It was my 8th grade vacation and I was in my uncles house playing with my cousins. My uncle, a MD, came from his office, still busy in his phone complaining about customer loss. The customer had gotten angry and had filed a law suit. Uncle told us that he will not be able to take us out as there is a japanese team of quality experts coming to train the employees. Years later, when i got into my first job in polaris labs, the new customer was japanese. The team was worried that japanese customers are very tough and expect very high quality levels. They wanted an american customer :). As I drilled down further into world of quality, there was a considerable japanese presence in the minds of our colleagues. Japan had come to be synonymous of quality somehow in my mind. But why only japanese? Ofcourse, their products in automobiles like toyota, honda had special place even in european and american minds. However, wasn't japan an American colony at some point in time and hadn't it done anything worthwhile in Q?
It was post the second world war and Tokyo had suffered huge disaster. Its economy had gone for a toss too. It had to do something to survive... something special. The united states department of army brought in Edwards deming from America where he was preaching quality. Deming is equated sometimes brutally only with PDCA cycle. However, this Q master had brought in some of the biggest advances at mindset level in the japanese industry. Due to the special needs and due to hard work and geniuses too, japanese adopted quality. As quality improved, costs reduced and this combo was a deadly one. The world realized the high quality low cost japanese product's uniqueness and went in a crazy buying spree. Japanese manufacturers went mastering quality level after level and their economy boomed. Deming after getting several prestigious awards in Japan, went back to America where surprisingly he wasn't as big a hit atleast till then. It was ford's tumbling sales and loss of profit which brought him into loop again. And it started all over again. Deming won several awards for his noble work on quality in america too. The world knows the story of quality as it happened then!
It was post the second world war and Tokyo had suffered huge disaster. Its economy had gone for a toss too. It had to do something to survive... something special. The united states department of army brought in Edwards deming from America where he was preaching quality. Deming is equated sometimes brutally only with PDCA cycle. However, this Q master had brought in some of the biggest advances at mindset level in the japanese industry. Due to the special needs and due to hard work and geniuses too, japanese adopted quality. As quality improved, costs reduced and this combo was a deadly one. The world realized the high quality low cost japanese product's uniqueness and went in a crazy buying spree. Japanese manufacturers went mastering quality level after level and their economy boomed. Deming after getting several prestigious awards in Japan, went back to America where surprisingly he wasn't as big a hit atleast till then. It was ford's tumbling sales and loss of profit which brought him into loop again. And it started all over again. Deming won several awards for his noble work on quality in america too. The world knows the story of quality as it happened then!
