Finally, finally, I was able to visit my two brothers that live in the Clearwater, Fl area. Baby brother Paul is a machinist and a fine one at that. Oldest brother Pete, Floyd to you, is a welder and general all around make-it, fix-it guy. Pete has a shop on Ulmerton Rd in St. Petersburg, while Paul’s shop is in Oldsmar. At 74, Pete is retired but stays very busy in his shop making and repairing rifle bolts, and creating, if need be, small parts for rare guns. Paul does machine work for a number of large companies in the area, he still has to work for a living. Both brothers have been helping me to create a “paddle” for a game. I say “game” but what it is is an experiment that companies use to teach employees and management alike, the importance of the system in controlling the production, good or bad, of the enterprise. Called the Red Bead Game, it was first used, and popularized by W. Edwards Deming, the American statistician that taught the Japanese how to make quality products in the early 1950’s.
I made this trip with the two women in my life, my wife of 26 years, Carolyn, and her sister, Charlene. after having dinner with brother Paul on Friday evening, the girls dropped me off at Pete’s shop on Saturday morning and took off for Lakeland, a trip of 90 minutes, to see their 99 year old aunt Marie. They spent the day there and returned to retrieve me around 6 pm. From there it was off to the mall to walk and shop ’til 9, then back to the hotel.
I accomplished a lot toward the completion of the game and we all had a great time. Now it is back to work.

Some of you know that I did a week in the hospital for a staph infection on my left index finger. Well thanks to some excellent care and a paltry $23,456, I am good as new. The total for the hospital was kept artificially low because I smuggled in my own Advil. That alone saved me a couple grand.

Generally I give the hospital, Capital Regional, high marks, but as with anything I write, there is a lesson. The lesson here is that to delight customers or patients, the goal is the same. Get it right ALL the time. My treatment required a 2 hour drip of anti-biotic followed by a 30 minute one. This was done both during the day and at night. Four of the five days this went off without a hitch. The evening drips went like this.

Start 2 hour drip at 10:30 pm

First drip ends at 12:30 pm

Start 30 minute drip 12:30 pm

Second drip ends 1:00 am

Sleep

Though I am usually asleep by 11 or so, I was able to work with these times. My internal clock wakes me at 5:30 am so there was a good night’s sleep of 6 and 1/2 hours.

Wednesday night, however, was just a tad off.

Start 2 hour drip at 11:00 pm

First drip ends at 1:00 am

Call for nurse at 1:00 am

Call for nurse at 1:30 am

Second drip started at 1:45 am

Second drip ends at 2:15 am

Call for nurse at 2:30 am to remove IV connection

Call for nurse at 3:00 am to remove IV connection

Get out of bed at 3:30 am and roll IV pump to nurses station

When asked how they can help me I say, ” Can you give me directions

to the elevators? I would like to go down to the next floor to see if

someone down there will remove this IV as I have been calling for a

nurse for over 2 hours.”

They had the IV disconnected in 5 minutes

Sleep around 4:30 am for 1 hour, wide awake at 5:30 am

I have already opined in these pages that I believe the U.S. needs just one state to adopt the management theories of W. Edwards Deming and it could start an avalanche of continual improvement that would propel this nation to the number one spot once again. Imagine if a state like Florida adopted state wide the theories of the man that taught the Japanese how to build quality into everything they made. Some of the worst things about management by numbers would fall by the wayside. Yearly reviews, incentive pay, ranking of employees, all hurt not help cooperation, which is the key to continual improvement.

In this country we have a grand tradition of “defending the old ways”. While that may make a great basis for a novel, it does not help us out of the mess we are in. Before WWII Japan had plenty of “old ways” that they had relied on for centuries, after the war they had to adopt new ways to rebuild the nation. The U.S. has been in decline in world markets for the last 30 years, and not just to Japan but to many nations that are adopting new ideas about how business is done. It was first in 1950 that W. Edwards Deming taught the Japanese control of quality through statistical methods. It took Japan just 30 years from then, using what an American taught them, to fundamentally change the way things of high quality are made. As a result, Deming was discovered in America. By 1980, Deming was 80 years old. No matter, as it was his dream to see his own country succeed the way the Japanese had. Working long hours the last 13 years of his life, Dr. Deming was able to effect the same kind of change in companies such as Ford Motor Company, Xerox, and Procter and Gamble.

So don’t defend the old when it is holding us back from a new fresh approach that will bring this nation it’s greatest successes yet.

Heading into my 65th year on this big spinning rock I have given to reminiscing. A young man from my past, Alexander Austin, has become quite a sensation in the area around Kansas City. Known locally as Mural Man, Alexander has decorated the Power and Light District of KC with some of the largest and most stunning murals anywhere. For this he has been hailed as something of a urban hero, and that is fantastic.
I said from my past so I will use some E-Ink and tell you the story. Around 1982 I was just starting in the sign business in Tallahassee, FL. The North Florida Fair held an art contest each year and as it happened I was asked to be a judge. I remember little about the works on display that day until I rounded a corner and came face to face with the most realistic rendering conceivable of Stevie Wonder. Nearly photographic, a closer inspection showed it had been done entirely in pencil! I told the organizer that I must meet the artist. As it turned out, Alexander Austin was on the premises. I had been given a glimpse into a rare, rare talent, and it rested on a young black man of just 20 years age. Amazing. We met and talked at length. That is when I found out he had some finance trouble that had led to law trouble that had led to despair. I did what anyone would have done faced as I was with the possibility that the world could well be deprived of this talent. I gave Alexander the time and money it took to get him out of trouble and a job to keep him out of it. I gave him the tools that have allowed him to use his amazing talent to change his part of the world, the talent came from God.

This weekend Carolyn and I are off to St. Augustine, FL to celebrate our anniversary of 26 years. It has only been lately that I have given much thought to it, and I mean it when I say I hope she does not give much thought to it. In spite of the fact that I am one of the greatest guys I know, a brilliant man indeed, I have at least one flaw. I know, I know, you are shocked, but it is true. If I step outside myself and look at me and my interactions with others I see that I am not the easiest person to live with. For one thing, my OCD. For the uneducated among you, that is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. My wife insists everyone has the same tendencies and that I make too much of it, but when you are overtaken with irritation when your computer monitor is out of being straight by an eighth of an inch and you cannot concentrate on any task until you fix it, you really do feel that something is amiss. I would like to think that I am a very easy going sort, but evidence is lacking for it. It is pretty universal, I guess, we all like to think we are liked, or at least, likable. Can we improve? I don’t know, I’d like to think we can. Here are some starting points. Listen more, talk less. Look at people, feel what they are saying. I once heard that an acquaintance was telling everyone who would listen about my uncanny skill in helping with his problem. What did you do you ask? The day he was speaking of…I listened to him for 30 minutes without saying a word. All the help he was praising …. came from within himself.

Response to a Deming presentation on November 22. I am humbled.

WOW, what a presentation. I must say this presentation was by far the best 30 minute segment I have heard in some time. I can’t say I am a student of Dr. Deming, yet, what I can say is I am a true believer and rapidly becoming a student of his philosophy.

Can you direct me where to go to learn more about Dr. Deming and his work?

Thank you for your support as well as your stewardship in carrying on Dr. Deming’s philosophy.

Best wishes,

Jerry Cox

TALLAHASSEE FORD LINCOLN

JERRY L. COX

SALES MANAGER

All I can say is WOW! I have just returned from the 2010 Deming Conference, held this year at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The conference runs from Friday evening until Sunday morning, ending with about 50 pizzas being devoured by the hungry participants. Starting Friday night from 6 pm until about 9 pm there is a reception for the attendees, held this year at the posh Campus Inn Hotel.

I spent several hours getting reacquainted with people from all over the world while enjoying the outstanding food.

Saturday at the conference is a long day. Breakfast is served from 8 am until we start around 8:30. The initial gathering was held in an amphitheater capable of seating 300 so the attendees left few empty seats.

I must comment on the site for the bulk of the conference. The Rackham Building is one of the oldest buildings on campus, having been endowed to the university by John Rackham, an early investor of the Ford Motor Company.

It was in the basement laboratory of this building that the Salk Vaccine was developed, ending the terror of Polio for millions.

Dr. Deming insisted that there were two main objectives. To learn, and to have fun. I did both at this, my fourth Deming Conference.

The keynote speaker on Sunday was Donald Peterson, retired president of Ford Motor Company.

I took Mr. Peterson’s book with me to the conference and was able to get an autograph to go with this picture.

First week of April I popped my right rotator cuff. It hurts pretty much all the time. I have friends that have had the surgery to repair it and their advice is all over the place. People I really trust say to avoid getting the surgery if at all possible, others who are equally trusted say get it done ASAP. I am 64 years of age. Maybe it is time to start being just a little more careful. Let’s see, since April I have had a fall to concrete that was stopped by my head, a rear end collision that damaged my neck, a spider bite that turned to a staph infection requiring surgery, and the shoulder was before all of that.
Probably I will get this surgery, but that will be after I get as much information as possible, after I make an informed decision. My wife, Carolyn is for me getting the surgery. This could have some connection to the increased limits on the life insurance, or just because she sees me in agony all the time. I sure hope it is the latter.

In the late 60’s my younger brother, Paul, and I worked together tuning and driving my 1968 American Motors AMX at local drag strips in the area around St. Petersburg, FL. Though no longer actively involved in the sport, I still enjoy watching and following drag racing. You, no doubt, have seen the cars known as dragsters. A top fuel dragster, called that because they run, not on gas, but nitro methane fuel, can traverse a 1/4 mile distance in less than 4 seconds and attain a speed of 330 miles per hour while doing so. To accomplish this in a race car of 1200 lbs. requires about 6,000 horsepower. What brand of late model engine do you suppose withstands this torture the best. The answer is none of them. No, there is only one engine ever produced that will withstand the pounding that 6,000 horsepower inflicts. That engine, the early Chrysler HEMI, has not been produced since 1956, more than half a century ago! In the 1950’s an American, W. Edwards Deming taught the Japanese his theories on management of quality. By 1980 the Japanese had taken what an American had taught them and used it to produce some of the world’s finest products. Like those early Chrysler HEMI engines, Deming’s methods have stood the test of time and power some of the world’s great companies today. Sometimes we err by looking only at the latest, when the best is right in front of us.