Friends in our International Business have wondered how the Japanese have become so successful given their general passiveness, high-context language, and inefficiencies in an attempt 'to save face.' This is my interpretation of what we can learn from the Japanese business :
The story starts with the aftermath of WWII. Due to the atrocities, the highlights must be summarized before continuing.
62M people were killed; 50M Allied and 12M Axis. The Axis powers were interested in world domination and used extreme genocide tactics in their pursuit. As the Japanese killed 7M Chinese and the Germans killed 15M Russians, the U.S. had to become the strong arm to end the war. Although a smaller country in size and isolated as an island, the Japanese continued their attacks and resisted surrender throughout 1944 to everyone’s amazement. The imperialist government was comprised of stodgy military people who would not surrender at any cost. It would seem that Japan had been crushed for a year with monthly firebombings that paralyzed further development of fuel and weapons and killed tens of thousands of civilians on every round of bombing.
The US devastated all Japanese industrialization through regular strategic bombing and two nuclear bombs. The atomic bombs claimed 200,000 lives and flattened 90% of Hiroshima and a significant part of Nagasaki.
The US military introduced Professor Edward Deming to Japan for census work. The Japanese became receptive to his teachings of quality control and were completely implemented along with ‘state of the art technology.’
The same information was available to American manufacturing. Automobile manufacture was the largest and most advanced industry at the time. The ‘Big 3,’ General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford, were fat cats and had a short vision. They lacked the competition and the vision to see a need to for continuous improvements to efficiency and quality.
Even though Deming lived in the US, it was the Japanese who were able to implement Total Quality Mgmt (TQM) as a system and a lifestyle. To this day, Japan gives an annual Deming award for quality which is the only national award associated with a non-national. Edward Deming is highly regarded in the Japanese history for teaching them how to build in quality (high tolerance, SPC control charts, preventative maintenance rather than low-tolerance resulting in selective assy, kanban, just-in-time).
The Japanese success in manufacturing is a case study in American design and education.
A combination of brand new manufacturing technology and quality management with a cultural discipline of competitive planning and paranoia has demonstrated this considerable success. It is the timing of the terrific global competition of the last ten years and the incredibly successful case study of implementing Total Quality Mgmt that has finally gotten the attention of American industry.
Once viewed as TLA (three letter acronym) management concept of the day, companies thought these educational techniques were more fads and distractions that would be time consuming and expensive to integrate with unknown rewards. Now it is clearly seen as a system that must be implemented and it is easy to quantify the program costs versus the savings.
As an aside, the incredible difference in quality from selective assembly to Six Sigma manufacturing was incomprehensible to American consumers. If not for the oil crisis in the 1970’s, Americans would not have become painfully aware of the disparity. Fuel shortages encouraged Americans to import inexpensive, economical Japanese cars. We found that the cars were superior (Japanese engines lasted three times longer than American engines) and we came to rely on them.
I am a Six Sigma specialist and I find the tools very helpful in the workplace, but this Dilbert demonstrates when Six Sigma is over-used. Dilbert
No comments:
Post a Comment