Total quality control: Lessons European executives can learn from Japanese companies

This paper reports the finding of a Mission to Japan by 18 executives to study the total quality control activities of 8 companies from diverse industries. A number of the companies can be classified as world class. In the companies studied the dedication, vision and planning for total quality control, development of policy and setting of improvement objectives at each level in the organisation structure, and attention to detail in the production preparation stage is without equal in the majority of Western organisations. It is also pointed out that the housekeeping of Japanese companies is first class and all the companies studied said their greatest assets are employees.