Your recollection of Japanese manufacturing is clouded by mythology. Japanese quality sucked in the 1950s, they had a horrible world wide reputation for shoddy goods.
...which got better because Japanese companies had a culture of continuous improvement. That's very relevant to the discussion: the point the parent posters were making is that rather than settle for "good enough" you should continually move the bar for what "good enough" is, because then you'll eventually end up overtaking fat & lazy competitors even if they have a large head start.
Exactly. When people complain about the quality of Chinese goods as a proxy for China and Chinese people as a whole, I ask them where their MacBook Pro is made and they quickly shut up.
All of these lazy, low tolerance sweeping generalizations need to go!
Comments
Your recollection of Japanese manufacturing is clouded by mythology. Japanese quality sucked in the 1950s, they had a horrible world wide reputation for shoddy goods.
...which got better because Japanese companies had a culture of continuous improvement. That's very relevant to the discussion: the point the parent posters were making is that rather than settle for "good enough" you should continually move the bar for what "good enough" is, because then you'll eventually end up overtaking fat & lazy competitors even if they have a large head start.
Maybe German manufacturing would be a better example?
German quality sucked some half century earlier, so much that England had to require them write "Made in" on their goods to warn consumers.
Quality comes and goes.
Exactly. When people complain about the quality of Chinese goods as a proxy for China and Chinese people as a whole, I ask them where their MacBook Pro is made and they quickly shut up.
All of these lazy, low tolerance sweeping generalizations need to go!