Purchasing and Negotiation Training

Robert Menard,
Certified Purchasing Professional,
Certified Professional Purchasing Consultant, Certified Green Purchasing Professional, Certified Professional Purchasing Manager

Editor’s note: This is Part Three of a three part series on the powerful and pervasive influence of W. Edwards Deming on business in general and purchasing in particular.  Click here for Part One and Click here for Part Two

We introduced Deming’s 14 Points of TQM in Part One.  Many practitioners of the purchasing profession have been surrounded by Deming’s theories and teachings in ways that may not be fully appreciated.  Following is commentary (in blue font) on the most significant impact of these points on purchasing practice today.   

8. Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.  Bullying by management, threats of termination, and other malfeasance creates a poor work environment where quality and productivity have no chance to flourish. 

9. Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to foresee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.  This should be an obvious point but we still talk about ‘silos” or “stovepipes” in corporate organization structures.    

10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.  Another way of saying this is that management is the problem.  When things go bad, management often blames labor instead of examining its processes.

•Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.

•Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.

Deming mentions leadership and management twice in this point.  The distinction is that leadership is to direction and vision as management is to execution and efficiency.

11. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality. These barriers are still stubbornly pervasive in business today.  Poorly trained supervisory talent defaults to riding herd instead of encouragement and showing the way. 

Click here for Bob’s book and CDs

12. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective.  In one of his last interviews, Deming explained this point as creating an environment of worker empowerment, innovation, and freedom.  The difference between believers and non-believers on this point is obvious to the trained eye. 

13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.  The application of this point to purchasing is crystal clear.  In researching for my first book in the late 1990s, I discovered that the average sales pro enjoys more education and training in one year than a purchasing pro receives in a career!  In the US, the Uniform Commercial Code specifically buyers to be educated and trained so this deficiency is still pronounced.

14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody’s job.  This speaks to the kaizen nature of constant improvement.