge” by John Willis is also very good – listening to that as an audio book at the moment. (No AI was used in the composition of this post)
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