As is represented by the world's top-level Japanese automotive manufacturers, Japanese manufacturers have been climbing to winning positions in global businesses. The driving force of their success includes responsiveness to diversifying market needs and elevating quality requirements, clarification of development concepts that facilitate new technology, application of technology to product planning and design, advanced production control systems that elaborately utilize state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies, and flexible, efficient production. Many Japanese manufacturers succeeded in fulfilling these factors mainly because they utilize Japanese-style Lean Production Systems or the so-called Toyota Production System (TPS) and Japanese-style, scientific quality management approaches such as Statistical Quality Control (SQC) and Total Quality Management (TQM) in order to improve their corporate management technology. As severe competition among manufacturers intensify both in Japan and overseas, action against quality problems that remarkably diminish customer satisfaction, and customer-first quality management, is becoming important. Scientific quality control methods that aim to optimize production processes for building in quality were undermined by the past expansion of quantity-oriented manufacturing through automation with massive and heavy equipment.
