Quality control: US and Japan

A number of leading electronics companies in the United States are beginning to involve production workers in the effort to improve the quality and reliability of their products. They are borrowing techniques developed over the last 20 years in Japan, techniques in turn based on American social science theories. Unlike schemes tried previously in this country - such as the Zero Defects movement, which relied on individual worker motivation — the newly introduced ideas are based on worker committees called Quality Circles, after the Japanese Quality Control Circles (QCCs). These identify production and design problems and suggest means of solving them.