Quality Enhancement Certification
As you may know, Dr. W. Edward Deming was the man that the United States government sent to Japan around 1950 to teach their business leadership how to “build quality into the process of both production and services”. In 1950, because Japan was a devastated country, Deming is said to have taught approximately 88% of Japan’s business leaders how to “build quality into the process” thereby eliminating preventable waste and creating higher quality products and services. TRN CEO Mark Masters has been a student of, and applies, the Deming approach, and gives substantial credit to it for his success in building successful talk radio enterprises.
Quality Enhancement Certificate signed by Dr. Deming
It was actually Deming’s brilliant, common sense methodologies that America later misconstrued to be a quality system that was endemic to all high quality products made in Japan; but Japanese quality products in the way that we have known them today are really a result of Dr. W. Edward Deming, and not a result of a natural, monolithic Japanese culture of quality. At one point, in the main entry of the Toyota headquarters in Japan, it was said that a giant image of W. Edward Deming was front and center, with, on either side of that image, pictures of the founder of Toyota and the then current CEO – this is because the “Deming Award for Quality” is highly sought after by Japanese companies (Toyota first won it in 1965).
Mark Masters became aware of Deming when, in 1979, Ford’s then CEO started a process of interacting to have the then 79 year old Deming teach Ford what he had taught the Japanese some 25 years earlier. In 1981, Deming agreed, and, by 1986, Ford became the most profitable car manufacturer in America. Ford credited this turnaround to Deming. More recently, J.D. Powers announced that Ford products had surpassed Toyota in overall quality.
Mark Masters is particularly proud of the fact that, in 1992, he spent four days with the then 92 year old Deming (still sharp as a tack) – what Deming taught Mark became the foundation for much of Mark’s management theories and practices today. Even though Mark was only 27 years old at the time, he also invested $25,000 in Deming’s entire private video training system. Mark adds this certificate as he considers it a particularly high point in his life to have been able to be with Deming and learn how he changed the world for every consumer alive today, particularly those in the west and, of more particular current relevance, it evidences the background training which sets Mark apart from other managers and consultants in the talk radio industry, and which Mark believes to be a key factor in the success which Mark has brought to the “TRN Companies”, Fox and others.
