
Why Jeff Bezos Is Obsessed With Waste - tortilla
http://gigaom.com/2009/05/09/why-jeff-bezos-is-obsessed-with-waste/
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speek
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen> \- This is one of Toyota's main reasons
for being as good as they are.

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donw
You're referring to one part of TQM -- Kaizen (改善) can be loosely translated
as 'improvement'. The second character (善) is Zen (quite literally), and means
'goodness' or 'virtue', and the first character means 'to change' and 'to
examine'. So, the long translation is that 改善 is the process of improvement
through introspection.

Kind of ironic that TQM was invented in the States, but really didn't take off
until it hit Japan; I think part of this has to do with an engineering culture
rooted on a very earthquake-prone island.

In case anybody is interested, the other parts of TQM (in Japanese) are:

当たり前品質 (atarimae hinshitsu): Obvious quality. The first moment that a customer
sees or touches your product, they should feel like it's a quality good.

完成 (kansei): Completion, perfection. A product should be well-thought out to
address the customer's needs.

魅力的品質 (miryokuteki hinshitsu): Products should have aesthetic quality as well;
for example, a kitchen knife should cut food smoothly and effortlessly, not
just hack it into pieces.

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xiaoma
Nice summary. I've often thought about the Japanese interest in "continual
improvement" as a reason for their success in industries such as car and
electronics manufacturing. The less structured American approach doesn't do so
well there, but does a great job in fast changing fields like software and
biotech.

> _The second character (善) is Zen (quite literally)_

Just a quick word of warning- 善 is pronounced "zen" or "shàn" in Chinese, but
it's not the zen you hear about.

Zen, as in Zen (or chán) Buddhism, meditation or any other "zen" in common
English usage is 禪 (simplified as 禅 after WWII).

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indiejade
Deming's bio is really interesting. To me it seems that Japan is already
something like light years ahead of the US because it embraced this most
logical long-term methodology for societies that rely upon production's means
of consumption.

Deming's Wikipedia bio; there's a lot missing, but it should be improved over
time: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming>

