Japan’s
post-war
economic
success
489
Japan’s post-war economic
success: Deming, quality, and
contextual realities
Peter M. Leitner
Senior Strategic Trade Advisor, US Department of Defense,
Arlington, Virginia, USA
Keywords Deming, Industry, Japan
Abstract It is difficult to unravel the thread of W. Edwards Deming’s impact on the post-war
industrial recovery of Japan and its transformation from a manufacturer of shabby copies of
Western goods to a pre-eminent producer of high-quality goods. His name is woven, however, into
the fabric of Japanese industrial history. Deming helped launch a campaign for institutionalizing
“quality control” within the Japanese manufacturing sector, which adopted a number of the terms
and concepts he advocated. In fact, his pedagogical approach dovetailed perfectly with, and helped
to provide a philosophical basis for, the infusion of quality as an intrinsic part of the production
process. Most importantly, Deming was conveying these concepts on the eve of the “electronics
revolution”, where unparalleled precision, cleanliness, and consistency of product were essential
metrics determining success or failure. However, the true extent of Deming’s influence may never
be known as it was caught up in the complex dynamics that characterized Japan’s industrial
resurgence from the late 1940s through the 1980s.
Divining Deming’s contribution
Deming was not operating within a vacuum when he began his numerous
journeys to Japan. The immediate post-war period saw the interaction of
powerful forces, including military occupation and management of many
aspects of Japanese industrial life.
With
the rise of Communism, particularly the growing inevitability of
victory for Chinese Communist forces, and the onset of the cold war, US policy
dramatically shifted in favor of promoting the growth and reinvigoration of the
Japanese industrial base. Many in Washington feared that a stagnating
Japanese economy would push Japan to seek to re-establish economic ties with
China and Russia and to be drawn into the communist orbit (Schaller, 1982,
p. 169; Schoenberger, 1989, pp. 220-3; Kawai, 1960, pp. 27-8).
The outbreak of the Korean War eventually
provided the mechanism to
reinvigorate and modernize hundreds of Japanese factories as the USA kicked
off a program of directed procurements worth billions of dollars for the
This article is part of a special symposium issue on an operational code approach to W. Edwards
Deming: the man, the context, the savant and the legacy, guest edited by Ronald Stupak.
The author would like to acknowledge the editorial and conceptual contributions made by
Ronald Stupak and Robert Gamino in the preparation of this manuscript. All shortcomings are
the author’s alone and the content does not represent the views of the Department of Defense or
the US Government.
Journal of Management History,
Vol. 5 No. 8, 1999, pp. 489-505.
©
MCB University Press, 1355-252X
Journal of
Management
History
5,8
490
Japanese to supply war material, both ordnance and support commodities, to
United Nations forces in Korea and for the daily maintenance of US occupation
forces in Japan. This relationship forced the Japanese to build quality into their
manufacturing process as goods to be supplied to the US military had to meet
the rigors of MILSPEC (military specifications) standards for fault tolerance,
reliability, and parts interchangeability.
The USA created a novel economic aid concept whereby Asian recipients of
US economic assistance saw their aid money tied to the procurement of
Japanese goods and services.
In other words, money the USA loaned or granted
to Asian countries could only be spent in Japan, in order to generate industrial
orders for Japanese factories and to help Japan re-establish relations with
former trading partners (Schoenberger, 1989, pp. 221-2). The US leaders hoped
that by forcing hostile neighbors into mutually beneficial business
relationships (or fostering economic interdependencies) the wall of hate and
suspicion left by the catastrophe known as the Second World War would break
down (Robertson, 1973, pp. 264-8).
Deming was not the sole voice for the type of
industrial reforms he was so
clearly advocating. While it is probably not useful to attempt to rank the relative
contributions of Deming against those of Joseph Juran, Philip Crosby, or
Armand Feigenbaum, their influence should not be overlooked[1]. It is fair to
say that they were, at least, as important to the Japanese transformation as
Deming. In fact, at one time or another each has been
described by the Japanese
as being among their greatest teachers in the quality control movement
(Bushnell, 1994, p. 205). Deming, however, remained far more narrowly focused
on statistical techniques than Juran or Feigenbaum, and he regarded himself
first and foremost as a statistician (Bushnell, 1994, p. 124). Tracy Voorhees, who
took the post of assistant secretary of the Army in 1950 and became an
extremely effective advocate for Japanese industrial recovery, should not be
underestimated either (Redford, 1978, p. 279-82).
