Made in Japan

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 Doming 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.