>>>>I sometimes use USers, but that gets confusing if someone makes the S small. :)
>>>>
>>>
>>>< With apologies to Theodore Bikel and whoever he stole (borrowed) from >
>>>
>>>"I have called these people the Weens because certain archeological evidence inclines us to the belief that they called their country the We ---- or the Us."
>>
>>During the 1960's there was a town in Japan that gave itself the name USA (you saa). Many Americans were very mindful of where things were manufactured so they would look for Made in USA - and they got what they paid for!
>>
>>Tom
>Yea, Tom, this goes along with your Demming stuff very nicely. You'll remember that virtually all Japanese goods were laughable in quality. I can still remember a slogan of the day (at least here in Canada)..."Made in Japan, from old beer cans". Even their cardboard boxes cracked under stress of any kind and virtually all were made of whatever that you could still read Japanese writing in the stuff.
>
>Yet look where they are now!!!!
>When Datsuns first hit the market everyone laughed. And the first Hondas had a real bad paint adhesion problem. But it has taken years for US car makers to get up to par with them, once they (Japanese) set out to "fix" their problems.
>
>JimN

Jim;

Old beer cans - Zipo Lighters come to mind. Ever take one apart? A beer can turned inside out. This is from the early 1960's. The Japanese are famous for their 20 year plans. Problem here is U.S. Investors want "instantaneous gratification" ROI - profits - and all that and they want it now - not 20 years. Every quarter will do.

The U.S. had many television manufacturers and the Japanese went after them. Aided by the Japanese government, by 1970 you could buy a Japanese color TV for less money in the U.S. than any color TV made here, and the quality was much better. Also the same set cost more in Japan. The Japanese government paid the Japanese TV manufacturers for all losses as the plan was to capture the U.S. TV Industry. Americans like to save a buck so they bought the Japanese sets. Less expensive and better. Within a few years U.S. manufacturing disappeared – the Japanese won the economic war of TV manufacturing and began taking on new areas – one at a time.

People here think it is best to keep government out of business and they think that is the case. U.S. government is very heavily involved in business – but not to help it – it regulates and taxes the H… out of it. The Japanese government working with Japanese business has taken many manufacturing jobs from the U.S. Now the Japanese are off loading the manufacturing process to developing nations where the cost of labor is cheaper. Many U.S. businesses don’t understand what is going on.

Japanese marketing was interesting. There were four vcr manufacturers in Japan, who made many models under many names. A manufacturer would make a run of ten models and build a six month supply. The top three sellers after six months were the ones that remained in manufacturing. The other seven were dropped. Any inventory was sold of those remaining sets.

If you go to discount houses you will never see the same model being sold at different stores – The Good Guys and Circuit City come to mind. They sell different models from the same manufacturer. Now what is hard to compete with is the Japanese assembly line. They can go to lunch and an hour later be set up to produce a different product or model. It can take the U.S. manufacturers days to months to do anything like that.

Tom