Japanese Quality Revolution

At first, Japan had a widely held reputation for less quality shoddy exports, and their goods were shunned by international markets. The birth of total quality in the United States, made major Japanese manufacturers converted from producing military goods for internal use to producing civilian goods for trade.

The quality movement in Japan began in 1946 (immediately after World War II) with the U.S. Occupation Force's mission to revive and restructure Japan's communications equipment industry. This led Japanese organizations to explore new ways of thinking about quality.

For this to make it possible Japan took help of two American quality experts, named W. Edwards Deming and Joseph M. Juran. The contributions of Deming and Juran emphasized the statistical quality control movement.

Japan rather than relying purely on product inspection, its manufacturers focused on improving all organizational processes through the people who used them. As a result, Japan was able to produce higher-quality exports at lower prices, benefiting consumers throughout the world.

Japanese manufacturers began increasing their share in American markets, causing widespread economic effects in the United States: Manufacturers began losing market share, organizations began shipping jobs overseas, and the economy suffered unfavorable trade balances. Overall, the impact on American business jolted the United States into action.

At first, U.S. manufacturers held onto to their assumption that Japanese success was price-related, and thus responded to Japanese competition with strategies aimed at reducing domestic production costs and restricting imports. This, of course, did nothing to improve American competitiveness in quality. As years passed, price competition declined while quality competition continued to increase. By the end of the 1970s, the American quality crisis reached major proportions, attracting attention from national legislators, administrators and the media.

In 1980, Finally U.S. organizations began to listen. The CEOs of major U.S. corporations stepped forward to provide personal leadership in the quality movement. The U.S. response, emphasizing not only statistics but approaches that embraced the entire organization, became known as Total Quality Management (TQM).