By Nancy Thorner & Al Boese -
If you were around the business world in the mid 70’s, you undoubtedly collided with the “Quality” mania that was beginning to captivate industrial corporations, financial institutions and even government. At the time, Japan Inc. was trouncing us in important manufacturing segments; automotive, photography, business and office equipment, and electronics. We were being overwhelmed by the Quality revolution in Japan, long pioneered by W. Edwards Deming.
Dr. Deming was king of quality in Japan business. He even had a coveted award established in his name: The Deming Prize, established in 1951 to honor Dr. Deming for contributing greatly to Japan’s proliferation of statistical quality control after World War II, and whose teaching helped Japan build its foundation by which the level of Japan’s product quality has been recognized as the highest in the world. Heretofore Japan had had a widely held reputation for shoddy exports which were shunned by international markets.
In the U.S. Dr. Deming was largely ignored, some even considered his principles of Statistical Process Control (SPC) to be simplistic and an interference with productivity and throughput. U.S. top management arrogance, in contrast with the Japanese, from such notable giants as GM, Ford, Kodak, Xerox largely ignored Deming’s SPC concepts, or delegated them to some low-level quality manager where they were lost in the noise.
In holding onto their assumption that Japanese success was price-related, U.S. manufacturers responded to Japanese competition with strategies aimed at reducing domestic production costs and restricting imports. This, of course, did nothing to improve American competitiveness in quality. While the US continued to produce inferior products to the Japanese who embraced, even worshiped Deming’s principles, our products were rejected in favor of those from Japan.
Later in the 20th century, major industries began to take notice of the quality revolution and finally adopted those radically new to American industry methods of product design, production and quality assurance. The rest is recorded history.
Fast forward to today when a new strategic threat to our country and industry, cyber warfare and cyber security are beginning to penetrate our thinking and very survival in strategic combat with China, Russia, Iran, N. Korea, and some non-state actors playing the ransomware game to extract money from their undefended targets.
At a Senate Intelligence hearing on "worldwide threat" on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on January 29, 2019, at which FBI Director Christopher Wray; CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats testified, noted were increasing threats from China, as well as new cyberthreats posed by Russia, Iran and North Korea. Dan Coates, Director of National Intelligence, reported that “China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly use cyber operations to threaten both minds and machines in an expanding number of ways – to steal information, to influence our citizens, or to disrupt critical infrastructure." Coates also noted how “Moscow’s relationship with Beijing is closer than it’s been in many decades and are becoming more open to new partnerships." As far as our 2000 elections, Coates revealed how U.S. adversaries are likely already looking to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election, refining their capabilities and adding new tactics.
Like the quality story early dominated by Deming, we need to heed the cyber risk assessments and implement robust cyber warfare countermeasures being offered by cyber security experts and technologies. This must not be a slogan and temporary like quality was once considered, but a permanent and vital function that is uncompromising in its quest for the impenetrable barriers to cyber warfare.
- First order of business, admit, without equivocation, that cyber warfare from our adversaries is real and represents serious and even fatal consequences if not confronted and defeated.
- Second, establish and fund at the highest organizational level, an Information Technology function to develop and sustain counter measures for the inevitable cyber invasion that will compromise and even destroy our businesses and institutions.
- Third, establish this new defense as a permanent and flexible function with the authority to break through internal barriers that are inevitable and corrosive. .
While the cyber threat is an existential threat to the country and our institutions, cyber security is an opportunity for a new generation of technology, employment, business category and investment in new ventures that can bring cyber security defense to companies of all size, not just the giants.
Just like the Quality revolution which is now taken for granted as the price of admission, Cyber Security must become a new revolution that in time becomes the new normal. But where is the modern Dr. Deming king of cyber security to lead the way?
Nancy Thorner's co-author on this piece Albert Boese was an international business executive in the Business Equipment, Reprographics and Printing industries managing both Multinational and Privately-owned corporations. He was introduced to and studied and implemented Quality Assurance principles under the direct guidance of W. Edwards Deming, the acknowledged international authority on Quality Assurance, also recognized in Japan as the single person who lead their industrial transformation from producers marginal quality trinkets to motor vehicles of enviable quality standards recognized throughout the world.
