「關鍵決策年Deming 1950」--FORTUNE 雙周刊

簡注FORTUNE 雙周刊的「關鍵決策年Deming 1950」

下文為近期FORTUNE 雙周刊 Wikipedia article "Fortune (magazine)".(established 1930)，為慶祝其創立75周年的主題 KEY DECISIONS，其中選過去150年，西方的20件改變歷史之事件（20 That Made History），其中之一為
”Deming 1950年”-- Deming博士講學日本。

此篇行文有點「輕浮」。有興趣的讀者請參考W. E. Deming『轉危為安』（Out of the Crisis）之附錄。

我作了兩處字眼小注，用【】表示。

FORTUNE 75 KEY DECISIONS
20 That Made History
Many of these epic decisions were breathtakingly smart. Some were appallingly stupid. But all of them shaped the modern world of business.

1950: Deming charts Japan’s remarkable course

下一原文網頁已失效 只當歷史http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fortune75/articles/0,15114,1071184-9,00.html

Sometimes big decisions are made to the blare of banner headlines. And sometimes they are made quietly, with no more drama than a puff of air. At a dinner party in Tokyo in the summer of 1950, 21 of Japan’s most influential corporate leaders, who accounted for some 80% of the country’s industrial capacity, made the latter kind of decision. What they did was listen—specifically to W. Edwards Deming, an obscure American statistician who had never met a payroll and had been to Japan only once before. Deming was nonetheless certain that he knew how to solve postwar Japan’s economic problems. "You can send quality out and get food back," he told his skeptical audience.

【Blare- A loud, strident noise. 2. Flamboyance.

v. intr. - 高聲鳴叫, 大叫 v. tr. - 嘟嘟地發出, 高聲發出
n. - 嘟嘟聲, 耀眼的光, 響而刺耳的聲音

日本語 (Japanese) v. - 鳴り響く n. - うるさい音

Banner . - 旗幟, 通欄頭號標題：a newspaper headline that runs across the full page
Synonym: streamer】

The pursuit of quality, Deming said, was the key to higher productivity, bigger profits, more jobs, and therefore a richer society. Quality, he lectured, did not begin by finding defects at the end of the production line. It had to be pursued along every link of the supply chain, with the active cooperation of everyone from suppliers to the humblest worker on the factory floor. If Japanese companies followed his 14 points, Deming promised his dinner companions and other managers in a series of lectures that summer, their goods would be world-class in five years. The notion seemed ridiculous. At the time, the term "Made in Japan" was such a joke that some factory owners set up operations in the village of Usa so that they could mark their products "Made in USA." But Japan’s poohbahs didn’t have any better ideas, so they decided to take up Deming’s challenge.

【注意；Usa為日本村鎮名，可以用來表示「Usa製」（Made in Usa），與「美國製」（Made in USA）混淆。

poohbah or Poohbah ：這是1885年W. S. Gilbert著名的輕歌劇作品The Mikado（英文中表示「日本天皇」a former title of the emperor of Japan used chiefly in the English language.。此劇為想像中之日本皇朝下之故事）中之「（洋洋得意的、身兼數職的）要人、顯貴」。As president, state warden, and security chief, the leader described in Gilbert and Sullivan's “The Mikado” is a poohbah poohbah or Poohbah or Pooh-Bah