where exactly does japan's culture of kaizen come from?
>>18511710Likely the result of Japanese work culture if we're being honest that demands salarymen work in different cities which necessitates more train autism before they finally decide to jump in front of one
Constant improvement has always been one of their ways.
>>18511710Geography is destinyJapan is a narrow strip of mountanious terrain that made it difficult for empires to conquer the island, its position off the coast of asia put it in a similar role to the UK in European trade
>>18511710This is one of those terms onto which the Anglosphere has attached more meaning than actually exists natively. The wikipedia article for kaizen in Japanese is actually extremely small. The idea of this as a philosophy or as a culture seems like an invention by non-Japanese to describe something they see in Japan.But what do they see? Small improvements to increase efficiency? Every business does that. One of the examples cited for kaizen is JIT manufacturing but this has its precursors in early 20th century American industry. So I'm not sure the definition of kaizen is actually well founded.
>>18511773i should have clarified - i'm not talking about kaizen in the business sense, i'm talking about it in every day life in general
>>18511773>Every business does thatlol, confirmed for never having worked a day in your life
>>18511710>he says posting a train designed by a german
>>18511966japan's train network is an order of magnitude more efficient than germany's
>>18511966Japan created shinkansen
>>18511966How come German trains are never on time?
>>18512949Germany does the same bullshit the US does and makes bullet trains share tracks with cargo trains and regional transport + Germany is federalized to a fault and every little bumpkin village thinks they deserve their own dedicated stop, so all the bullet trains are constantly deaccelerating to stop by in every fucking "Wer?" Dorf
>>18514498Switzerland is also highly federalized and doesn't have this problem
>>18511710I could actually talk about this at length. After WW2, Japanese infrastructure and manufacturing capability was practically nonexistent from the firebombing campaigns. The US and its allies sent experts over to help Japan rebuild. Among them was a man named W. Edwards Deming who is a legend in the business world, particularly in continuous improvement fields. He gathered managers and leaders from many of Japan's industries and taught them management principles that they should incorporate. Among them was a man named Taiichi Ohno who worked for Toyota, he took many of Deming's principles, expanded on them, and set them into clear, repeatable systems that eventually became known as TPS, the Toyota Production System. TPS focused heavily on eliminating waste, reducing variation, empowering line workers to stop defects at the source, and building processes that continuously refined themselves over time instead of relying on heroic effort. What made it so powerful was that it was systemic rather than motivational. Toyota built an organizational culture where improvement was expected at every level every day. Eventually American manufacturers realized Japan was outperforming them in quality, cost control, and reliability, so companies in the West started studying Toyota intensely. That is where concepts like Lean manufacturing, Six Sigma integration, Kanban systems, Just-In-Time logistics, and modern continuous improvement culture largely entered mainstream business practice.To this day, Japanese Manufacturers give put the Deming Prize to industry leaders in continuous improvement, which if you know anything about Japan should be shocking for such an honor to be named after an American.TL;DR an American Statistician is to thank for Japan's culture of continuous Improvement and its economic recovery Post WW2
>>18514505Switzerland is the size of my backyard, genius.
>>18514513to think an american is the reason why japan became so advanced, but america cannot adapt his principles
>>18514533>but america cannot adapt his principlesNo joke. He lamented this a lot. For the remaining 30ish years of his life he worked as a consultant and an instructor in these principles and would get requests from American companies to come and make them lean and he would basically be like, "You don't have the mindset to make these changes last, I can't help you." In a way, Japan having to build everything from the ground up was a massive blessing because there was no established industry culture to fight against, or at least it was young enough that changing it didn't mean fighting with 25yr old-guard employees resistant to everything.This shit is my bread and butter and I love doing continuous improvement, but genuinely the resistance you face from retards and cowards who don't get it or don't want to change is the worst part.
