Okay, think about this the next time you want to go all nationalistic; the reason the Japanese automakers had such a great reputation for quality for such a long time was not the brainchild of a Japanese engineer. The reason the Japanese got so far ahead of Americans for so long in the car-quality race is because they listened to a guy named W. Edwards Deming. Not a very Japanese-sounding name is it? It shouldn't. It isn't. Mr. Deming was born in Sioux City Iowa, and in 1950 lectured the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers about the importance of statistical process control, and its impact on product quality. And the Japanese scientists and engineers listened. As an object lesson, consider that Ford produced a model at one point which was available with either an American-made transmission, or the same transmission manufactured in Japan; the parts inside both transmissions were within specifications, but in the Japanese-assembled transmission, parts tolerances were much closer; for example, if a part was supposed to be one foot long, plus or minus one-eighth of an inch, the Japanese-made part was within one-sixteenth of an inch of specification. So what was the net takeaway here? the cars with the Japanese-assembled transmissions ran smoother, and experienced fewer problems. and customers wanted the cars with the Japanese-assembled transmissions, and were willing to wait a few extra weeks or months to take delivery. Put that in your Marlboro Red and smoke it. Wanna read more about him? Here ya go.

http://www.lii.net/deming.html

Was Deming alone in the Americans not listening to what he had to say? Not by a long shot. consider the case of Charles Paulson Ginsburg, inventor of the Video Tape Recorder. He invented the VTR for Ampex, initially for commercial use; CBS was the first network to use a VTR to record broadcasts for television, and for network use, the Ampex VTR-1000 cost $50,000. So far, I haven't really made my point here. Flash forward to 1971, and the idea that the VTR could be popularized for home use. What company made that happen? Sony. Okay, the Betamax format eventually got eaten by VHS, but you get the idea. And I don't claim, then, that the Japanese are really any more almighty than Americans, big-picture, the real issue is who's got the vision? Who can really see what will or won't be good, or popular, or right? A bunch of speed-crazed, pharmeceutical-frenzied, swashbuckling yahoos like Americans, or the relatively conservative, analytical and honor-bound Japanese? I would say it's just necessary to think more when you live on an island, the way the Japanese do, otherwise everything is hard to get and outrageously expensive. As opposed to America, where you could probably drive at triple-digit speeds through more than one western state with impunity, because there's nothing more there than tumbleweeds and the occasional Armadillo. the real thing is, especially in times like these, vision and creativity should be necessities, especially in our youth, and from everything I can see, they're not. Too many still think they could make it as NBA stars or rappers or models. To my teacher friends.......see to it that your students aim a little higher than this willya? Thank you.