(^484) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
to profits.^18 For them, this Japanese ascent was lèse-majesté on a
global scale.
How did the Japanese do it? First, they made a virtue of
handicaps. Since their home market was too small for the long runs
that justified the mass-production methods of the American industry,
the Japanese diversified their product, catering to special needs and
tastes and switching models as demand dictated. To this end, they
learned to design and test faster: 46 months in Japan vs. 60 in the
United States (1.7 million man-hours vs. 3.1 million) to craft a new
model; 1.4 months vs. 11 to return to normal quality after
introduction of the new model.^19 The latter comparison is crucial.
Haste makes waste, quality is decisive, and the annals of American
car production are dotted with instances of quick savings swallowed
by long repairs.
These quick-change techniques made it possible for Japan to gain
first-mover advantage; to copy quickly the successes of other
makers; to drop mistakes in a hurry. Here was the flexible production
that some have put forward as the technology of the future.^20 It was
not a shift to small scale ("small is beautiful") as some have thought;
on the contrary, big firms had the resources to do it better and pay
the costs of variation. But it was a major change from "any color, so
long as it's black."^21
Variety required a suitably versatile technology. After the war, the
Japanese needed new equipment, and this gave them the
opportunity to imagine and combine ingenious tools and
machines—most of them, ironically, made to order in the United
States. It also opened the way to the latest devices—automation,
robotics, computerization. The key change took the Japanese from
single-purpose to multipurpose machines, which required a
workforce trained to deal with a range of jobs, shifting quickly from
one to the other. The Japanese did this by adapting the equipment
and learning the drill, so that by the 1970s, for example, they could
change dies in stamping presses in five minutes, compared with eight
- Cf. Lee Iacocca, then chairman of Chrysler, on the $7-per-car economy on rust-
proofing the Aspen, followed by $100 million in repairs and an even costiier loss of
consumer confidence—Holusha, "Detroit's Push," p. D-8.
î March 1983: "Japanese auto makers introduced three cars this spring that make De-
troit's newest models seem dated already." Nag and Simison, "With Three New Cars,"
on the prospective impact of the Toyota Camry, the Honda Prelude, and the Mazda