Kaizen is like a hotbed that nurtures small and ongoing changes, while innovation is like magma that appears in abrupt eruptions from time to time.

Masaaki Imai

The purpose of any activity must be to provide value to someone else. That is the justification for a human organization. Whether it's a government or a school, or a company.

James P. Womack

Er kan geen controle of verbetering plaatsvinden als je niet over de feiten en accurate gegevens over de werkvloer beschikt. Het is de taak van het middenmanagement en de managers hieronder om ervoor te zorgen dat hun gegevens accuraat zijn zodat het bedrijf de werkelijke feiten kent.

Kaoru Ishikawa

Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.

Steve Jobs

There should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety.

Augustus Welby Pugin

That’s what all we are: amateurs. We don’t live long enough to be anything else.

Charlie Chaplin

It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn how to draw it in a few seconds.

Paula Scher

Design is the concious effort to impose a meaninful order.

Victor Papanek

Preaching quality won't help.

Michael Hammer + James Champy

Excellence is in the details. Give attention to the details and excellence will come.

Perry Paxton

We have 50,000 moments of truth out there every day.

Jan Carlzon

Self-generated quality control is more effective than inspector-generated quality control.

Tom Peters

Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

Steve Jobs

We try to solve very complicated problems without letting people know how complicated the problem was. That's the appropriate thing.

Jonathan Ives

The defining qualities are about use: ease and simplicity. Caring beyond the functional imperative, we also acknowledge that products have a significance way beyond traditional views of function.

Jonathan Ives

Technology alone is not enough. It's technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.

Steve Jobs

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that.

Steve Jobs

Every good product I've ever seen is because a group of people cared deeply about making something wonderful that they and their friends wanted. They wanted to use it themselves.

Steve Jobs

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. … Our inner balance, and even our very existence, depends on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to our lives.

Albert Einstein

If no problem is recognized, there is no recognition of the need for improvement.

Masaaki Imai

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.

Tom Peters

All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing the time line by reducing the non-value adding wastes.

Taiichi Ohno

When you buy bananas all you want is the fruit not the skin, but you have to pay for the skin also. It is a waste. And you the customer should not have to pay for the waste.

Shigeo Shingo 

The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognize.

Shigeo Shingo

First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.

Leo Rosten

Eenvoud is niet het kenmerk van de beginner. Het is de duur bevochten stempel van de meester.

Godfried Bomans

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

Epictetus

By avoiding early commitments, you gain flexibility in the choices you have later.

Chris Matts and Olav Maassen

All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing the time line by reducing the non-value adding wastes.

Taiichi Ohno

[Quality] is never and accident: it is always the result of high retention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, and skillful execution; it presents the wise choice of many alternatives, the cumulative experience of many alternatives, the cumulative experience of many masters of craftmanship. Quality als marks the search for an ideal after necessity has been satisfied and mere usefullness achieved.

Wilma A. Foster

In physical science the first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it;  but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind;  it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be.

Lord Kelvin

We should work on our process, not the outcome of our processes.

William Edwards Deming

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.

Henry Ford

Quality is free, but it is not a gift.

Phil Crosby