Paradigm Shift

Ohno’s thinking was underpinned by two principles: (1) All waste -- inventory, defects, time, excess plant capacity and unnecessary human effort - contributes to higher costs and lower quality. as new-product quality and reliability and advancements become commonplace, we in industry are challenged to create things that will be new and intriguing enough to bring the customers to us.

Today, however, it is assiduously courting its customers, domestic and foreign, uncovering and accommodating customer preferences. exports to Japan in 1996 were 20 percent over the 1995 level. The JIT method of waste reduction (and time compression) spread rapidly to all phases in the value delivery chain - engineering, customer service, logistics and new product development. His name is Taiichi Ohno, the man generally credited with developing the quality improvements that brought Toyota from near bankruptcy in the 1940’s to the third largest automaker of the 1990s. Further, in a survey by Business Week in 1995, the Social Security Administration was ranked the best in the nation in customer service among "over the telephone businesses. ” After seeing what can be done, it is a tragedy that most American executives did not begin seeing the relationship between quality products and customer needs until the mid-1980s. "

American business, on the other hand, prospered for many years with an “if we can make it, we can sell it” attitude. I foresee all of us having lives enriched with the biggest winner being the American standard of living. Thus his goal was total elimination of waste: and (2) the “Just-in-Time” method of managing inventory.