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Actually, many of the vast improvements in Japanese industry over the last 50 years can be traced back to an American, who taught the Japanese how to kick America's ass.

>>Japanese automobile makers took American quality control approaches, and actually applied them

After WW2, Dr. Deming was sent to Japan to help in reconstruction. In America, Deming's ideas were universally ignored. The Japanese were led to believe he was the US's leading quality engineer.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Actually the parent was right, it was the management techniques of Ed Deming that propelled Japanese quality above what American companies were capable of producing, not just "better engineering" as the poster stated. Japanese cars were initially a flop in the US when they were first introduced in the 50s before the Deming era. American manufacturers initially shrugged off Deming before he went to Japan to present his ideas and were later stuck playing catch up. Ed Deming, one of the most infuential people of business in this century

If you've ever wondered why the quality of Japanese cars is so high, credit Taguchi.

Okay, has anyone heard of a guy named W. Edwards Deming?

To paraphrase Tommy Boy, "I could take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed". I.E. *marketing* does not make quality. I never heard of this Taguchi guy.

Quality has been the victim as companies cut corners to cut costs

Yup. Nothing new here. The problem of how to improve software is the same problem of improving a product or service. The answer: quality. So how do you improve quality? Talk to the Japanese (aka Deming's Way, Lean Thinking and of course Six Sigma). What I find fascinating is how no one has documented the parallels between Lean Thinking/Six Sigma and the Open Source development model.

Open Source works because it's all about doing things "the right way". When you do things properly, costs go down, quality goes up and customers and companies are happier. Now if we can just get rid of more muda in the Linux world...

You are right about cost cutting being a problem during the AMF era, the other problem was AMF dramatically increased production without investing in more/better tooling, and so they had to cut the quality of the hand assembly and fitting work to make due.

It seems to me that what you said is not proof, but it is interesting to think about.

The situation with Japan was unusual, it seemed to me, because of General McArthur. He used his power to help Japan rebuild. (My father was one of the U.S. military people who helped in the re-construction.) Basically, General MacArthur was Japan's first democratic leader.

Japan has been peaceful, not because of war, but because of an amazing amount of creative and intensive charity after the war. Also, the Japanese are culturally pre-disposed to accept one strong, fatherlike, leader.

Notes from Google: General MacArthur, the founder of today's 'prosperous' Japan says "... he had achieved countless reforms such as educational reform, farmland reform, zaibatsu dissolution, dissolution militarism, promotion of democracy and tax reform tax reform as well as signing on battleship Missouri. It is no exaggeration to say that he was the founder of today's prosperous Japan."

This article tells a little more: Japan Under American Occupation.

The cultural disposition of the Japanese to accept an older leader helped them accept W. Edwards Deming, an American quality control expert. See History of Japan's Quality movement which says,

"The quality movement in Japan began in 1946 with the U.S. Occupation Force's mission to revive and restructure Japan's communications equipment industry. General Douglas MacArthur was committed to public education through radio. Homer Sarasohn was recruited to spearhead the effort by repairing and installing equipment, making materials and parts available, restarting factories, establishing the equipment test laboratory (ETL), and setting rigid quality standards for products (Tsurumi 1990). Sarasohn recommended individuals for company presidencies, like Koji Kobayashi of NEC, and he established education for Japan's top executives in the management of quality. Furthermore, upon Sarasohn's return to the United States, he recommended W. Edwards Deming to provide a seminar in Japan on statistical quality control (SQC)."

See also, Japan's Secret: W. Edwards Deming.

As I said, the charity toward Japan after the war was extensive , amazingly so.

Christianity should be given some credit here because the idea of being charitable to Japan apparently came from Christian principles. (This is not meant to be a religious statement. It is only a cultural statement.)

The charity was even more remarkable because Japan had had a really, really rotten outbreak of mental illness that causes Japanese to be disliked in countries surrounding Japan even today. There were certainly many reasons why people would allow themselves to feel negative toward the Japanese.

Uh, a lot of the principles of modern kaizen were developed by an American guy named W. Edwards Deming based on the work of a former Bell Labs (another one) employee named Walter Shewhart (who invented something called Statistical Process Control). Granted, Deming did most of his work on the project in Japan, where he went at the request of the US military during the occupation in the '50s, ostensibly to teach the Japanese "American business methods."

However, what the military didn't know or didn't realize was that Deming had some ideas of his own that he'd been trying to get US industry to adopt for years. Most US industry at the time wasn't interested in the concept of systemic quality, however. (Most of them were satisfied with Quality Inspections and an "acceptable defect rate.") The Japanese adopted the idea wholeheartedly, after hearing Deming lecture. The Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers, the Japan Management Association, and the Japan Standards Association supported the lectures, along with the US military. Eventually, Japanese scholars like Kaoru Ishikawa added some new ideas (like Quality Circles) to the mix.

In North America, the resulting system is usually called Total Quality Management. It started in Japan, but it started because of W. Edwards Deming, who was really instrumental in turning Japanese productive systems into the powerhouses they are today. (Ask your parents and grandparents about the time when "Made In Japan" meant "This Is Junk.")

On the other hand, to be fair to the Japanese, they adopted the system almost overnight, and used it to become a world manufacturing superpower, more or less, in under 10 years. US industry is still trying to get used to kaizen/TQM, even though the basic system's been around for almost 50 years...

It's about statistics. The auto industry is decades old and the statistics and testing methods used to detect undue variance in productions methods are well developed.

Much of the rise of "Japan == Quality" in many industries (especially automobiles) can be credited to a man named Deming.

His work on quality assurance was accepted in Japan far more readily than anywhere else. I think the electronics industry has a lot to learn from him. The lack of proper use of statistics in QA often leads to undue numbers of bad products leaving factories.

Encryption is but one small detail in a sea of problems. Before a solution can be found, we must understand the problem--something the folks in government aren't very good at, especially when the problem is technical and scientific. This country has several very major problems, with deep roots. An easy-to-grasp example manifests itself in airline security (a common subject of conversation nowadays). The problem is twofold: first, public education in this country quite frankly sucks, and secondly, most people in this country expect the government to solve their problems for them.

The public education system in this country teaches students how to read, write and do arithmetic, but these are really just side-effects of the underlying agenda: teaching students, starting in kindergarden, to follow directions. I clearly remember getting points off my math homework for figuring out the answer a different, shorter way--points were taken off even when I had the correct answer! On one occasion, the teacher specifically told me that I hadn't followed directions, which is supposedly more important than the answer. On another occasion, a teacher admitted to me that when she studied to become a teacher, she was taught that teachers assign homework to their students not to exercise their new knowledge, but to see which ones do the homework and turn it in on time--another way of following directions. While I agree that homework (or any work) should be delivered on time, I believe that the results should be considered more important. Take a look at The Matrix: Mr. Anderson is expected to be at his desk on time every day--they don't care if he delivers results as long as he follows directions. There is an important pattern here...

The government spends way too much time and money writing long, cumbersome, complicated rules and regulations, to regulate things down to the smallest imaginable details. For example, someone once said that the entire Constitution is roughly 1/12 the length of a bill regulating the sale of cabbage. OSHA makes up workplace rules that make industrial work all but impossible. (This is more true in large corporate factories, where more time is spent filling out paperwork than actually accomplishing any work.) And finally (this one is the saddest--or the most amusing, depending on your point of view), a guy on 60 Minutes said that the FAA defines exactly what threats the security rent-a-cops are supposed to look for. One is a bomb, which is defined as an otherwise empty bag containing a bundle of dynamite with a big analog clock stuck on the side. (And I suppose they can only get you for this if you're wearing a black mask and a zorro-style hat.)

Coming back to the subject, the purpose of the past two paragraphs was to show you that first, the educational system (the government) teaches you to follow directions, and then, they compose mountains of directions covering every possible subject. The problem with this approach is that you can't code every possible combination beforehand--you have to figure out a pattern and come up with guidelines. The human mind has the capability (and beyond) to think on its own, in real time.

I mentioned above that "most people in this country expect the government to solve their problems for them," and haven't talked about that yet. This is one of the biggest reasons we have such a bloated and expensive government. There are government programs in place for everything, even for deciding what can be considered fine art and what can't. I heard a fine example of this on the radio last night--a guy called one of those talk-radio shows and suggested that the government should install solar panelling on all the buildings in our country so we won't be so dependant on the middle east for oil. Why does he expect the government to do this for him? If he wants solar panels on his house, then he should buy them and put them there! The government has no business placing solar cells on anybody's roof. This is the second part of a huge problem that starts in our education system--a colossal number of people in this country think the government should share in their personal problems.

I believe the government should spend less time and taxpayer money sticking their noses in our business. Instead, they should spend more of that fiat dough on improving the education system. This doesn't mean putting more Dells or iMacs in schools--if it were up to me, students would be required to handwrite their reports in cursive. It's an important but forgotten part of education called penmanship. An improved education system is one where students are taught, from day one, to think on their feet, in real-time. Don't follow the directions--make up the directions, and then follow them. Learn about priviledges and responsibility--and learn to accept responsibility for your actions and inactions. (Most folks currently expect the government to take responsibility for their actions or lack thereof.) Learn to do math the teacher's way, and then figure out faster and better ways to do problems (and present these to your peers in class). Learn to read between the lines and not believe everything you read, see and hear. Do these suggestions seem obvious? Why, then, aren't they being carried out? Why do so many of us have sloppy, incoherent handwriting? Why do students, when asked a difficult question, expect the teacher to know the answer? Why doesn't anybody in this country take responsibility for their actions? Why do we have defective policies in place for decades (and follow these policies), instead of proactively analysing the situation and finding a better way? Why do so many people believe every word the media tells them? (Including the claim that tools which can be used for evil will pervert the minds of those who possess them, much like the One Ring.) Don't pretend these problems don't exist--they are very real and very dangerous.

Education isn't limited to public schools, by the way. Our airline security, stewardesses, pilots and janitors should receive an education in psychology, body language and self defense, instead of regulations nobody reads that describe a Wile E. Coyote-style bomb. This rule applies across the board, yet training is only the beginning--the real training is in learning how to learn and think out of the box, all the time.

The following books (off the top of my head) contain some real insight, and should be mandatory reading for all employees of the government: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey--for its discussion of principle versus character, among other things; Out of the Crisis , by W. Edwards Deming; Nuts! by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg; and finally, The Pursuit of Wow! , by Tom Peters.

The problems with encryption, the DMCA, the SSSCA, and all other defective policies will work themselves out once people stop following directions and start using their brains.

'Fraid I don't have time to go into detail today, but fortunately there's plenty of resources available: Several books, of which my favorite for the beginner is "Four Days With Dr. Deming : A Strategy for Modern Methods of Management (Engineering Process Improvement Series)", and websites, you can start with the W. Edwards Deming Institute Web Site. Also try Deming's Fourteen Points and his Seven Deadly Diseases. Don't be discouraged that you've seen some of these before in failed methods -- there've been many attempts to create a more management-palatable "Deming Lite", with disapointing results.

One last scrap: RE: STUDENT REQUEST: Deming's 14 points applied to a software engineering organisation.