489 Japan’s post-war economic success: Deming, quality, and contextual realities

Whither Deming?
The “culture of quality” that permeated certain sectors of Japanese
manufacturing in the post-war period resulted from a technology-based push
stemming from the engineering requirements of military procurements and
modern electronics manufacturing rather than a pedagogical “pull” from the
teachings of Deming, Juran, Crosby or Feigenbaum.
For example, the electronics industry, the hallmark of Japan’s post-war
industrial triumph and quality reputation, was purchased from the USA.
Production and processing equipment imported from the USA was of
extraordinarily fine quality, highly automated, and consistently produced
superior output. The physical production process owed its quality to its foreign
origins. Japan contributed to the brainstorming, packaging, marketing[4], and
commercialization of this US-origin technology into consumer products. The
flourishing of turn-key plants, or licensed manufacturing arrangements –
where representatives of the licensor are on call to ensure that product
standards are maintained – does not add up to indigenous quality. Licensed
production arrangements, with their extensive hand-holding, are designed to
transfer quality, consistency, and reliability in order to protect the licensor’s
reputation and liability in his home market as well as abroad.
When one applies Deming’s concept of quality to a specific industrial
example, the water becomes murky. Can Japan’s achievement be attributed to
“quality” factors or to successful product differentiation efforts aimed at
securing market share or a specific niche?
During the past ten years the author conducted dozens of shop-floor visits to
defense contractor operations, primarily in the aerospace sector, in order to
categorize and understand which machine tools[5] these contractors select and
utilize for defense production.
At several of these plants, the author was astonished that most of the newer
(five years old or less) high-accuracy or five-axis machine tools were of
Japanese, Swiss, or German origin. As these plants are subject to Buy-America

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Act restrictions, an explanation was requested for the obvious preference for
foreign machine tools. The responses invariably named price and quality with
the Japanese having the lowest price and the Germans and Swiss the highest
quality. However, the plant officials generally agreed that few differences persist
among the major Japanese, German, Swiss, and US machine tool builders in
terms of product quality as measured by the incidence of catastrophic failure. 
The quality difference they noted was the extraordinary willingness of
Japanese machine tool builders in particular to satisfy customer requests for
unique capabilities, urgent delivery schedules, on-site maintenance, and
proprietary acceptance tests. Some officials cited examples of design engineers
flying in from Japan with replacement parts in their suitcase to repair a critical
machine tool within 24 hours so a production line could be reopened. US
suppliers would not consider offering such post-sale service, they said. US
machine tool builders have traditionally focused their attentions on supplying
the automobile industry while aerospace customers have been largely relegated
to being offered standard off-the-shelf machines. In many cases, aerospace
companies were forced to design and build their own machine tools in-house
because US suppliers were not interested in building one-of-a-kind systems. The
Japanese, however, see such projects as goodwill opportunities that will
eventually lead to future market share for conventional machine tools as well. Is
this aggressive, customer-sensitive marketing approach attributable to the
“quality” teachings of Deming, who held that the “quality of any product or
service can only be defined by the customer”, or has it resulted from
successfully implementing traditional techniques for entering mature markets?
Non-tariff barriers, technology transfer “by hook or by crook”, licensing
arrangements, and the Japanese patent system greatly facilitated the Japanese
economic miracle. So too did the largesse of US occupation policy, which sought
to establish Japan as a principal arms supplier for US and Allied armies in Asia,
and US efforts to help South-East Asia develop the food and raw materials
needed by Japan. The USA even designed the Japanese war reparations
formula to further Japanese market inroads into South-East Asia by allowing
the reparations to be paid by processing raw materials from aid recipients.
These advantages helped the Japanese squeeze foreign competition mercilessly. 
In addition, as late-comers in the electronics and machine tool fields, the
Japanese benefited from the most modern technology available and targeted
their efforts toward low-risk, underserved niche markets. Wide-ranging
government support programs facilitated their activities. Adding historical
subsidies and directed procurements, the Japanese miracle takes shape as a
tribute as much to post-war US policy and technology as to the teachings of
one, two, three, or even four quality and efficiency experts.
The ultimate contribution of Deming and his US colleagues may have been
their outlining a theoretical basis for the emphasis upon quality within the
context of evolving Japanese work and business relationships. This
achievement buttressed Japanese reindustrialization and aided the consistent
application of a general industrial management theory unique to the Japanese

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culture. Deming stated: “An example is no help to management unless studied
with the aid of a theory. To copy an example of success, without understanding
it with the aid of a theory, may lead to disaster” (Deming, 1989).
Japanese acceptance of Deming’s syllogism that “the information necessary
to optimize any system is not only unknown at this time, but inherently
unknowable to us” (Delavigne, and Robertson, 1994, pp. 48-9) gave direct
support to those inclined toward experimentation, “plug-in” solutions, and the
exploitation of Western technological advances through licensing and
aggressive patent practices.
In addition, Deming’s targeting of management as the essential force for
infusing an emphasis on quality throughout the production process coupled
with the need to train as many workers as possible in the application of
statistical methods were revolutionary insights.
However, the final word should probably be left to Joseph Juran and his down
to earth assessment of the contributions made by US quality control experts to
the Japanese success story.
A segment of the US press has come up with the conclusion that the Japanese miracle was not
Japanese at all. Instead, it was due to two Americans, Deming and Juran, who lectured to the
Japanese soon after World War II. Deming will have to speak for himself. As for Juran, I am
agreeably flattered but I regard the conclusion as ludicrous. I did indeed lecture in Japan as
reported, and I did bring something new to them – a structured approach to quality. I also did
the same thing for a great many other countries, yet none of these attained the results achieved
by the Japanese. So who performed the miracle? (Bowles and Hammond, 1991, p. 37).
Notes
1. The Deming approach. Deming tends toward assessment of quality in human terms, yet
espouses the utility of tools for understanding data. Deming created 14 major points that are
widely utilized. These seek to create constancy of purpose, institute training, drive out fear,
break down barriers, etc. The core of the Deming approach, however, lies in the use of simple
data analysis tools that include control charts, flow charts, Pareto diagrams, scatter plots,
cause-and-effect diagrams, etc. (Deming, 1982; 1993).