Product Quality: Comparisons of U.S. and Japanese-Made Products

After World War II, U.S.-made products were said to have set the standards for quality against which the rest of the industrialized world's production was measured. However, that position began to change during the 1960's, so that now Japanese products are viewed as setting the standards for quality. GAO believes that the reason for the loss of U.S. industrial competitiveness is that the United States is being outperformed by its international competitors both in efficiency of production and in quality of products. A roundtable discussion was conducted as part of the GAO study of product quality and Japanese approaches to achieve high levels of productivity and product quality. In essence, the Japanese system (1) incorporates a national plan and strategy by identifying technologies for innovation with large worldwide market potential; (2) identifies a few firms believed to be capable of innovating and producing new products competitively within targeted technologies; (3) makes sufficient resources available to those favored firms to achieve early design, development, and production; (4) protects those favored firms from excessive competition in the domestic markets during early stages of development; and (5) once the production machinery is running, provides worldwide marketing capability through its large trading companies. The United States does not have anything like this. GAO believes that a number of fundamental issues about quality in this country need to be addressed. Consensus-building is needed in order to agree on what the problems are. Labor and management must find ways to change adversary relationships into positive relationships for successful productivity and quality efforts. Work stability and cyclical layoffs must be dealt with. The educational system needs to be more responsive to longer term needs. The roles of specific disciplines and specialties need to be redefined. In managing growth under conditions of scarcity, export performance must be emphasized. The Government needs a focal point that can take the lead to: foster productivity and quality improvements; support creation of labor/management committees throughout the country; support consensus-building activities involving Government, industry, labor, and other segments of the economic system; and disseminate useful information on best practices for productivity and product quality improvements.