Managing for quality in the United States and in Japan

What are the Japanese doing that causes so many of their products to be of extremely high quality? Is their ability to produce high-quality items a cultural phenomenon or can it be imported to the U.S.? This survey of the current literature on managing for quality begins with a historic overview and examines Japanese quality practices. These concepts have been extended to present-day management, information flows, product design, purchasing, and manufacturing in both Japan and the United States. They form an integrated approach to using manufacturing to attain a competitive advantage, an approach that uses quality management as an important component and emphasizes the linkages among components and functions within an organization.