(Special Interview) In Pursuit of Sustainable Monozukuri Quality

When we speak of quality, we need to consider it externally, i.e., from the customer's viewpoint, rather than accepting definitions given for the convenience of the manufacturer. This is because quality refers to the overall image of the features that address the needs for the product or service in question. Quality is goal-oriented. Some products are functional while others are intended to give a certain status to the people who own them. In either case, the customer is interested in whether the product satisfies his or her own needs.

The basic concepts and methods for attaining quality control can be applied to a variety of things. For example, quality control methods can be used to reduce costs, or to shorten delivery deadlines. Some people describe this use as quality control without the quality, and refer to it as a "hollowing-out" of quality control. In response to this, the term "quality assurance" is often used as a means of bringing back the quality-oriented quality control of the 1960s.

Naturally, quality control methods also change with the times. In the 1950s and 1960s, the relationship between process conditions and product quality was grasped by using facts and data, and statistical methods were widely used to search for the conditions that would prevent defects from occurring. This was effective because goals, such as specifications, were clearly defined and the conditions that would satisfy these goals could be identified and controlled.

The "seven tools of quality control" consisted of primitive methods based on facts and data from sources like histograms and control charts. These were followed by the birth of the "new seven tools of quality control" in the form of the KJ Method, relational charts, schematics, matrix tables, and other tools. Various predictive methods, such as Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), also came into use. In other words, people were working their way back to the upstream processes of production preparation and design in order to build quality into the production process.

Typically, customer needs can be summed up as "being able to quickly receive products that are both inexpensive and good." We all understand what we mean by quick and inexpensive, but what exactly are "good products"? To understand this, it's important to conduct research into a variety of themes and define what kind of "good products" people want, then to manufacture them and have people use them. With levels of technology rising and becoming increasingly complicated, and with changes happening more rapidly than they used to, this process is extremely difficult. Still, as long as we define good quality as the ability to supply customers with what they want, this is the fate of Monozukuri, and manufacturers will have to continue offering it. Because customer needs are not always obvious, manufacturers have to dig to reveal them, and then propose the results in such a way that happy customers find themselves saying things like, "I'm surprised at the kinds of products that pop up," and "I never imagined this kind of function, or this kind of use." Rather than conducting market research, it's often possible to discover these needs by simply watching customers carefully. At any rate, it is an extremely important part of the pursuit for quality and more should be done to establish it as a methodology.

I think the biggest problem for Monozukuri today is the mindset. The motivation for quality and improvement has declined, leaving an atmosphere of stagnation where people don't know what to do and assume that things won't work even if they try as hard as they can. Without putting up much of a fight, they lose their will to try while muttering things like, "It won't work," "It won't sell," or "It won't turn a profit."

Japan's period of rapid economic growth centered on the baby-boomers, who moved forward no matter what, with the idea that, "If I really try hard, I can make the world a better place," or "I can give myself a better lifestyle," or possibly "I can become important." Since everyone was basically poor in that day and age, they were able to believe that people who tried hard could rise to the top. In that kind of society, the will to master your work, to do things 100%, and to keep on improving is what succeeded in raising quality. In the end, though, people simply became conceited when others started talking about "Japan as number one." Today, people are simply interested in being smart enough to get by, and the hungry spirit that used to drive them to seek the truth is diluted.

In order to achieve a rebirth of "Japan as a nation of quality," I've proposed the "Q-Japan Concept," and one of the main pillars of this concept is to "establish the spiritual structure that the age requires." We need to reinforce the "traditional Monozukuri abilities" that we had during the rapid-growth era while simultaneously nurturing "new Monozukuri abilities" in response to the surrounding changes, but the abilities that we're speaking about here are those of an autonomic mentality. As we continue to make advances in information technologies and distribution technologies, we also have a crucial need for self-starting people to lead us in taking risks as the competition around us becomes increasingly intense. Here, an autonomic or self-starting person refers to one who has his or her own value standards and welcomes new challenges. Unfortunately, this kind of person is relatively rare in Japan, and the tendency is to be more heteronomous in nature. People tend to measure themselves by the standards of others, then complain about the areas that they find lacking, and work non-stop to overcome them.

However, Japanese Monozukuri will not succeed by waiting around for others to lead the way. People need to change their mindset and develop the abilities to define issues and conceptualize models. Instead of thinking that globalization is based solely on welcoming people and ideas from other countries, they should be promoting Japan and trying to spread our country's distinctive features all over the world.

A look at production quality in Europe and the US shows the strength of proposal-type companies that can provide solid concepts to back up the notion that "this (product, service, function, etc.) is definitely good" instead of simply trying to satisfy the superficial needs of users. As you can imagine, these companies have strong core technologies and technological systems. During Japan's period of rapid economic growth, even if a company didn't have the technology, it would still do everything it could to develop customers, and the technology would often come to it in the process. These Japanese companies weren't especially gifted in proposing concepts or applying definition-type production, but they had a real talent for catching up after starting from second or third place.

I'm interested in the production being carried out in Northern European countries. There, manufacturers try to support and advance their home countries by providing values that are highly acclaimed in the market. These countries preceded Japan as "gray societies," and have relatively small populations, so the idea of endlessly ramping up mass production is not an option. As a result, they will often use a fundamentally strong concept to develop an IT-related product or system, or a business or service model, and raise its added value. Japan will also have to pursue this kind of quality in order to carve out a "new age of quality."

It's inevitable that mass-produced products will go to China. Japan should instead focus on industrial products, which are produced in relatively large quantities, and concentrate on customizing them to meet the needs of each customer. In contrast with mass-marketed products, the emphasis here is not on producing huge lots and selling them cheaply to increase profit, so it's necessary to change the concept of "quality," and inject new abilities and technologies. For example, development methods that will minimize failures and repetitive steps are in demand. Having to repeatedly revise designs results in excessive costs. There is also a need to improve the predictive capabilities that indicate what will happen when a certain method is used. Stronger abilities to verify designs and evaluate products and services are also demanded.

The Q-Japan Concept points out the idea of "strengthening quality from a competitive viewpoint." While there was no real strong awareness of this idea during Japan's period of rapid economic growth, quality must have been a factor in achieving competitive superiority. Until around the middle of the 1980s, Total Quality Management (TQM) attracted a lot of attention from management because it was directly related to management issues for supplying a large amount of industrial products with high quality and low cost. The management environment suddenly changed, though, with the burst of Japan's bubble economy, and the unifying force of TQM decreased. Today, there is a need to reevaluate the use of quality in strengthening competitiveness, and to reconsider the methodology of quality management. It is especially important that companies clarify the image of the abilities they should have for a Quality Management System (QMS), and work to actualize that image. The JIS (Japanese Industrial Standards) Q9005 and Q9006 that were established in 2005 are guidelines for achieving QMS from a competitive viewpoint. These standards also emphasize the importance of organizations being able to achieve excellent learning capabilities and a mental climate that will enable them to transform themselves.

From an academic standpoint, we can formulate organizational and management theories that point toward a prescription for the symptoms in Japan's Monozukuri industry, but there is a great deal of importance in the interaction that results when industries apply these theories and have to decide whether to accept or customize the discoveries and exceptions that they find along the way. Because of this, companies need to have people who can put know-how into words and systematize it, or to rephrase that, people who can create models. Here, I'm referring to the ability to visualize and standardize know-how so it can be shared. To sum up, efforts from both industrial and academic circles will lead to the development of new theories in the fields of quality and value creation, and contribute to advances in Monozukuri.

This is a series of control techniques and management methods that help to improve the quality of management in companies and other organizations. It describes systematic activities for efficiently managing all of the organizations within a company in order to achieve the corporate objective of supplying products and services that satisfy customers both time-wise and price-wise. The TQM goals that must be met by the activities of every employee include raising quality in all departments and all processes, reducing unit prices, meeting delivery deadlines, providing safety, raising morale, and conserving the environment.

The Total Quality Control (TQC) concept that helped Japan to achieve its unique growth from 1960 onward was renamed TQM in 1996. Outside of Japan, the term TQM is ordinarily used, and it includes the use of TQC as an activity for responding to changes in the management environment.

TQM is not designed to increase profits in a short time. By accumulating improvements, TQM aims to strengthen the corporation overall, thus enabling it to provide high-quality products and services, raise customer satisfaction, and increase profits as a result.

Monozukuri =Manufacturing, Development, Engineering, Value creation, Value production
Mono = Things, Object, Entity, Subject, Something valuable, Something meaningful
Zukuri = Making, Manufacturing, Building, Forming, Creation, Generation, Production, Development

The Deming Prize in the field of TQM was established by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) in 1951 in commemoration of the late Dr. William Edwards Deming, a U.S. quality control expert who contributed greatly to Japan's statistical quality control after World War II. His teachings helped Japanese products reach some of the highest levels of quality in the world. There are three categories of the Deming Prize: The Deming Prize for Individuals, which is given to individuals or groups; the Deming Application Prize, which is given to companies or divisions of companies; and the Quality Control Award for Operations Business Units. The Deming Prize Committee serves as a third-party entity to conduct examinations, give awards, and handle administrative work.

These JIS standards are quality management system guidelines. Based on the results of a survey of TQM standardization needs conducted in 1999, JIS Q9005 and Q9006 were created with a strong emphasis on the quality management image of the future. JIS Q9005 is sub-titled "Guidelines for sustainable growth." It explains that it is indispensable for organizations to respond to change in order to survive, and that they must be sufficiently aware of, and utilize, their unique strengths and features. It says that quality management must be autonomously created in order to improve and revolutionize the quality of the products and services that a company provides to its customers. JISQ 9006 is sub-titled "Guidelines for self-assessment." Both of these standards have been recognized as important sources for the revision of ISO 9004.

While Japan was showered with worldwide attention for the remarkable achievements that it made in TQC during the early 1980s, the unifying force of the quality control field had decreased by the 1990s. Japan then set its focus on responding to change, and issued -- through the ISO 9000 channel -- its own original quality management system guidelines to the world in the form of JIS Q9005 and Q9006.