XIII. Made in japan

Read and translate the article:

Quality control is not a new idea. It has been embraced enthusiastically by the Japanese, who learned it from its US originators.

Next time someone gets a little over-enthusiastic about Japanese production methods, just remind them of an American management guru by the name of W. Edwards Deming. For it was Deming who, one evening in 1950, addressed twenty of Japan's top corporate bosses and set them on the road to the manufacturing miracle of the century.

Statistical quality control

It's hard to believe it now, but at that time Japan was a byword for low-quality goods and industrial inefficiency. Deming's advice was simple: successful manufacturing is quality-driven. And statistical quality control, he told his audience, is the most effective method of monitoring and raising standards. If scientific product sampling became an integral part of the production process itself, there would be no need to pay people to produce defective goods and then pay them again to rectify the defects. You would have 'zero defects'. And that is how total quality was born in the USA, but adopted by Japan.

Production management

Ironically, over the last ten years a school of production management theory has grown up, chiefly inspired by and imitative of Japanese models. For from a Western perspective there is much to admire in production methods which the West originally invented but which the Japanese have made their own.

Just in time

One thing western companies have been quick to learn from the Japanese is something called 'Just in Time'. The basic idea of JIT is to match industrial output with market demand so closely that products roll off the production lines and reach the distributors and retail outlets at precisely the rate at which they are purchased by the end-user in one smooth operation.

TQM

Another buzz-word in Europe and the States is Total Quality Management or TQM. It also originated in this Japanese commitment to eliminating error and waste at all stages of the production process. Both JIT and TQM are now firmly established in Western factories. But, oddly enough, they're not working.

Loyalty - the key to success

There's a simple explanation for this. The key to Japan's supremacy in the quality wars is loyalty. Most Japanese executives still expect to work for their company until retirement. And as Japanese production managers rarely have the authority to hire and fire in the same way that their Western counterparts do, re-structuring the team is seldom an option. So naturally the Japanese work together on the basis that they will be doing so for the rest of their working lives. It's all long-term. Product development is obviously important if you intend to be around long enough to see it through to completion. But it wouldn't be so important if you were thinking of making a career move to another firm. Again, it makes sense for the Japanese to be interested in fostering good on-going relationships with their customers, most of whom will also have a life-long commitment to their companies. Perhaps the first rule of quality is continuity.

Commitment to Total Quality

We hear a lot about Japanese Quality Circles - groups of people from different levels in a production department who are assigned to study ways of maintaining and improving quality. But QCs only work if they are open and participative. Too many Westerners seem to be cautious about sharing ideas with colleagues, whom they chiefly see as rivals. That's one reason why 80% of their TQM programmes fail. And, though Japanese corporate structure is changing and lifetime employment may soon become a thing of the past, to the production manager in Osaka total quality is still a way of life. In Ohio it may never be more than a gimmick.

Assignments:

1) Which of the following points support those raised in the article?

1. American business are now re-learning production techniques which they

originally taught the Japanese.

2. 'Just in Time' is about producing goods as fast as possible without defects.

3. Japanese workers have a higher output than their Western counterparts.