First, my thoughts on Juran: interesting query, Marc. In reading “Quality Planning and Analysis”, I got the impression that he was very much into measuring things and the control aspect. Many formulas and calculations throughout the book. Still, in this book and the Quality Handbook, he has chapters written about prevention and strategic quality planning (written by him, not a support author). Admittedly, I don’t recall that they were very strong or dominant on the topic of prevention or improvement.
As far as Japan’s economic woes: in any country, as your currency gains in strength, the tendency is to buy things from other countries where your dollar, yen, whatever will go farther. Japanese consumers began to buy products not made in Japan (and evidently, not made here either, i.e. trade deficit). The loss of domestic consumer spending hurt. As the dollar gains strength here in the US, the same will (is?) happen here. It is a cyclic event. In addition to this phenomenon, Japan made very poor investments and overextended itself. Automation and efficiency actually were far more successful than originally anticipated as were the Quality of their products (cars, electronics). As such, expansions made by many organizations provided more capacity than the World demand required. Hence, many organizations were too large and efficient and returned to manual labor (where feasible and practical) while the workforce incurred layoffs that were thought to be unheard of. Out of workfolks began to spend less as a means of survival worsening an already down turned domestic spending. Combined with the early 90s worldwide mini recession, the combination of these oversights and required cutbacks proved to be more costly and caused an extended recession in Japan. Many contend that this collapse was as a result of TQM, Hoshin, and Japanese Management. I disagree. While management has the responsibility and obligation to look forward into the future and provide constancy of purpose for the organization, its employees, and customers, they had stumbled into something never before seen. They were caught by surprise. They also did not have the increased level of immigrants (no surprise as it is already an overcrowded nation) enjoyed by many nations, but none more than the US. The worldwide reductions in births will effect all of us in the near future, but countries like Japan and Italy will be effected worse.
However, my money is on the Japanese not to make a mistake of this magnitude and continue to widen the gap between the rest of the world on Quality. I think that they would take that bet on two grounds: arrogance and confidence.
Regards,
Kevin