My guest for episode #229 is John Dyer, president of his consulting firm, JD&A, Inc., and a contributor for IndustryWeek.com. John started his career at General Electric and later moved to Ingersoll-Rand, where he was VP of Operations for their Security and Safety sector. John had the good fortune to learn directly from W. Edwards Deming, as he took the famed four-day seminar (that included the Red Bead Experiment) and was also invited to take the follow on course with a smaller group. You’ll also want to scroll down to see the great picture that he posted on Twitter of him and Dr. Deming. For a link to this episode, refer people to www.leanblog.org/229. In the podcast, we talk about questions and topics including: Tell us about the early days of your career in manufacturing engineering and management… how did you get involved in operational excellence? While at GE, you had some experience with W. Edwards Deming, tell us about that… What are some of the key lessons from Dr. Deming that stick with you today? GE’s CEO Jack Welch had once derided Deming as “too theoretical.” Was it that or did Deming’s concrete suggestions just fly in the face of Jack’s way? What did John recently witness when a relative was a hospital inpatient? How did that compared to some things Dr. Deming saw and reported as a patient in 1987?