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To a great degree, American business has turned to its principal competitor, Japan, to learn how to restore quality. Ironically, what U.S. executives think of as "the Japanese method" was pioneered largely by an American statistician, W. Edwards Deming, 89, who began preaching the quality gospel to receptive Japanese industrialists in 1950. During the 1980s, thousands of U.S. companies borrowed the so-called quality-circle concept, in which teams of employees are encouraged to participate actively in monitoring and improving their part of the production process.
But giving the worker a greater sense of importance was not enough. A change in corporate philosophy was needed, the sort of disruptive and often expensive change that works only if the commitment starts at the top. In companies where impressive quality gains have been made -- Ford, Hewlett-Packard, 3M, Corning Glass, Apple, Motorola and Rubbermaid -- the chief executive lays down the rules and makes sure they are followed. Says Rubbermaid Chairman Stanley Gault: "Everyone has to know that shoddy work will not be tolerated. Our customers are not there to field-test our products." At Apple, says Chairman John Sculley, "quality is a religion. Anybody on the plant floor has the authority to shut down the entire line. And it happens."
Among the methods companies use to ensure quality:
-- 3M sends hourly workers on morale-building field trips to see how customers use the company's goods. One such team visited a local TV studio that uses 3M magnetic videotape.
-- When Motorola developed Micro TAC, the first pocket-size cellular phone, engineers made the device sturdy enough to be dropped from a height of 4 ft. onto a concrete surface without breaking.
-- At Apple, even the products help monitor quality. On the Macintosh assembly line, the computers run diagnostic checks on themselves.
Hewlett-Packard got the message when its Japanese partner, Yokogawa Hewlett- Packard, complained about the quality of the memory devices manufactured by the American firm. The centerpiece of Hewlett-Packard's quality program, started in 1979, is a closer relationship with its suppliers. Treating them as partners rather than free-lance sources, the company involves partsmakers in the initial design phase of its new products and gives the suppliers six-month forecasts of its needs so that the smaller companies can plan their own production. As a result, Hewlett-Packard reached its goal of increasing quality tenfold in just ten years. Says Chairman John Young: "If I'd asked for 30%, nothing would have happened."