My brother taught me playing Cricket; he introduced me to my Football and Basketball club. I played and represented club and division. I achieved some good accolades in athletics. He was the one who abusively told me when I was in class 5th that let us see if you can pass mathematics of class 10th either. And to his surprise I improved so much that I could solve MSc Physics problems when I was in 12th. He was All India Ranked 16th in GATE and had many PhD offers. He plays flute, he is an artist acts in theaters too. Well, why am I writing all this? The reason is – My brother taught me “there is no substitute to hard work”. He is right he has proved it always. And I recalled the lesson when I saw the following on facebook.
One of my friends, Rahul Krishnan, recently said – every professor of operations management seem to be fascinated with Japan or Toyota. To this I said, perhaps 10 to 20 years down the line Japan would be replaced by China.
I started thinking – what is the reason? The reason seems to be – there is no substitute to hard work. Japan did this post World War II, China did in late 70’s to present. In 80’s manufacturing started following Japanese systems, and I think in next few years we will start looking at what does China do differently that it is so economic, so efficient and so competitive?Our professor of Macroeconomics Prof Mankad shared with us how economy changed and Japan became an economic power to reckon with, now it is China. The currency of Japan was undervalued, they became manufacturing super power and export experts. See China, the same is happening now once again – history is repeating itself. Perhaps it will repeat again when we move from TPS to CPS (Chinese Production System) in future. In fact many Japanese companies outsource their work to China. So it is time to learn what China is doing differently.
No doubt Japan is a nation of hardworking people and so is China. And I come back to the lesson – there is no substitute to hard work.
4 Comments
Tarun Kumar Kushwaha · November 11, 2010 at 4:25 am
Even though Praveen there are similarities in the export trends from Japan and China the backstage scene is quite different in both the cases under discussion. Japan excelled because the copied the technologies from West instead of developing new and optimized them in terms of wastages and costs – the process pioneered by Taiichi Uhno for Toyota, using various Quality Systems like Kaizen, TPS etc. The China story is almost the same till copying the technology from West instead of developing new ones, but it suddenly changes tracks when it come to processes of production and work force management. Japanese concentrated more on controlling processes and hence costs, thereby differentiating in terms of quality and costs. Chinese friends on the other hand have exploited labour, as it is dirt cheap available in China. The quality standards are very much evident when somebody tells you that your cellphone or your beloved gadget is not original and is “China ka maal”(Chinese Product) and your heart skips a beat. Chinese production dominates only because the government has supported the manufacturing industry and promoted quantity but not quality.
Hence, Japan has taken a place which no one can snatch in the manufacturing industry. As “Prof Mankad” said even though China is the biggest producer of steel the finest steel comes from Japan.
Pravin · November 11, 2010 at 12:14 pm
You are right Tarun. Still I have my opinion and therefore the following –
1. I, you and perhaps many would agree there are similarities – both copied technology initially
2. What I believe is – you cannot copy to be the leader. Japan did it by manufacturing excellence; China is doing it by something else. There is no single path to success, if China does what Japan did China would remain second only to Japan
3. I recall class of Prof Moradian – there was a song in Hindi movie Shree420 (1955) ‘Mera joota hai Japani’ (My Shoes are Japanese). The reason for this song was – Quality of Japanese products during 50’s and 60s was poor. Now if you see the correlation same was true for China. A Nokia mobile phone or an HP laptop both have many parts (or completely) from China. Product from China are improving in quality over a period of time
4. There has been a thought in my mind for a long time – you cannot cost cut to growth. I will write on that in future that is what we need to see in case of China what the intend to do?
5. Agreed on Govt support yet as I said in point 2 ‘doing things differently’ is what China did, also changing perception will take time China perhaps China is working on quality aspects
7. Lastly, not only Prof Mankad but also Prof Seetharaman said the same thing. While writing the blog I had in mind – The Steel Company Nippon. It is a matter to see how long China competes on quantity and how long quality leadership is maintained by Japan. The mantra remains – whoever wants to come in the foray has to do things differently, one cannot copy to lead.
I want to drive home the point – There is no substitute to … HARD WORK, both the countries prove that, you would also agree to it, wont you!!
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