Quality trends around the world

Abstract

The speaker recently visited Italy, India, China, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Description and asses- ment are given for each of the places visited regarding both general economic and social conditions, and the quality of the maufacturing processes and their resultinq products. Comments were made ln a general context, although specific examples are cited. Ratings are given for workmanship, engineering, product quality and overall impression for each place visited. China was regarded as a country with great potential considering the large amount of human resources available.

Improper (or lack of) implementation of known techniques was seen to be commonplace resulting in a waste of time and manpower, and a sometimes over-priced and inferior product. In summary, some of the world's leading manufacturing nations have much work to do to catch up with Japan and the United States in product quality assurance, and could be well-advised to adopt some of the more structured methods of controlling their manufacturing processes and hence, output quailty.

Keywords:

• quality trends
• quality assurance
• productivity
• manufacturing process