作者：罗伯特-X-克林格利
bob@cringely.com
MAY 25, 2000
Stranger in a Strange Land: How Homer Sarasohn Brought Industrial Quality to Japan and Why It Took Japan So Long to Learn
By Robert X. Cringely
bob@cringely.com
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纪念荷马·萨拉森纪念荷马·萨拉森
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悼念 »哀悼萨拉森之死
近藤义雄
京都大学
标准化与质量控制
特聘教授 Vol. 1 55，第3期，2002年，第42-43页
布莱恩·巴特翻译
根据我们的朋友 Kenneth Hopper 最近发来的一封电子邮件，Homer Sarasohn 于 2000 年 9 月 28 日因淋巴瘤并发症去世，享年 85 岁。随后他的妻子雪莉 (Shirley) 也于六周后的 11 月 10 日去世。
二战时期的日本，制造质量明显粗糙。在通信设备领域尤其如此，这些问题对联合军事行动产生了深远的影响。因此，萨拉森将国家的电力和通信设备制造商纳入联合军事司令部民用通信部门（CCS），并成为推动在这些行业引入现代质量控制措施、教育和指导的带头人。
萨拉森还让查尔斯·普罗兹曼、弗兰克·波尔金霍恩和其他平民参与了行动。1948年至1950年间，他为富士通讯、古河电机制造、日立、松下电器、三菱电机、日本电机、索尼、三洋电机、夏普、住友电机、东芝和其他公司并确保他们参加了两次课程。这极大地推动了战后日本工业的进步。
1949 年 11 月至 1950 年 1 月，CCS 必修课程在大阪举行。萨拉森不仅是第一位担任主要发言人的美国人，住友电气工业公司的井上先生还带来了另外三名高管。
1949 年参加 CCS 课程时，Sarasohn 33 岁。他喜欢纽波特纽斯造船厂的座右铭，并将其用在 CCS 研讨会的正文中：
我们将在这里建造好船，如果可以的话，可以盈利，如果必须的话，就亏损，但永远都是好船。
借用现在的这个思路，其实就是质量控制；但是，如果将质量控制视为一种内在的东西，那么我们是在说质量控制高于一切，还是质量主义？无论怎么看，这都需要认真研究，对日本来说是一件幸事。
1984年 西森三郎先生在新股化学公司出版的CCS管理专业系列日文版《质量控制之路》封面上署名。他的签名下方刻有 1995 年在伦敦日本大使馆举行的 CCS 研究中心研讨会的参与者所写的对 Homer Sarasohn 的感想。他们的进展在 Vols 中有详细介绍。研讨会论文集2、3等。
此后，萨拉森和他的妻子在亚利桑那州斯科茨代尔度过了充满活力的晚年。
2000年9月，第八届年度服务质量会议和第七届太平洋质量组织会议在斯科茨代尔联合召开。我想再次见到萨拉松，就给他写了一封信。但由于健康原因，他住进了医院，我没能见到他。
参考文献
1) Kenneth Hopper：质量，日本和美国第一章，质量进展，卷。18，第 9 期，第 34-41 页
2) 伦敦 CCS 研究中心研讨会，卷。49，第 4 期，第 88-89 页，1996 年
3) 伦敦 CCS 研究中心研讨会，QC 100, 90。第 319-323 页，1998 年 — 日本标准
© 近藤义雄 2002
2014-07-19
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隐私政策
上周的专栏提到了霍默-萨拉松（Homer Sarasohn），他曾经是 IBM 的首席工程师。 知道萨拉松的人并不多，但即使提到他的名字，也有几位读者询问更多。 因此，本周我将从新公司系列中抽出时间，来看看萨拉森的经典故事。 与此同时，我们还可以从另一个角度来审视整个工业质量控制行业，我希望这个角度会对我们有所启发。 这个故事讲述了日本是如何开始重视质量的，以及为什么要花费这么长的时间。 这不是你想象中的故事。 这门课程如此重要，以至于我们作为一个社会已经忘记了它。
数字
霍默-萨拉森（Homer Sarasohn）与妻子住在亚利桑那州斯科茨代尔（Scottsdale）的一个养老院里，他是日本电子工业之父。 萨拉森是个温和的人，长着一张猫头鹰般的脸，他从未打算去日本。 他很想成为一名妇科医生，但在经济大萧条时期，他没钱上医学院。 于是，萨拉森放弃了他的物理学本科学位，在战前去设计无线电发射机。
第二次世界大战爆发后，他当了一名伞兵，后来又继续从事无线电工作，并加入了麻省理工学院辐射实验室。
当时的辐射实验室是美国主要的雷达研发中心，萨拉森的工作就是将实验室的新雷达设备原型转化为当时的无线电制造商可以批量生产的产品。 1946 年，他还在雷达实验室工作，一封来自华盛顿的电报把他召到了东京。 电报上说，日本占领军首领道格拉斯-麦克阿瑟将军正在通缉他。
"我以为这是个玩笑，"萨拉森说。 那年他 29 岁。
麦克阿瑟的总部分为几个部门。 每个部门都是日本政府的一个分支机构，但每个领导职位都由一名美国行政官员担任。 美国政府
美国政府是麦克阿瑟的名义模式，尽管他在某些地方对其进行了调整，以适应日本社会和他本人的军事背景截然不同的需求。 例如，日本没有真正意义上的总统；麦克阿瑟扮演的是天皇的角色，这很适合他。
到日本后，萨拉松被任命为民用通信科工业处处长。 这意味着他负责重建日本的通信基础设施。 麦克阿瑟想利用无线电作为占领的工具--沟通
麦克阿瑟想利用无线电作为占领的工具--用数十万台无线电接收机进行通信。 在战后的日本，收音机将是第一批向公众提供的电器。
"萨拉森说："民用通信科只有不到 100 人，我们都不了解日本。 "美军的轰炸使整个国家夷为平地。 到处都是难民。 工厂都没了。 没有被炸毁的电子生产设备都散落在农村。 我们必须找到设备和有经验的人来操作这些设备，然后在我们能找到的地方建立工厂。 最简单的方法就是让那些在战争期间一直在运营的公司恢复运营，如 NEC、松下、古河、富士通、东芝等。 一年之内，我们就把它们组织起来了。
麦克阿瑟废除了财阀--主导战前日本经济的公司联盟。 这些集团的残余以日本大型贸易集团的形式存活至今，它们建立了国内卡特尔，操纵供应和价格，总体上确立了日本长期以来依靠顺从的消费者建立强大经济的传统。 麦克阿瑟将战争归咎于财阀及其领导人，他禁止这些人参与原来的公司，几乎将所有高层管理人员都排除在劳动力储备之外（后来，美国结束对日本的占领后，他们又回到了日本，前财阀领导人对日本 20 世纪 60 年代的经济复苏负有主要责任）。 由于所有的领导者都离开了，萨拉松不得不在能找到中层管理者的情况下将他们提拔到高层职位。
那是真空管收音机的时代，当临时工厂终于开始生产真空管时，美国人震惊地发现产量通常不到 10%。 90%的真空管无法工作。 对于经营工厂的日本人来说，这并不奇怪，也无需担心；即使在战前，情况也一直如此。
"日本人没有质量意识，"萨拉森说。 "除了零式战斗机和一些飞机发动机外，他们的设计很糟糕，制造的产品也很低劣。 我来自雷达实验室，看到日本海军雷达的原始性质，我感到特别震惊。 他们的真空管很糟糕，收音机更糟糕，因为每部收音机都是由未经训练、经常无人监管的工人手工接线的。 他们大量生产，忽视质量。 工厂脏乱不堪，除了战争初期从德国引进的一些技术外，大部分生产技术都是 1868 年明治维新时期的技术。
萨拉森召集工厂经理，要求他们找出一个可以改善质量的问题。
"他说："大家鸦雀无声。 "从这个意义上讲，他们不应该为自己的公司做出有意义的贡献。
最后，经理们开始互相交谈，萨拉松则在一旁等待。 据翻译说，他们正在努力决定给出什么样的答案才能让美国人最满意。 就在那时，霍默-萨拉松决定成为日本的电子沙皇。 "他说："我必须成为独裁者，才能完成任何事情。 他说："日本人的心理就是追随领导。 他们当时使用的说法是'付钱给掌权者'，这是 19 世纪德川时代流行的屈从文化的遗留。 如果我想让这个行业重新站起来，我就必须完全掌控它。
为了扮演好独裁者的角色，萨拉松首先要学会日语。 "他说："我们的翻译都是日裔大兵，主要是来自夏威夷的农家子弟。 "他们无法理解要求他们翻译的技术资料。 更糟糕的是，日本本地人不信任他们，认为他们是叛徒，因为他们不是真正的日本人，也不忠于天皇。 对我来说，作为征服者的代表直接统治比被征服者更容易。
天皇被迫说他不是神，而我代表着促成这些变化的力量。 我的力量毋庸置疑。
由于对麦克阿瑟手下提供的日语课程感到失望，这位美国人搬进了一个日本家庭，接受了他们的文化，并以日本人的身份生活到 1950 年。
在萨拉松的控制下，日本电子工业开始缓慢发展。 随着新生产方法的采用，产量不断提高，真空管的产量最终达到了 75% 左右（当时设定真空管世界标准的 Sylvania 公司的产量为 85%）。 但是，当时人们对质量的要求仍然没有深刻的认识。
"我记得我曾访问过大阪的平川电气公司（该公司现在叫夏普电子）。 公司经理想让我知道，他理解我关于工作场所整洁的演讲，"萨拉森说。 "他雇了一个人专门负责保持工作场所的清洁。 我们在一个大的装配区找到了他。 这个家伙拿着一根棍子，棍子的末端有一根绳子，绳子的末端有几条丝带。 他围着装配台转来转去，用这根棍子拨动，用丝带把灰尘轻轻推开。 厂长得意地看着他，心想他的人正在'打扫'工厂，我一定会对他刮目相看的。
还有一次，萨拉松突然造访东京通信工程公司。 他给这家小公司安排了一项重要的工作，制造一种特殊的电子设备，但这个项目已经拖了很久。 他独自穿越东京，毫无征兆地出现在电子工厂，要求查看他订购的设备。 厂主不在，零件散落一地，布满灰尘。 特别项目--广播电台演播室调音台--支离破碎，几乎没有开工。 萨拉松对眼前的一切感到愤怒，他一言不发地离开了，留下工人们黯然神伤。
东京通信工程公司的两位创始人听说了这次灾难性的访问后，急忙穿过城市去安抚萨拉松。 他们的公司才成立几年，他们不想让公司的历史在那一天终结。
问题是质量。 工厂一团糟。 特别项目不仅没有完工，其部件的质量也很差。 萨拉森给了他们最后一次机会。 "我告诉他们，要么改过自新，要么丢掉工作，"他说。
东京通信工程公司后来更名为索尼公司。 索尼公司的联合创始人之一伊布卡（Masaru Ibuka）和盛田昭夫（Akio Morita）就是来为公司的生存求情的两个人。
第二次世界大战结束时，美国领导人认为他们对日本的占领可能会永远持续下去。 但到了 1949 年，萨拉松清楚地意识到，朝鲜战争即将来临，美国对日本的占领也将很快结束。 如果他的工作要继续下去，他就必须找到一种方法，向日本工业永久地灌输一些质量意识。
首先，萨拉松建立了电气测试实验室，用于测试收音机和其他电气设备的原型，然后才能批准投入生产。 之后，同样的产品会从生产线上随机取样进行进一步测试，以确保质量保持在可接受的水平。 如果质量下降，生产线就会关闭，这就把管理的成功与否直接与质量控制联系在一起。 因此，负责人必须对产品质量亲力亲为，不能将这一责任下放。
电气测试实验室仍在日本运营，履行着霍默-萨拉森在 1949 年设立的相同职能。 它还发挥着萨拉松无法预料的新功能，其中包括作为美国电子产品进入日本的一道屏障，这些产品在进入日本之前必须先通过一系列繁琐多余的测试。 每台电风扇、立体声组件和室内空调都必须在日本的设施中再次进行测试，尽管它们已经获得了美国联邦通信委员会或保险商实验室的批准。
日本的企业管理者也必须掌握专门的管理技术。 但一些占领军成员反对向日本人传播美国的生产技术。
这个问题在麦克阿瑟将军面前的20分钟陈述中得到了决定。 麦克阿瑟将军很久以前就不再遵守他最初的命令了 命令明确要求他 "不承担任何恢复或加强日本经济的责任" 萨拉森认为，如果没有更好的管理，日本将成为美国纳税人的长期负担。 他的反对者，经济和社会科科长则认为 萨拉松提出的计划会把日本变成一个经济怪物 在世界市场上威胁到美国。
"去做吧，"麦克阿瑟临走时随口说了一句，改变了世界历史的进程。
萨拉森与从西方电气公司（Western EIectric）请来负责日本电话系统的工程师查尔斯-普罗兹曼（CharIes Protzman）合作，编写了一本教科书，并为他们称之为 "公民通信部门管理研讨会"（CiviI Communication Section Management Seminar）的课程编写了教学大纲。 这是电子工业高级管理人员的必修课程，每周四天，每天八小时，为期八周。
"萨拉森回忆说："课程内容包括质量控制、管理理念和哲学。 "我们会问他们公司为什么要做生意，他们要么鄙夷地看着我们，要么说他们做生意是为了盈利，这是不对的。 正确的答案是，他们做生意是为了实现一些适当的长期目标，比如在制造无线电设备方面占据技术领先地位。 除非你能想出一个理由、一个座右铭、一个明确的声明来说明你为什么要做生意，否则你就不是在做生意。 我们教导他们，座右铭必须在公司的各个层面被理解"
"萨拉森说："我们举出的例子是纽波特纽斯造船公司，他们的座右铭是：'我们要在这里造出好船--如果可以，我们要盈利；如果必须，我们要亏损，但总之要造出好船'。
CCS 管理研讨会在东京和大阪举办，内容包括制造的系统方法，将客户满意度融入持续的产品开发。 研讨会讲授了工业工程、成本控制以及投资研究和开发的价值。 他们还教导公司各个部门的员工都应参与产品开发。 但课程主要强调的是质量控制，即质量是一种精神状态，不能被检查到产品中去。 经理们被告知，质量是衡量公司价值的标准。
完成 CCS 课程的管理人员必须使用 Sarasohn 和 Protzman 编写的教材，再次向自己工厂的管理人员讲授同样的课程。 两人于 1950 年离开日本后，日本管理协会在接下来的 25 年里一直举办 CCS 管理研讨会。 他们的教科书《工业管理基础》至今仍在日本印刷。
萨拉松研讨会的早期毕业生包括索尼公司的伊布卡和盛田、松下电器的松下正治以及三菱电机的加藤武夫。
"萨拉松说："大家都知道，他们都通过了考试。
那么，为什么我们从未听说过霍默-萨拉松或查尔斯-普罗兹曼呢？ 因为我们听说过美国质量大师爱德华兹-戴明（W. Edwards Deming），他是一位促销大师，在这两人于 1950 年底返回美国后，他被带到日本继续他们的工作。
戴明早年曾在美国农业部、人口普查局和陆军部从事统计质量控制工作，他在很大程度上是在为他人的工作邀功。
"戴明实际上是我们的第二选择，"萨拉森回忆道。 "我们想要的是上世纪 30 年代的沃尔特-谢瓦特（WaIter Shewart）。
但当时谢瓦特不在--他健康状况不佳--所以我们选择了戴明。 他利用了这一点。 我太笨了，或者太天真了，或者太忙于谋生而无暇顾及"。
萨拉松和普罗兹曼特别希望有一个美国人来继续他们的质量运动。 东京帝国大学有一个统计小组希望能胜任这项工作，但这两个美国人很谨慎。 "萨拉森解释说："这所大学的统计小组在日本社会中具有老政治家的地位，这让他们对我们来说很冒险。 "日本一个非常了不起的地方是其工匠的成就，他们是真正的艺术家，不计时间和费用，努力生产完美的产品。 我们在这些统计学家身上也看到了一些同样的艺术倾向，他们可能沉浸在对任务的智力鉴赏中，以至于忘记了这一切的意义，那就是生产。 日本的许多大型计算机编程项目，如第五代知识处理工作，也显示了这种效应。 团队沉浸在宏伟的概念中，以至于永远无法完成程序"。
但是，萨拉松和普罗兹曼代表的是日本的征服者，他们通过法令进行统治，而戴明实际上是为日本科学家和工程师联盟工作。 该联盟最终设立了戴明奖，每年颁发给被评为在质量控制中最先进地使用统计学的日本公司。 萨拉松是麦克阿瑟的人，而戴明则被视为日本科学家和工程师联盟的人，这有助于确保他在历史上的地位。
"我为自己在日本所做的工作感到自豪，"萨拉森说，"但我从未想到日本的电子产业会成为主导产业。 我对美国的商业机构充满信心，因为它在当时似乎占据了有利的先机。 但不知从什么时候开始，我们迷失了方向。 我们忘记了我们教给日本人的教训。 今天，这个国家的商业方式是错误的，总是从短期考虑，试图快速致富。 我们从哪里找来这些 MBA？ 日本的高级管理人员来自工厂车间和工程实验室，而我们则从销售、营销和财务部门提拔管理人员。 这是错误的方式"。
"如今，美国企业的质量何在？ 萨拉森摇着头问道。 "不会是唐纳德-特朗普吧？"
不，不是唐纳德-特朗普。 这也不是日本与生俱来的优势。 毕竟，日本的电子产品和汽车是什么时候变得如此出色的？ 20 世纪 70 年代，对吧？ 当然是在 20 世纪 80 年代--萨拉松和普罗兹曼回到美国 30 多年之后。 我们不能把日本的成功归咎于这些人，就像我们不能把美国的明显失败归咎于他们一样。 他们可能已经奠定了基础，但还必须有其他事情发生，才能解释日本公司是如何在被教导了整整一代人之后，突然主宰世界电子和汽车行业的。
答案的其余部分在于我们的业务是什么。 我们要最大限度地利用什么变量？ 组织，就其本质而言，是笨拙的。 任何三个人以上的团体，你最多只能指望他们把一件事做好。 这就是为什么没有交响乐团。 公司也是如此，它们的管理都是为了最大限度地利用某些特定的变量。
从日本 1868 年明治维新开始工业化的第一天起，在随后的一百年里，日本工业一直致力于最大限度地提高产量。 "为当权者买单 "意味着要制造数以百万计的产品，这些产品的质量往往令人生疑，但这并没有什么关系，因为这些公司都有自己的领地，它们以廉价生产换取市场份额。 尽管萨拉松和戴明大肆宣扬，但在日本封建的工业结构中，公司生产多少小部件仍然比生产质量好坏更重要。 这一点可以向任何一位 20 世纪 60 年代日本汽车的车主求证。 当然，索尼制造的收音机和电视机也相当不错，但索尼是例外，而不是常规。
美国人吃肉，在商业世界里，肉意味着利润。 美国公司的组织就是为了实现利润最大化。 在二十世纪六七十年代，在企业集团时代，重要的是生产的美元数量。 到了 20 世纪 80 年代，华尔街完善了这一方法，并将注意力集中在利润率上，拆解了过去笨重的巨型企业，为股东获取更大价值，而这一切都以牺牲长期规划和产品开发为代价。
日本公司也经历了类似的转变，但不是从毛利最大化转向毛利率最大化，而是以电子部门为首的日本大公司
- 而是从生产最大化转向产量最大化。
生产就是制造东西。 产量是指制造出能用的东西。 一百年来，尽管霍默-萨拉松（Homer Sarasohn）做出了很多努力，但日本公司一直专注于生产，而忽视了产量。 然后，在 20 世纪 60 年代末，一些事情发生了，日本人开始制造能用、好用的东西，而我们却在不知不觉中陷入了困境。
"Yoshiro Nishi 说："直到 20 世纪 60 年代平面工艺出现，我们才开始讨论良品率问题。
Nishi 是霍默-萨拉森（Homer Sarasohn）的翻版。 20 世纪 80 年代初，他是东芝公司一个小型工程小组的负责人，该小组将计算机内存业务从美国夺走。 东芝的一兆位动态随机存取存储器（DRAM）芯片使美国公司损失了数十亿美元的销售额，同时也使美国的贸易逆差增加了数十亿美元。 对此，西义隆功不可没。 后来，西担任惠普公司超大规模集成（VLSI）电路设计主管。 表面上看，西是东芝公司借给惠普公司的，但在 1985 年的日美贸易谈判中，西却被作为让步让给了惠普公司。
但平面工艺是怎么回事？
平面工艺是 1959 年飞兆半导体公司发明的集成电路制造方法。 这是一种在一片硅片上安装多个晶体管的方法。 德州仪器公司的杰克-基尔比（Jack Kilby）已经在同一片锗上制造出了多个分立元件，包括第一个锗电阻器和电容器，但基尔比的元件是通过必须手工安装的细小金线在芯片上连接在一起的。 德州仪器的集成电路无法批量生产。
飞兆半导体公司创始人鲍勃-诺伊斯提出了另一种生产方法，即在芯片上表面沉积一层绝缘氧化硅--这被称为 "平面工艺"。 然后用光刻技术在氧化物上印制金属细线，将芯片上的元件连接在一起。 这些金属线与杰克-基尔比（Jack Kilby）的金线一样可以传输电流，但它们可以一步完成印刷，而不是手工一条条安装。 诺伊斯和他的同事们利用新的光刻方法，先在一块芯片上安装两三个元件，然后是十个、一百个、数千个。 如今，在曾经只有一个晶体管的硅片上，可以安装超过一百万个元件，而这些元件都太小了，根本看不见。
在飞兆半导体公司完善集成电路之前，日本和美国公司都生产单个元件。 尽管日本人的废品率相对较高，但他们凭借较低的劳动力成本控制了一部分市场。 因为半导体毕竟只是用沙子做成的，所以每生产一个好的晶体管，扔掉多少个晶体管并没有什么区别。
但当业务从分立元件转向集成电路时，扔掉多少零件突然变得重要起来。 飞兆半导体公司的平面工艺消除了日本在劳动力成本方面的优势，同时也扩大了日本在质量方面的劣势，因为集成电路可能会因为一点点灰尘而毁于一旦。 如果一半的日本分立晶体管是坏的，那么另一半就是好的，这没有问题。 但如果集成电路中有一半晶体管是坏的
日本公司就会倒闭。
几乎是一夜之间，日本电子工业获得了新生，从最大限度地提高产量转变为最大限度地提高产量。 突然之间，他们以一种前所未有的方式理解了霍默-萨拉松在产品质量方面的教诲的意义。 将任何过程都视为一个整体系统而不是离散的元素，这一点变得至关重要，而产量最大化的方法不是追求零缺陷，而是追求零变异。 如果你能控制生产系统并消除变异，那么你甚至不需要去寻找缺陷，因为根本就不会有缺陷。 这是提高集成电路产量的唯一方法，无论你在哪个国家工作，但它远远超出了半导体的范围，涵盖了所有制造领域。 这就是佳能公司不检查复印机和打印机的原因--因为差异太小，检查是浪费时间。 这就是霍默-萨拉森（Homer Sarasohn）在 1948 年所宣扬的理念，也是日本电子行业在 1968 年突然明白的理念，当时他们从谈论质量到为之付诸行动，因为不这样做就会失败。 这些经验在传授 30 年后，首先在日本的电子工业中传播开来，随后又传到了汽车工业，并得到了很好的应用。
如果说丰田汽车是可靠的，这就是原因所在。
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MAY 25, 2000
Stranger in a Strange Land: How Homer Sarasohn Brought Industrial Quality to Japan and Why It Took Japan So Long to Learn
By Robert X. Cringely
bob@cringely.com
Last week's column mentioned Homer Sarasohn, who among many things was at one time the chief engineer for IBM. Not many people know about Sarasohn, but even the mention of his name prompted several readers to ask for more. So this week, I'm taking a break from my series on new companies to take a look at a classic Sarasohn story. And at the same time, we get to look at the whole business of industrial quality control from a different — and I hope enlightening — perspective. This is the story of how Japan came to appreciate quality and why it took so long to happen. It's not the story you expect. And it's the sort of lesson that's so important that we as a society have already forgotten it.
Figures.
Homer Sarasohn, who lives with his wife in a retirement complex in Scottsdale, Arizona, is among many other things the father of the Japanese electronics industry. A gentle man with an owl-like face, Sarasohn never planned to go to Japan. He really wanted to be a gynecologist, but couldn't afford to go to medical school during the Depression. So Sarasohn fell back on his undergraduate physics degree, and went to work before the war designing radio transmitters.
When the Second World War came along, he served as a paratrooper, then later resumed his radio work, joining the staff of the MIT Radiation Laboratory.
The Rad Lab, as it was called, was the major U.S. development center for Radar during the war, and it was Sarasohn's job to take laboratory prototypes of new radar equipment and turn them into products that could be mass produced by the radio manufacturers of the day. He was still working at the Rad Lab in 1946, when a telegram came from Washington, summoning him to Tokyo. The telegram said he was wanted by General Douglas MacArthur, head of the occupation forces in Japan.
"I thought it was a joke," Sarasohn said. He was 29 years old.
MacArthur's headquarters was divided into several sections. Each section served as a branch of the Japanese government, though with an American administrator in each leadership role. The
U.S. government was MacArthur's nominal model, though he adapted it in places to suit the very different needs of both Japanese society and his own military background. There was no true president, for example; MacArthur played, instead, the role of emperor, which suited him.
When he got to Japan, Sarasohn was made chief of the Industry Branch within the Civil Communications Section. That meant he was in charge of rebuilding the communication infrastructure of Japan. MacArthur wanted to use radio as a tool of occupation — to communicate
hundreds of thousands of radio receivers. Radios would be the first appliances available to the public in post-war Japan.
"There were fewer than 100 people in the Civil Communications Section, and none of us knew anything about Japan," Sarasohn said. "American bombing had laid bare the country. There were refugees everywhere. The factories were all gone. What electronics production equipment hadn't been destroyed was dispersed to the countryside. We had to find equipment and people with experience to run it, then set up factories wherever we could. The easiest way to get up and running was to bring back to life the companies that had been operating during the war — NEC, Matsushita, Furukawa, Fujitsu, Toshiba, and others. Within a year we got them organized in a primitive way."
MacArthur had abolished the Zaibatsu — the confederations of companies that had dominated the pre-war Japanese economy. These groups, the remnants of which survive today in the form of Japan's enormous trading conglomerates, created domestic cartels, manipulated supplies and prices, and generally established the long Japanese tradition of building a robust economy on the backs of submissive consumers. MacArthur blamed the war on the Zaibatsu and its leaders, who he banned from participating in their old companies, taking virtually all top managers out of the labor pool (they later returned, following the end of U.S. occupation of Japan, and ex-Zaibatsu leaders were mainly responsible for Japan's economic resurgence in the 1960s). With all the leaders gone, Sarasohn had to promote middle managers, when he could find them, into the top jobs.
Those were the days of vacuum tube radios, and when vacuum tube production finally began in the makeshift plants, the American was appalled to see that yields were typically less than 10 percent. Ninety percent of the vacuum tubes would not work. To the Japanese running the factories, this was no surprise, nor was it a cause for concern; it had always been this way, even before the war.
"The Japanese had no sense of quality," Sarasohn said. "With the exception of the Zero fighter and some aircraft engines, their designs were bad and their manufactured goods were shoddy. Having come from the Rad Lab, I was particularly appalled to see the primitive nature of Japanese naval radar. Their vacuum tubes were bad and the radios were even worse, since each was hand-wired by untrained, often unsupervised, workers. They produced goods in mass quantities, ignoring quality. The factories were filthy, and with the exception of some technology picked up from Germany early in the war, most of their production techniques dated from the Meiji Restoration of 1868."
Sarasohn called in the plant managers, asking them to identify one problem they could work on to improve quality.
"There was utter silence," he said. "They were not expected to make meaningful contributions to their companies in this sense."
Eventually, the managers began to talk with each other, while Sarasohn waited. According to the translator, they were trying to decide what answer to give that would most please the American. That was when Homer Sarasohn decided to become the Japanese electronics czar. "I had to become a dictator to get anything done," he said. "It's part of the Japanese psyche that they follow the leader. The expression they used then translated to 'pay the man in power,' which was a holdover from the culture of submission popular during the Tokagawa era of the 19th century. If I was going to get the industry back on its feet, I would have to take complete charge."
In order to play his dictator role, Sarasohn first had to learn Japanese. "Our translators were Nisei GIs, mainly farm-boys from Hawaii," he said. "They couldn't understand the technical materials they were being asked to translate. Worse still, they were distrusted by the native Japanese, who saw them as traitors since they were not really Japanese and weren't loyal to the emperor. It was easier for me to rule directly as a representative of the conquering horde than
conquered, the emperor had been forced to say he was not a god, and I represented the force that had made those changes happen. My power was unquestioned."
Frustrated with Japanese language courses offered by MacArthur's staff, the American moved-in with a Japanese family, embracing their culture, and living as a Japanese until 1950.
Under Sarasohn's control, the Japanese electronics industry began to make slow progress. Yields rose over time as new production methods were adopted, eventually reaching around 75 percent for vacuum tubes (Sylvania, which set the world standard for vacuum tubes, had an 85 percent yield at the time). But there still wasn't a deep understanding of the need for quality.
"I remember visiting the Hirakawa Electric Company in Osaka (the company is today called Sharp Electronics). The manager wanted to show me that he understood my lectures about having a clean workplace," Sarasohn said. "He had hired a man specifically to keep the place clean. We found him in one of the big assembly areas. This fellow had a stick with a string coming from the end of it, and on the end of the string were a couple of pieces of ribbon. He was going around the assembly benches, flicking this stick, using the ribbons to push the dust around a little. The plant manager looked on proudly, thinking that his man was 'cleaning' the plant, and that I would be impressed."
On another occasion, Sarasohn made a surprise visit to the Tokyo Communication Engineering Company. He'd given the small company an important job, building a special piece of electronic equipment, but the project was long overdue. Travelling alone across Tokyo, he appeared without warning at the electronics factory, demanding to see the equipment he'd ordered. The owners were absent, parts were scattered everywhere and covered with dust. The special project, a radio station studio mixing console, lay about in pieces, barely begun. Furious with what he saw, Sarasohn exited without a word, leaving the workers in disgrace.
When they heard about the disastrous visit, the two founders of the Tokyo Communication Engineering Company hurried across the city to mollify Sarasohn. Their business was only a couple years old, and they didn't want its history to end that day.
The issue was quality. The plant was a mess. The special project was not only unfinished, the quality of work that its parts displayed was bad. Sarasohn gave them one last chance. "I told them to either mend their ways or lose their jobs," he said.
The Tokyo Communication Engineering Company later changed its name to Sony Corporation. The two men who came to plead for the survival of their company were Sony co-founders Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita.
When the Second World War ended, American leaders thought their occupation of Japan might last forever. But by 1949, it was clear to Sarasohn that the Korean War was coming, and that the American occupation of Japan would soon end. If his work was to survive, he had to find a way of permanently instilling in Japanese industry some regard for quality.
First, Sarasohn set up the Electrical Test Laboratory, which was used to test prototype radios and other electrical gear before they could be approved for production. Later, random samples of the same goods would be taken off production lines for further testing to guarantee that quality remained at an acceptable level. If quality dropped, the production lines would be shut down, tying the success of management directly to its control of quality. The people in charge were thus personally committed to product quality, and could not delegate this responsibility.
The Electrical Test Laboratory still operates in Japan, fulfilling the same function set up by Homer Sarasohn in 1949. It serves new functions that Sarasohn could never have predicted, too, including acting as a barrier for the entry of American electronic goods that must first pass a tedious battery of superfluous tests before they are allowed in the country. Every electric fan, stereo component, and room air conditioner must be tested again in a Japanese facility, despite carrying Federal Communications Commission or Underwriters' Laboratory approvals.
management techniques specificaIIy for Japanese pIant managers. But some members of the occupation forces opposed spreading U.S. production know-how to the Japanese.
The issue was decided in a 20-minute presentation before GeneraI MacArthur. The GeneraI had Iong before stopped foIIowing the Ietter of his originaI orders, which toId him specificaIIy to "not assume any responsibiIity for the economic rehabiIitation or strengthening of the Japanese economy." Sarasohn argued that without better management, Japan wouId be a Iong-term drain on U.S. taxpayers. His opposition, the head of the Economics and SociaI Section, argued that the program Sarasohn was proposing couId turn Japan into an economic monster that wouId threaten the U.S. in worId markets.
"Go do it," MacArthur said casuaIIy on his way out the door, changing the course of worId history.
Working with CharIes Protzman, an engineer from Western EIectric who had been brought in to run the Japanese teIephone system, Sarasohn wrote a textbook and prepared a syIIabus for what they caIIed the CiviI Communication Section Management Seminar. It was a required seminar for senior eIectronics industry executives, meeting eight hours per day, four days per week for eight weeks.
"The course was quaIity controI, management concepts, and phiIosophy," Sarasohn remembered. "We'd ask them why their companies were in business, and they'd either Iook at us bIankIy or say that they were in business to make a profit, which was incorrect. The right answer was that they were in business to achieve some appropriate Iong-term goaI, Iike taking the technicaI Iead in manufacturing radio equipment. UnIess you can come up with a reason, a motto, a cIear statement of why you are in business, then you aren't in business. And we taught them that that motto had to be understood at aII IeveIs of the company."
"The exampIe we heId up was Newport News ShipbuiIding, whose motto was: 'We wiII buiId good ships here — at a profit if we can, at a Ioss if we must, but aIways good ships,'" Sarasohn said.
The CCS Management Seminar was taught in Tokyo and Osaka, and covered a systems approach to manufacturing, integrating customer satisfaction into continued product deveIopment. The seminars taught industriaI engineering, cost controI, and the vaIue of investing in research and deveIopment. They taught that workers on aII IeveIs of the company shouId be incIuded in product deveIopment. But mainIy the course stressed quaIity controI, that it is a state of mind that can't be inspected into a product. QuaIity, the managers were taught, is a measure of the worthiness of their companies.
Managers who had finished the CCS course were required to teach the same Iessons again to executives at their own factories, using the textbook written by Sarasohn and Protzman. After both men Ieft Japan in 1950, the CCS Management Seminar was given for the next 25 years by the Japan Management Association. Their textbook, FundamentaIs of IndustriaI Management, is stiII in print in Japan.
EarIy graduates Sarasohn's seminar were Ibuka and Morita of Sony, Matsushita EIectric's Masaharu Matsushita, and Mitsubishi EIectric's Takeo Kato.
"As you know from history, they passed the course," Sarasohn said.
So why haven't we ever heard of Homer Sarasohn or CharIes Protzman? Because we have heard of American quaIity guru W. Edwards Deming, a master of seIf-promotion who was brought to Japan to continue their work after these two men returned to the U.S. at the end of 1950.
Deming, who did earIy work in statisticaI quaIity controI at the U.S. Department of AgricuIture, Census Bureau, and War Department has been, in Iarge part, taking credit for the work of others.
"Deming was actuaIIy our second choice," Sarasohn recaIIed. "We wanted WaIter Shewart from
the 1930s, but Shewart wasn't available at the time — he was in poor health — so we settled for Deming. He's capitalized on it. I was too dumb or naive, or too busy earning a living to bother."
Sarasohn and Protzman specifically wanted an American to continue their quality campaign. There was a statistical group at Tokyo Imperial University that wanted a crack at the job, but the two Americans were wary. "The university group had elder statesman status in Japanese society, which made them risky for us," Sarasohn explained. "One really remarkable thing about Japan is the achievement of its craftsmen, who are really artists, trying to produce perfect goods without concern about time or expense. We saw some of the same artistic tendency in these statisticians, who might have got so caught up in the intellectual appreciation of the task that they could forget the point of it all, which was production. This effect shows, too, in many large- scale Japanese computer programming projects, like their work on fifth generation knowledge processing. The team becomes so involved in the grandeur of their concept that they never finish the program."
But where Sarasohn and Protzman represented Japan's conquerors and ruled by decree, Deming actually worked for the Japan Union of Scientists and Engineers. That Union eventually established the Deming Prize, which is given each year to the Japanese company judged to have made the most advanced use of statistics in quality control. While Sarasohn was MacArthur's man, Deming was perceived as the Japan Union of Scientists and Engineers' man, which helped insure his place in history.
"I was proud of the work I did in Japan," Sarasohn said, "but I never imagined the Japanese electronics industry would become dominant. I had confidence in the American business establishment, which seemed at the time to have a healthy head start. But somewhere along the line we lost our way. We forgot the very lessons we taught the Japanese. Business in this country today is done the wrong way, always thinking in the short term, trying to get rich quick. Where did we get all these MBAs? Senior Japanese executives come from the factory floors and engineering labs while we promote our executives from sales and marketing and finance. That's the wrong way."
"Where is quality today in American business?" Sarasohn asked, shaking his head. "It can't be Donald Trump, can it?"
No, it isn't Donald Trump. And it isn't some innate superiority of Japan, either. When was it, after all, that Japanese electronics and automobiles got so good? In the 1970s, right? Surely by the 1980s — 30 years and more after Sarasohn and Protzman returned to America. We can't blame those men for Japan's success anymore than we can blame them for America's apparent failure. They may have laid a foundation, but something else had to happen to explain how Japanese companies came suddenly to dominate the world electronics and automobile businesses, a full generation after they were taught how.
The rest of the answer lies in what it is we're in business to do. What variable is it that we are trying to maximize? Organizations, by their very nature, are clumsy. Take any group of more than three people and the best you can hope for is that they will do one thing well. That's why there are no marching symphony orchestras. It's that way with companies, too; they are all managed to maximize some particular variable.
From Japan's first days of industrialization in the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and for the hundred years that followed, Japanese industry was intent on maximizing production. "Paying the man in power" meant building millions and millions of things, often of dubious quality, but that was okay because these companies were territorial and they lived for market share bought with cheap production. Despite the preaching of Sarasohn and Deming, in the feudal Japanese industrial structure it still mattered more how many widgets your company made than how well they were made. Talk to any owner of a 1960s-era Japanese car for proof of that. Sure, Sony was making pretty good radios and televisions, but Sony was the exception, not the rule.
eat meat, and in the world of business, meat means profits. American companies were organized to maximize profits. What mattered in the 1960s and '70s — in the era of conglomerates — was the sheer number of dollars produced. By the 1980s, Wall Street had refined this approach and was concentrating on profit margins, disassembling the ungainly megaliths of the past to gain greater value for shareholders, all at the expense of long-term planning and product development.
The Japanese companies went through a similar shift, but rather than going from maximizing gross profits to gross margins, the big Japanese corporations — led by their electronics divisions
— went from maximizing production to maximizing yield.
Production is making things. Yield is making things that work. For a hundred years and pretty much despite the efforts of Homer Sarasohn, Japanese companies concentrated on production and ignored yield. Then, in the late 1960s, something just happened, and the Japanese started making things that worked, and worked well, and we were in trouble without even knowing it.
"We didn't start to talk about yields until the planar process came along in the 1960s," said Yoshiro Nishi, who in those days was a junior semiconductor engineer at Toshiba.
Nishi is a sort of Homer Sarasohn in reverse. In the early 1980s he was the head of a small engineering group at Toshiba that literally took the computer memory business away from America. Toshiba's one megabit dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips cost American companies billions in sales, at the same time adding billions to America's trade deficit. Yoshiro Nishi can rightly take credit for that. Later, Nishi was head of Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) circuit design for Hewlett-Packard. Nishi, who was ostensibly on loan to HP from Toshiba, was literally handed-over as a concession in U.S.-Japanese trade negotiations in 1985
But what's this about the planar process?
The planar process was what they called the method invented for making integrated circuits at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959. It was a way of putting several transistors on one piece of silicon. Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments had already built several discrete components on the same slice of germanium, including the first germanium resistors and capacitors, but Kilby's parts were connected together on the chip by tiny gold wires that had to be installed by hand. TI's integrated circuit could not be manufactured in volume.
Fairchild founder Bob Noyce came up with a different production method in which a layer of insulating silicon oxide was deposited on the top surface of the chip — this was called the "planar process." Then photolithography could be used to print thin metal lines on top of the oxide, connecting the components together on the chip. These metal traces carried current in the same way that Jack Kilby's gold wires did, but they could be printed on in a single step rather than being installed one at a time by hand. Using their new photolithography method, Noyce and his boys put first two or three components on a single chip, then ten, then a hundred, then thousands. Today, the same area of silicon that once held a single transistor can be populated with more than a million components, all too small to be seen.
Until Fairchild perfected the integrated circuit, Japanese and American companies alike made individual components. The Japanese controlled a portion of that market based on their lower labor costs and despite their comparatively high reject rates. Since semiconductors were, after all, just made of sand, it didn't make that much difference how many transistors they threw away for every good one.
But when the business switched from discrete components to integrated circuits, it suddenly did matter how many parts were thrown away. Fairchild's planar process took away Japan's labor cost advantage and at the same time amplified Japan's quality disadvantage, because ICs could be ruined by the slightest bit of dust. If half of the Japanese discrete transistors were bad, then the other half were good and that was okay. But if half the transistors in an integrated circuit
Japanese companies literally out of business.
Practically overnight, the Japanese electronics industry was born again, switching from maximizing production to maximizing yield. Suddenly, they understood in a way that they never had before the significance of Homer Sarasohn's lessons in product quality. It became essential to consider any process not as discrete elements but as a total system, and the way to maximize yields is not to aim for zero defects but for zero variation. If you control the production system and eliminate variation, then you don't even have to look for defects, because their won't be any. That's the only way to increase integrated circuit yields, no matter what country you work in, but it goes far beyond semiconductors to all areas of manufacturing. That's why Canon doesn't inspect its copiers and printers — because the variation is so low that inspection is a waste of time. That's what Homer Sarasohn was preaching in 1948, and what the Japanese electronics industry suddenly came to understand in 1968, when they went from talking about quality to doing something about it, because the alternative was failure. These lessons spread, 30 years after they had first been taught, first through the electronics industry in Japan and then to the automobile industry, which put them to good use.
If Toyotas are reliable, this is why.
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