The Timelessness of Deming

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If ever you start thinking you've got hurdles to overcome, remember Japan. At the end of WWII, companies there were facing badly damaged infrastructure, limited capabilities, and a government in turmoil. But desperation can breed openness to help, and that is fundamental to how, in a few short years, the reputation of Japan's product moved from "plastic, trinkets, junk" to "quality, state-of-the-art, reliable." By 1980, American businesses started paying attention, starting with NBC's 1980 documentary "If Japan Can, Why Can't We?" It made clear Japan's quality superiority.

Japan gives much of the credit for its postwar industrial turnaround to W. Edwards Deming, a U.S. government statistician. Deming showed them the importance of using statistics in quality control, providing great impetus to that nation's nascent quality movement. Meanwhile, on this side of the Pacfic, American businesses had turned away from the quality statistics that had been so valuable during the war. The quality of many American manufacturers was quickly surpassed by that of their Japanese competitors.