“As Uchimaru sees things, an engineer who doesn't think TQM applies to technical activities must not understand either engineering or TQM or both. TQM is the application of the scientific method to business (pick an important problem, get the facts, analyze the facts, find the underlying truth, plan a method of improvement based on the underlying truth, systematically test it to verify that it works, standardize the new method, and then the cycle around again)”

— Shoji Shiba

Shōji Shiba, New American TQM. Productivity press, 1993. p. 463
Shiba talks about Kiyoshi Uchimaru, who was president of NEC's main microchip design subsidiary in the 1980s.

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Japanese academic 1930

Shoji Shiba (1930) Japanese academic

Alex d'Arbeloff cited in: Shōji Shiba, New American TQM. Productivity press, 1993. p. 315

“Science and mathematics… have added little to our understanding of such things as Truth, Beauty, and Justice. There may be definite limits to the applicability of the scientific method.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

“After years of work in both areas of study, I concluded that the social sciences were different, in many important ways, from the natural sciences, but that the same scientific methods were applicable in both areas, and, indeed, that no very useful work could be done in either area except by scientific methods.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Source: The Evolution of Civilizations (1961) (Second Edition 1979), Chapter 1, Scientific Method and the Social Sciences, p. 33

“The engineer must be able not only to design, but to execute. A draftsman may be able to design, but unless he is able to execute his designs to successful operation he cannot be classed as an engineer. The production engineer must be able to execute his work as he has planned it. This requires two qualifications in addition to technical engineering ability: He must know men, and he must have creative ability in applying good statistical, accounting, and " system" methods to any particular production work he may undertake.”

Hugo Diemer (1870–1937) American mechanical engineer

Source: "Industrial Engineering," 1905, p. 67

“Engineers, scientists, and statisticians have, until recently, been the groups chiefly interested in activity called quality control. These technologists have been primarily concerned with the technical methods which have become associated with the subject. They have applied these methods to a number of industrial quality problems.
Excellent results in improving quality and in reducing costs are now being reported from these applications. These reports have generated growing interest by industrial managers in the potentialities of quality control as a business method.
What, management is asking, is meant by the term "quality control"? Is there anything really new about it? What are the quality-control activities? What is the proper organization for quality control? How much does the program cost, and what benefits can result from it? Is quality control good only for mass production? May it be useful in a job shop as well? How do statistical methods fit into the quality-control pattern? What does quality control mean to the foreman, to the design engineer, to the salesman? How is quality control introduced to a company?”

Armand V. Feigenbaum (1922–2014) American businessman

Source: Quality Control: Principles, Practice, and Administration. 1951, p. vii; Preface: lead paragraph

“It is this detachment, this use of comparison, his faith in the possibility of applying scientific processes of thought to the organisation of industry, which constitute Babbage's unique contribution to the advancement of management. More than half a century before Taylor was to illuminate the same point, with far greater effect because he was a practising engineer, Babbage had stumbled on the underlying truth that there are general principles applicable to the manufacture of products by machinery, and that it is an understanding of these principles rather than the technical knowledge of how to make a particular article which is of the first importance.”

Lyndall Urwick (1891–1983) British management consultant

Vol II. p. 23 as cited in: Hopf (1947).
1940s, The Making Of Scientific Management, 1945

“Enterprise Engineering is not a single methodology, but a sophisticated synthesis of the most important and successful of today's change methods. "Enterprise Engineering" first explains in detail all the critical disciplines (including continuous improvement, radical reinvention of business processes, enterprise redesign, and strategic visioning). It then illustrates how to custom-design the right combination of these change methods for your organization's specific needs.”

James Martin (author) (1933–2013) British information technology consultant and writer

Book summary
The great transition (1995)

“A new concept and a new method were needed. The concept from the engineering standpoint is the evolution of the engineering scientist, i. e., the scientific generalist who maintains a broad outlook. The method is that of the team approach. On large-scale-system problems, teams of scientists and engineers, generalists as well as specialists, exert their joint efforts to find a solution and physically realize it.
We are led to the concept of the system-design team, a small group of engineers or scientists, to lead a large project and organize the system effort. Such men have been variously called engineering scientists, system engineers, system analysts, or large-scale-system designers. The technique has been variously called the systems approach or the team development method. It is toward this man and his teammates that these discussions are directed. With the realization that not enough can be learned in all the required fields to make him a specialist, enough is introduced to make him aware of the language and problems of the specialist. This generalist is a new quantity in the engineering world, and his education must be begun.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Source: System Engineering (1957), p. 8

“Software engineering concerns methods and techniques to develop large software systems. The engineering metaphor is used to emphasize a systematic approach to develop systems that satisfy organizational requirements and constraints.”

Hans van Vliet (1949) Dutch computer scientist

Source: Software Engineering: Principles and Practice, 2007, p. 2

“We regard as "scientific" a method based on deep analysis of facts, theories, and views, presupposing unprejudiced, unfearing open discussion and conclusions.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968)
Context: We regard as "scientific" a method based on deep analysis of facts, theories, and views, presupposing unprejudiced, unfearing open discussion and conclusions. The complexity and diversity of all the phenomena of modern life, the great possibilities and dangers linked with the scientific-technical revolution and with a number of social tendencies demand precisely such an approach, as has been acknowledged in a number of official statements.

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