Toyotas Secret :: essays research papers

If you enter the lobby of Toyota’s headquarters in Japan, you will see two small portraits and one big one hanging there. The two small ones show the founder and the current chairman of the company. The large portrait shows an American. It is Dr. Edward Deming. Who is Edward Deming you might ask? And indeed who is he? But it’s a long story and one cannot explain who Edward Demings is without involving characters like the Japanese, the Americans and the Toyota Company. So here goes†¦ Long Ago and Far Away†¦ World War II had barely ended, the Japanese were left with a devastated country, ruins that were previously houses and a battered economy. But there was something left that helped them overcome all this destruction. They did not sit and lament their fates but began thinking†¦where do we go from here and to get there what do we need to do? Factories began production again firstly to supply all the basic necessities and after around 15 years when everyone had the basic goods they needed, they turned their energies towards overcoming the surplus of imports. Japan needed to offer something more in their goods if they had to succeed on foreign shores.... The Japanese car manufacturers namely Toyota wanted to start operations in America. That was all very well. But how could they make the Americans buy their cars rather than local ones. Enter Dr. Edward Demings and hey presto! They had the secret recipe!   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The man who according to his biographer Rafeel Agumayo(1) is the American who taught Japan what quality management is. Dr. Edwards Deming was a physicist specialized in the field of statistics and worked in United States Bureau of Census. His greatest contribution on the evaluation of statistical methods for ensuring the quality of census assessment established him as a leader in the field of Total Quality Management. In fact he is considered as the "Guru" of Total Quality Management. Deming also enunciated 14 principles for quality management which include innovation, the philosophy of quality to be inculcated in all individuals, appropriate and complete supervision, absence of fear and openness, ensuring quality from design through to maintenance, work standards in production, training of every worker in statistical methods, retraining people to new skills and so on. The world saw Toyota take over America by storm, they offered better, faster, more comfortable and more efficient cars and Americans came to buy cars from them in droves.