> I agree with what you say, Mark, but I think it isn't the > whole picture. In the early 80s, a guy at a Japanese steel > company explained to me how his time was being taken up with > visiting Americans determined to learn the secrets of > Japanese TQC. He felt they were wasting their time. Not > because they were incapable of learning, but because there > was nothing to learn. He said that Westerners will debate and > evaluate various methods until they decide on the best > approach. Japanese corporations, on the other hand, will take > any method, good or bad, and make it work. Having > subsequently worked with a number of large Japanese > corporations, I think his comments were very shrewd. In other > words, it's not that Japanese methods transferred to the west > are doomed to failure, but rather that any method adopted by > Japanese corporations is doomed to success. (But that was in > the 80s, and plenty has changed since then.)
That's true - I don't think the mentality has changed since that time, though economic shifts did have its social impact. Failure really isn't an option - they make it work. But it is possible to use Japanese methods and have strong, cohesive, quality minded teams, even with a few Americans walking on the tatami mats with muddy shoes ;-) It is just extremely hard to achieve. Best regards, Lynn Fredricks Worldwide Business Operations Runtime Revolution, Ltd _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
