I'm told that under the pressure of world competition Japanese industry is dumping the ideas of W.Edwards Deming in favour of a more "orthodox" external control, American system of management. Does this show that Glasser's adaption of Deming's ideas i.e. Lead management, may not stand up to the tough world of International competition?

-- ken lyons (kenlyon@gofree.indigo.ie), March 16, 2000

Answers

As someone who works for a Japanese Company, I think there is some truth in what you say. As a result of the recession in the Japanese economy, many Western style concepts, have been introduced to boost the confidence of investors, especially overseas investors. An example is how Japanese companies have laid off employees despite tradition "Liftime Employment" concept. However, it also seems possible for Japanese to have two "Quality Worlds", and the adoption of one system does not mean that the other has been dumped. So the traditional management systems have not changed, but whether these were as Demming described is another question.

-- Brendan O'Shaughnessy (boshaughnessy@alps.ie), March 20, 2000.

I do think that there is lack of emphasis on the Deming 14 points, because of recession, but that does not make Deming teaching irrelevant. For example who can under play the role of training and education, or of continuous improvement or for that matter empty sloganeering. Japanesed problems have more to do with their financial sector which did not pay heed to Deming and did not pay attention to the PROCESS of banking. In India, a lot of companies have gained by the Deming theory and a number of them have not. The difference was in the latter case, they only used Deming to look good and had no serious intention of giving up command and control structure. Same Deming, two differnt results

-- Dinesh Kumar (dineshkumar@netkracker.com), August 20, 2001.