Back in the 1980s, the eminent quality expert W. Edwards Deming was invited by the chief executive of a major American auto company to give a luncheon talk about quality at a retreat for the company’s corporate senior staff. This was during the era when Japanese carmakers had humbled their American rivals by producing durable, small automobiles. In U.S. manufacturing centers such as Detroit, it was sinking in that the Japanese knew something important that the Americans had overlooked: a basic set of practices for continuous improvement. Dr. Deming (as just about everyone called him) was one of the key figures teaching this body of theory and practices — which later would come to be known as lean production — first in Japan and then back in the U.S.
