Severe quality requirement
It is often said that Japanese companies are very strict about quality. This might be one of the reasons why these companies, for example Japanese automotive or electronic companies are successful in global market.
However, this can be one of the most difficut point for oversea companies to enter into Japanese market because of the extremely high requirement of prodcut quality. So I would like to explain the difference about the understanding of product quality bewtween Japan and other countries.
I have very hard experiences when I was working for Japanese subsidiary of American automotive components’ company. This company is quite famous for their product performance and quality in US. So when I started this job, I never imagined that I would have tough time because of prodcut quality issues.
As this company supplied many compontes to major American automotive companies such as GM, Ford, Chrysler, Japanese automotive companies also purchased similar products from this company. My Japanese customers were happy with the performance and price of the products. However, they were not happy with the product quality…?
Please imagine when a defective product of your company was found at a prodution line in automotive companies. How do you take action to this issue??
In other countries, I imagine that you would ask a quality assurance peron in this automotive company replace with new one. Then this issue will be reported to your company to take action in the near future.
However in Japan, it is absolutely different. Firstly, quality assurance would call me. Then he would tell me “Defective prodcut was found. So come to out production line NOW! Then inspect all the stock of your products urgently!”
When I had such issue, as the qty of our products in their stock was always 2 – 3 thousand, it always took me to inspect all the stock about 3 days from early morning till late evening… And their production line used only inspected products.
This is not the end when defective products are found at production line.There are actually many more process to close this issue of defective products.?
In this article, I would like to give you a message that Japanese companies would never accept to replace with new product when a defective products is found. They always request us to inspect all the stock immediately. Then they will ask us to proceed to the next step, which is the detailed investigation of manufacturing process of the products.
So in the next article, I will explain about Japanese way of defective products’ investigation.