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Many would say that the man whose work accounts for success of Japanese industry in general is an American management theorist and statistician by the name of W. Edwards Deming. During the 1930s, Deming, a physicist at the time, was working at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While there, he was associated with a statistician named Walter A. Shewhart, whose achievement was developing techniques that helped to reduce waste and promote improvement of industrial and manufacturing processes. He taught both management and workers to keep statistics on the processes and results of their work. This data then could be used to determine whether the processes could be adjusted to ensure greater efficiency. This work became the basis for Deming's theories.

Along with these statistical methods, Deming began to develop an entire theory of management that would complement Shewhart's work. He was convinced that letting workers keep their own statistics would eliminate the need for "quality control experts" by building quality into every stage of a process and by letting workers themselves do their own quality control. Although his work earned him an important role in helping domestic industries during World War II, his theories were largely ignored after the war. As the U.S. industrial machine retooled for mass production after the war, quality took a back seat to quantity.

But after the war, the Japanese discovered Deming. In Japan his theories found fertile ground in which to grow. Not only his work on statistical analysis but his emphasis on cooperative procedures in the workplace was very appealing to the Japanese - by nature a cooperative people. With time, his work thrived, helping to create the Japanese industrial juggernaut we know today and earning him a reputation as the "American father of Japanese industry." The Deming Prize, established in the 1950s, is today Japan's most prestigious industrial award.

Deming's work and methods become significant at that juncture where moral and practical, industrial and educational interests meet. Why does every tire have to be excellent at Bridgestone? Why is it important for us to educate all students, not just some of them? Because in a country that ostensibly embraces the ideal of social and economic equality, education can be a great equalizer. In an open society, we cannot afford to be driven along class lines.

Lester Thurow, noted economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lays this out for us quite clearly in his book Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe, and America (1992). For him, both educational and industrial reform are essential if we hope to survive and to compete at the international level. He points out that the new world economy is one in which the quality of labor has become the chief determinant of success.

Natural resources (except in countries such as Kuwait) are no longer the determining factor they once were in the international economy. Nor is access to capital a crucial factor; Thailand has access to the same world capital, to the same banks as does the United States. Even technology, which was once thought to give an edge to a nation's economic competitiveness, has double-crossed us. Despite all our inventiveness in the area of video cameras, VCRs, and FAX machines, we have seen the systematic appropriation of these products by the Japanese. Our technology has produced thousands, even millions, of jobs - for the Japanese.

An interesting pattern emerges when we compare Japanese, German, and American industry. Both Japan and Germany invest significantly less of their research and development money in new products than does the United States. New products, they have learned, are less important than was once the case.

Our educational system has given us the edge in developing new products through inventions and technology. It has done this by doing an impressive job of educating its elite. But educating the elite to invent new products is not enough, as we have seen. It is not new products, but the processes involved in producing them, that give countries the competitive edge. Increasingly, it will be in this arena that international competition is won or lost, especially by such resource-poor countries as Japan, Thailand, and Singapore, which invest their best thinking and energy and resources accordingly.

Creating new products is important, but not without the ability to produce them efficiently as well. The ability to scrutinize, streamline, and refine processes of manufacturing and service - while adding to and enhancing quality - will be the name of the game. It is a game in which we are far behind. Worse still, we are only dimly aware of its rules or its interdependence with the quality of education we provide. . .

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