10 percent") workers and foremen in shop floor quality control circles. Detailed reports on defects discovered on the assembly line and by field repair- men allowed the Japanese to pinpoint problems; top management met daily to discuss the reports.
Some U.S. air conditioner makers, by contrast, kept virtually no rec- ords on product failures, and none collected data as precise as the Japa- nese did. In the factory, quality almost invariably came second to meeting production schedules, and...