WORLD / Asia-Pacific
Japan fears losing quality edge
(New York Times/chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-09-21 11:48
A recent surge in recalls of the defective products made in Japan has
sparked worries among the Japanese that the country is losing its best
face -- the craftmanship.
In radio talks shows, on the front pages of newspapers, in government
ministries, and even in the local noodle shops, people would talk about
the drop in products quality, the New York times reported.
The sentiment also made TV series like "Project X" one of the most
popular TV shows. The show is about a bunch of corporate engineers who
invented the hand-held calculators and ink-jet printers that helped turn
Japan into an industrial powerhouse.
Many Japanese fears that the country may be losing its edge in product
quality, while its neighbors like China and South Korea are catching up.
"Craftsmanship was the best face that Japan had to show the world," said
Hideo Ishino, a 44-year-old lathe operator at an auto parts factory in
Kawasaki, an industrial city next to Tokyo. "Aren't the Koreans making
fun of us now?"
"It took us years to build up this reputation," Kazumasa Mitani, 32, a
co-worker, was quoted as saying. "Now we see how fast we can lose it."
In the last two months, Toyota and Sony, the country's two proudest brand
names, announced large-scale recalls of defective products. They have
created something of a crisis in a country where manufacturing quality is
part of the national identity, the New York Times reported.
This week, Sony suffered another blow when Toshiba announced that it was
recalling 340,000 Sony-made laptop batteries, after last month's recalls
of 5.9 million batteries. And Toyota said Wednesday that it would hire
8,000 more engineers to strengthen quality.
In the Japanese media, Sony's and Toyota��s quality problems have
frequently topped coverage of wars in Iraq and Lebanon. And Nihon Keizai
Shimbun, the leading economic daily, began a front-page investigative
series this month called "Can Japan Protect Quality?"
"Toyota and Sony have been a wake-up call that something is amiss in
Japan," Takamitsu Sawa, an economics professor at Ritsumeikan University
in Kyoto was quoted as saying. "Japan seems to have lost something
important on the way to becoming a developed country, and many Japanese
want to get that back."
Japan's Trade Minister Toshihiro Nikai last month took unusually blunt
steps. He sent letters to Sony executives, ordering them to report on
quality-control improvements after recalls by Apple and Dell of Sony-made
laptop batteries.
Sony promised to comply and diligently sent employees to receive the
letters by hand. It was the first time such orders had ever been issued
to Sony.
"This is very rare," said Atsuo Hirai, assistant chief at the trade
ministry's information product safety section.
Rarer still was the fact that a few weeks earlier, the transport ministry
issued similar orders to Toyota. Hiroshi Okuda, the retired chairman of
Toyota, called on his countrymen to do more about "the declining
competitiveness of Japanese manufacturing."
"Japan lacks a sufficient sense of crisis," he warned last month.
To be sure, Japanese companies continue to dominate production of many
high-tech products, from digital cameras and color copiers to solar cells
and the delicate optics used to etch circuits onto most of the world��s
computer chips. And despite its problems, Toyota still appears on track
to become the world's largest carmaker in the next year or two.
"They'll learn from their mistakes," said Yuji Fujimori, an electronics
analyst in Tokyo for Goldman Sachs.
And, Sony's problems have not been limited to batteries. The company
worked furiously over the summer to resolve problems in production of its
PlayStation 3, its widely awaited game console, which is due out in
November.
"If asked if Sony's manufacturing ability has declined, at this point
today I have to say yes," said Ken Kutaragi, chief executive of Sony's
video game division.
Various reasons crop up as possible explanations for declining quality.
Universities said that new students are more interested in literature and
the liberal arts than engineering. Applicants to engineering programs are
down to 8.7 percent of all university applicants this year from 12.3
percent eight years ago, according to the New York Times report.
"In the old days, there were a lot of students who wanted to join the
front lines of manufacturing, and really gave it their all," said
Chitoshi Miki, an executive vice president in charge of student education
at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. "Now, no one even wants to break a
sweat."
Others have begun to blame recent American-style management changes, like
the end of traditional lifetime job guarantees. Fujitsu, the electronics
maker, has backed away from basing salaries on individual performance,
saying it hurt employee morale and undermined team work.
Some economists said Asian competitors have been closing in as Japan
wrings its hands. Lee Kwang Hoon, an electronics analyst at Hanhwa
Securities in Seoul, said that the recall of Sony-made batteries could
offer an opportunity for the biggest Korean makers, Samsung and LG, to
rival Sony in market share.
"The biggest change may not be that Japan has dropped in quality," said
Masaru Kaneko, an economics professor at Keio University in Tokyo, "but
that Asia is catching up."
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