![]() Edwards Deming Brought the Quality Revolution to America: "When he stood before the recently vanquished enemy of the United States, Deming spoke not as a conqueror but as a man who had grown up poor, the son of Wyoming pioneers, and who understood the hardships involved in building something from nothing." As Andrea Gabor wrote in her book, The Man Who Discovered Quality: How W. His approach was, according to many, gentle and understanding. Deming's task was to assess the state of Japan's industry and identify its immediate needs. Edwards Deming had come to Japan in 1947 as part of General Douglas MacArthur's six-year occupational government. Edwards Deming, and Taiichi Ohno.Īmerican scientist W. It needed to find a way of improving productivity without spending itself into bankruptcy. automakers were eight times as productive as their Japanese counterparts, and Toyota was short of equipment and capital. Toyoda had been given a directive by his late cousin, Kiichiro: make Toyota's productivity the equal of the American automakers' within three years. Kamiya and Toyota managing director Eiji Toyoda, a descendant of Toyota's founder, could again contemplate making cars. Ultimately, the war would save Toyota and many other Japanese companies. Mantle recalls that the governor of the Bank of Japan would go so far as to describe the Special Procurements program as "divine aid." Many decades later, Japanese journalists would write how "even today, Japanese businessmen shudder at the thought of what would have happened if there had been no war in Korea." Toyota production leapt by forty percent. Kamiya was greeted with an order from the Pentagon for 1,500 trucks per month. Japan's proximity to Korea made it an ally of America in the war against Communist China. The Defense Department, too, opposed this kind of deal on the grounds that it would distract from domestic American production.Ī disappointed Kamiya returned to Japan to find that the Korean War had broken out. "If he failed to line up a deal with Ford, Toyota would fail."įord, however, was not interested. "Toyota was selling fewer than three hundred trucks a month, and it had stopped making cars altogether. Kamiya, writes Jonathan Mantle in Car Wars, was desperate. In the hope of striking a deal with Ford Motor Company, Toyota sales director Shotaro Kamiya made the long journey to the United States. Another made clothing, chinaware, and even fish paste. One of Toyota's plants switched production to flour and bread, to feed its workers. Production dropped by more than half, forcing manufacturers to produce anything they could sell, including tools, kitchenware, farm equipment, and food. Manpower had dwindled and automobiles had fallen to an all-time low on consumers' priority lists. In devastated Japan, the Japanese company, which had made cars and trucks before the war, was virtually broke. The ideas of "Just-in-Time" parts delivery, flexible production lines, empowered production-line workers, and reduced waste gave the Japanese a leg up on Detroit when hard times hit the auto industry in the gas crisis of 1973.īut back in 1950, it seemed impossible that Toyota would ever rise to challenge the American automakers. At its heart is the elimination of waste to provide customers with well-made products in a timely manner, through intelligent automation ("jidoka") and "Just-in-Time" manufacturing.
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