Word: japanized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Less than a decade ago, Xerox was in serious trouble. The company whose name is synonymous with copying machines was steadily losing customers. As Japan's Ricoh, Canon and other new competitors muscled onto Xerox's turf, the company slumped from an 86% share of the world market for basic copiers in 1974 to just 16.6% by 1984. When a shaken Xerox finally studied its competitors more closely, the company discovered their secret weapon: the Japanese firms hewed to rigorous quality standards. Taking a hard-eyed look at its operations, Xerox discovered that it was slowly destroying itself with sloppiness...
...great degree, American business has turned to its principal competitor, Japan, to learn how to restore quality. Ironically, what U.S. executives think of as "the Japanese method" was pioneered largely by an American statistician, W. Edwards Deming, 89, who began preaching the quality gospel to receptive Japanese industrialists in 1950. During the 1980s, thousands of U.S. companies borrowed the so-called quality-circle concept, in which teams of employees are encouraged to participate actively in monitoring and improving their part of the production process...
...American commitment to quality comes at a time when competitive challenges from abroad are growing rapidly and more and more foreign-owned plants are being based in the U.S. In the 1990s such competitors as Japan and West Germany will be joined by strong new rivals from much of Asia, from a more muscular European Community and from such Latin American countries as Mexico and Brazil...
...Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes do their high kicks with uncanny precision. But last week the Manhattan landmark, which houses U.S. companies ranging from General Electric to Simon & Schuster, took on a fresh symbolism. Control of the 19-building center passed into foreign hands when Japan's Mitsubishi Estate Co. agreed to pay $846 million for a 51% share of the Rockefeller Group, which owns most of the complex...
...many Americans the deal was an unsettling reminder of the decline of ^ U.S. financial dominance and Japan's simultaneous rise. Connecticut's Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman cited the transaction as evidence that the U.S. must redouble its efforts to become more competitive. Said he: "This year when they turn on the lights of that Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, we Americans are going to have to come to grips with the reality that this great national celebration is actually occurring on Japanese property...