Definitely! Shewhart and Deming are massively under-rated and I agree that today's measurement-obsessive culture is heading "Into the Crisis" not out of it.

Every once in a while I read the 14 points , almost like a religious text to ask myself if I really do any of this, or have slipped "into sin". :)

I've always been interested in Deming and his ideas (my dad was kind of obsessed with him when I was younger) and every time I want to find some good material on him to get other people interested I have trouble. A lot of the websites, books, videos, etc. out there are clearly sales vehicles for individual consultants, and when you get past that a lot of the remaining material has a kooky, almost cultlike quality. And almost invariably it feels very old, not in the sense of time-worn wisdom but in the sense of something that has been left behind. The vibe I get is less "let's pass this wisdom on to a new generation" and more "we were right the whole time, you should have listened to us".

Certainly there was an entire cottage industry of well-paid consultants popularising these ideas around the 80s and 90s and yes, there was something distinctly cult-like about the scene and the Six Sigma Green Belt and Black Belt trainings that grew out of them.

That's not the fault of the ideas though, many of which are just common sense.

I was involved in the production of interactive video training courses on SPC and related topics in the late 1980s and early 1990s ... they still used 12" laserdiscs; the CD and the internet hadn't been invented yet. :))