The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“W. EDWARDS DEMING FEDERAL BUILDING” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H11334-H11336 on Sept. 26, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
W. EDWARDS DEMING FEDERAL BUILDING
Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for the immediate consideration of the bill (H.R. 3535) to redesignate a Federal building in Suitland, MD, as the ``W. Edwards Deming Federal Building.''
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Maryland?
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I will not object, and I would ask the gentleman from Maryland for an explanation of the bill.
Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. TRAFICANT. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3535, a bill designating the Federal building in Suitland, MD, as the W. Edwards Deming Federal Building.
Dr. William Edwards Deming was a renowned expert on business management. He began his public service career with the Department of Agriculture as a physicist, in 1927. He then moved to the Bureau of Census to become the mathematical advisor to the chief of the population division, where he developed and designed statistical sampling techniques for use in the national census. His interest in quality and management led him to introduce sampling as a quality measurement technique for punch card verification and other processing in the 1940 census.
It is a fitting tribute to name this Census Bureau facility in his honor.
This bill has bipartisan support and I would like to thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their assistance in bringing this measure forward.
I urge my colleagues to support this bill.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Speaker, under my reservation of objection, I yield to the ranking member of our committee, the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Oberstar].
(Mr. OBERSTAR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, I support H.R. 3535, a bill to designate the Federal building in the Suitland Federal Center, 4700 Silver Hill Rd., Suitland, MD as the W. Edwards Deming Federal Building.
Mr. Deming, who died in 1993, was honored throughout the world as the quality management guru. Dr. Deming began his career as a physics teacher at the University of Colorado, and from 1928 to 1939 held a Federal position as a mathematical physicist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He also presented special lectures on mathematics and statistics at the Graduate School of the National Bureau of Standards.
In 1931 Dr. Deming was inspired by the book ``Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Products'' and he subsequently undertook the task of improving quality in manufacturing. His work in this area, as we are aware, strongly contributed to the economic renaissance of Japan.
Dr. Deming was a prolific writer, teacher, and lecturer. He has received numerous awards, honorary doctorates, and honors including the Second Order Medal of the Sacred Treasure, awarded by the Emperor of Japan.
It is fitting and proper to honor the distinguished career of this truly outstanding American by designating the Federal building in Suitland, MD as the W. Edwards Deming Federal Building. I thank Mr. Wynn of Maryland for introducing H.R. 3535 and urge support for its passage.
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Speaker, this designation would honor the contributions and career of an outstanding American. It is fitting and proper to designate the Census Bureau facility in Suitland in Dr. Deming's honor. I want to commend the gentleman from Maryland, Congressman Wynn, for his work on this bill and urge support of this bill.
Mr. Speaker, I offer my statement in its entirety for the Record:
Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object. However, I will not object and yield to the gentleman for an explanation of the bill.
Thank you, Mr. Gilchrest. H.R. 3535 is a bill to designate the Federal building at the Suitland Federal Center, Suitland, MD, as the W. Edwards Deming Federal Building. This designation would honor the contributions and career of an outstanding American.
Dr. Deming's career included work at the Department of Agriculture, and the Bureau of Census, as well as statistical consulting work for many foreign countries such as Austria, France, India, and most notably Japan, where he is often cited as a leader in the Japanese renaissance. Dr. Deming's work supported the thesis that most product defects were the result of poor management practices not careless workers. He argued that motivated workers working with proper tools produced quality products.
Mr. WYNN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my support for H.R. 3535, legislation to redesignate Federal office building No. 3, located in Suitland Federal Center, 4700 Silver Hill Road, Suitland, MD as the William Edwards Deming Federal Building.
By way of background, Dr. Deming received his B.S. degree from the University of Wyoming, his M.S. degree from the University of Colorado and his Ph.D. from Yale University. In 1927, he became a faithful civil servant joining the Department of Agriculture as a physicist and then moved on to the Bureau of the Census to become the mathematical adviser to the chief of the population division. In that position he developed and designed statistical sampling techniques for use in the census. His interest in quality management led him to introduce sampling as a quality measurement technique for punch card verification and other processing activities in the 1940 census.
After leaving the Census Bureau in 1945 he began a second distinguished career as a consultant on statistics and management to several foreign governments, including those of Austria, France, Germany, India, Turkey, and most famously Japan.
Dr. Deming's theories were based on the premise that most product defects resulted from management shortcomings rather than careless workers, and that inspection after the fact was inferior to designing processes that would produce better quality. He argued that enlisting the efforts of willing workers to do things properly the first time and giving them the right tools were the real secrets of improving quality--not teams of inspectors.
His successes with industrial leaders in Japan, with Ford Motor Co. and Xerox Corp. are unmatched. As a civil servant he dedicated his life to designing innovative methods of statistical gathering.
I urge the Members of the House to support this legislation to rename the Federal office building in Suitland, MD after this renowned expert on business management, Dr. W. Edwards Deming.
I would also like to ask unanimous consent to include in the Record additional material detailing the life of Dr. Deming.
W. Edwards Deming--1900-1993
William Edwards Deming, who was born in Sioux City, Iowa, on the 14th of October 1900, has been honored throughout the world as a ``quality-management guru.'' Yet, until the end of his life he insisted upon being known as a ``Consultant in Statistical Studies,'' the title that appeared on his letterhead. His path to the eminence that he attained as a statistician was circuitous and full of serendipity.
After Ed Deming's graduation from the University of Wyoming in 1921 as an engineer, he remained there another year to study mathematics. If was during that time that, as he once told me, he received a letter from the Colorado School of Mines informing him that he was known to be a good flute player and that the professor of physics wanted to have a band and therefore would like him to come to teach. He accepted the invitation and, after a year, decided to get a master's degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Colorado. Just before he completed his degree, one of his professors who had studied at Yale with Willard Gibbs, a famous mathematician and physicist recommended him to his alma mater. Yale subsequently offered him free tuition and a job as a part-time instructor, both of which were eagerly accepted.
Upon finishing the requirements for his Ph.D. at Yale in 1928, Ed Deming began his career in government as a mathematical physicist in the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and he remained in that position until 1939. His 38 publications during the period had to do principally with the physical properties of matter, but there were several that reflected his interest in statistical methodology. I once asked him why he, a mathematical physicist, became a statistician. His answer was quite involved.
``Courses in engineering and surveying led me to the theory of errors, and in studying physics and mathematics, I learned a lot of probability. Kinetic theory of gases is a theory of probability. So are thermodynamics and astronomy. And so is geodesy, involving measurement of the earth's surface for the purpose of figuring the curvature or other characteristics of the earth. It makes use of `least squares,' And I had very good teachers in least squares.
``When people had problems with experimental data. I just worked on them and found myself able to make a contribution, of thought anyway. And I suppose that's the way I got eased into it.''
Analysis of results of experimental work in bacteriology and chemistry gave him a chance to learn more about the statistical adjustment of data. There were three papers on
``The Application of Least Squares,'' published in the
``Philosophical Magazine.'' In his book ``Statistical Adjustment of Data,'' published in 1943, he brought together, in readily usable form, the substance of these papers and of the earlier literature and his own studies on the subject. This text is still frequently consulted for guidance on the application of the method of least squares in various different situations.
From 1930 through 1946, Ed Deming was a special lecturer on mathematics and statistics in the Graduate School of the National Bureau of Standards. His courses, given from 8 to 9 a.m. at the Bureau, later inspired many lectures and articles by his students. These paved the way for the establishment in 1947 of the Statistical Engineering Laboratory within the Bureau of Standards. During an overlapping period that extended from 1933 through 1953, he was head of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of the Graduate School of the USDA and made major contributions to the mathematical and statistical education of a whole generation. In 1936, he went to London to study the theory of statistics with Ronald Fisher at University College, the University of London.
While at University College, Ed Deming met and attended lectures by Jerzy Neyman, who had been Head of the Biometrics Laboratory of the Necki Institute in Warsaw, Poland. Neyman read, at a meeting of the Royal Statistical Society, a revolutionary paper: ``On the Two Different Aspects of the Representative Method: The Method of Stratified Sampling and the Method of Purposive Selection.'' As a result of the lectures and particularly this paper, which marked the beginning of a new era in sampling, arrangements were made for Neyman to visit the USDA Graduate School in 1937 and lecture there.
Ed Deming took pains to ensure that Neyman's lectures in Washington were well attended by U.S. Government statisticians, and he worked an entire year to produce the book, Lectures and Conferences on Mathematical Statistics. The lectures and the book together had a tremendous impact on sampling theory.
The staff of the Bureau of the Census was already planning in the late 1930s for the 1940 Population Census. Users of census data have always wanted more information than can possibly be provided with a normal budget. Many of them were willing to accept sample results, but some of the old timers at the Bureau were opposed to the idea of sampling.
``Sampling was abhorred,'' Ed Deming told me, ``because the census had always been complete. It couldn't be anything other than complete. But sampling was in the air.''
The final decision rested with Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins. After listening to the arguments pro and con, Hopkins decided in favor of sampling procedure that would be used in the 1940 population census. ``Well,'' Ed told me,
``one day in 1939 the telephone rang, and it was Dr. Philip Hauser, the Assistant Director of the Census Bureau, wanting to talk with me about a job. I said `Right Away!' and joined the Bureau of the Census as Head Mathematician and Advisor in Sampling.''
After leaving the Census Bureau in 1946, Ed Deming began his practice as a Consultant in Statistical Studies from an office in the basement of his home in Washington, DC. For the remainder of his life, he conducted his consulting from this office, aided for many years before her death in 1986 by his wife Lola, a distinguished mathematician in her own right. During the final nearly four decades of his life he was assisted by his extraordinary secretary, consultant and confidant, Cecelia Kilian, known to hundreds of people throughout the world as ``Ceil.''
At the same time that he began his consulting practice Ed Deming joined the Graduate School of Business Administration at New York University as a full professor. Before he ``retired'' from NYU in 1975 to become Professor Emeritus, he regularly taught two courses in survey sampling and one in quality control; and, moreover, he served as advisor to about 100 students who earned their master's and doctoral degrees. I asked him on one occasion if NYU didn't have some sort of policy concerning retirement of academic and other personnel at age 65 or 70. His response was, ``Well, if they did have, they didn't tell me about it.''
The fact is that until a few months before his death, Ed Deming continued to teach at NYU every Monday afternoon during the academic year and to direct studies of graduate students. He also taught Monday mornings during the last few years of his life as a ``Distinguished Lecturer' at Columbia University, where a Deming Center has recently been established.
Ed Deming's entrance into the world of quality improvement was inspired by the 1931 book Economic Control on Quality of Manufactured Product, written by his friend and mentor Walter Shewhart, the father of statistical process control. In 1938, he arranged for Shewhart to deliver a series of four lectures entitled ``Statistical Method from the View point of Quality Control'' at the USDA Graduate School. These lecturers were published by the Graduate School in 1939 ``with the editorial assistance of W. Edwards Deming.''
The crusade that Ed Deming subsequently undertook for the improvement of quality resulted, as we know, in the economic Renaissance of Japan and eventually in his own world-wide prominence as a ``prophet of quality'' and philosopher of management. This aspect of Ed Demings' life was highlighted by the media in the hundreds of commentaries upon his death. The present tribute to his memory therefore, has emphasized only what is pertinent to statisticians and was not mentioned in those commentaries.
Ed Deming's extensive contributions to statistical thinking are too voluminous to suit the present purpose. It suffices to say, that throughout his life, he championed the belief that statistical theory shows how mathematics, judgment, and substantive knowledge work together to the best advantage. Thus he, himself, was a master as logician and architect of statistical studies. This was more than evident at the Deming Seminar for Statisticians held annually at NYU beginning in 1987.
Ed Deming died quickly in his sleep on December 20, 1993 at is home. His daughters, Diana and Linda, their husbands, and Diana's five children, along with their own spouses and children (16 in total), were to assemble at his home for what they feared might be his last Christmas. Most of them had arrived in Washington by the time of his passing
Mr. TRAFICANT. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Maryland?
There was no objection.
The Clerk read the bill, as follows:
H.R. 3535
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. DESIGNATION.
Federal Office Building No. 3, located in the Suitland Federal Center at 4700 Silver Hill Road in Suitland, Maryland, shall be redesignated and known as the ``W. Edwards Deming Federal Building''.
SEC. 2. REFERENCES.
Any reference in a law, map, regulation, document, paper, or other record of the United States to the Federal building referred to in section 1 shall be deemed to be a reference to the ``W. Edwards Deming Federal Building''.
The bill was ordered to be engrossed and read a third time, was read the third time, and passed, and a motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
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