日批在线视频_内射毛片内射国产夫妻_亚洲三级小视频_在线观看亚洲大片短视频_女性向h片资源在线观看_亚洲最大网

   

Japan fears losing quality edge
(New York Times/chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-09-21 11:48

A recent surge in recalls of the defective products made in Japan has sparked worries among the Japanese that the country is losing its best face -- the craftmanship.  

In radio talks shows, on the front pages of newspapers, in government ministries, and even in the local noodle shops, people would talk about the drop in products quality, the New York times reported.

The sentiment also made TV series like "Project X" one of the most popular TV shows. The show is about a bunch of corporate engineers who invented the hand-held calculators and ink-jet printers that helped turn Japan into an industrial powerhouse.

Many Japanese fears that the country may be losing its edge in product quality, while its neighbors like China and South Korea are catching up.

"Craftsmanship was the best face that Japan had to show the world," said Hideo Ishino, a 44-year-old lathe operator at an auto parts factory in Kawasaki, an industrial city next to Tokyo. "Aren't the Koreans making fun of us now?"

"It took us years to build up this reputation," Kazumasa Mitani, 32, a co-worker, was quoted as saying. "Now we see how fast we can lose it."

In the last two months, Toyota and Sony, the country's two proudest brand names, announced large-scale recalls of defective products. They have created something of a crisis in a country where manufacturing quality is part of the national identity, the New York Times reported.

This week, Sony suffered another blow when Toshiba announced that it was recalling 340,000 Sony-made laptop batteries, after last month's recalls of 5.9 million batteries. And Toyota said Wednesday that it would hire 8,000 more engineers to strengthen quality.

In the Japanese media, Sony's and Toyota’s quality problems have frequently topped coverage of wars in Iraq and Lebanon. And Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the leading economic daily, began a front-page investigative series this month called "Can Japan Protect Quality?"

"Toyota and Sony have been a wake-up call that something is amiss in Japan,"  Takamitsu Sawa, an economics professor at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto was quoted as saying. "Japan seems to have lost something important on the way to becoming a developed country, and many Japanese want to get that back."

Japan's Trade Minister Toshihiro Nikai last month took unusually blunt steps. He sent letters to Sony executives, ordering them to report on quality-control improvements after recalls by Apple and Dell of Sony-made laptop batteries.

Sony promised to comply and diligently sent employees to receive the letters by hand. It was the first time such orders had ever been issued to Sony.

"This is very rare," said Atsuo Hirai, assistant chief at the trade ministry's information product safety section.

Rarer still was the fact that a few weeks earlier, the transport ministry issued similar orders to Toyota. Hiroshi Okuda, the retired chairman of Toyota, called on his countrymen to do more about "the declining competitiveness of Japanese manufacturing."

"Japan lacks a sufficient sense of crisis," he warned last month.

To be sure, Japanese companies continue to dominate production of many high-tech products, from digital cameras and color copiers to solar cells and the delicate optics used to etch circuits onto most of the world’s computer chips. And despite its problems, Toyota still appears on track to become the world's largest carmaker in the next year or two.

"They'll learn from their mistakes," said Yuji Fujimori, an electronics analyst in Tokyo for Goldman Sachs.

And, Sony's problems have not been limited to batteries. The company worked furiously over the summer to resolve problems in production of its PlayStation 3, its widely awaited game console, which is due out in November.

"If asked if Sony's manufacturing ability has declined, at this point today I have to say yes," said Ken Kutaragi, chief executive of Sony's video game division.

Various reasons crop up as possible explanations for declining quality. Universities said that new students are more interested in literature and the liberal arts than engineering. Applicants to engineering programs are down to 8.7 percent of all university applicants this year from 12.3 percent eight years ago, according to the New York Times report.

"In the old days, there were a lot of students who wanted to join the front lines of manufacturing, and really gave it their all," said Chitoshi Miki, an executive vice president in charge of student education at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. "Now, no one even wants to break a sweat."

Others have begun to blame recent American-style management changes, like the end of traditional lifetime job guarantees. Fujitsu, the electronics maker, has backed away from basing salaries on individual performance, saying it hurt employee morale and undermined team work.

Some economists said Asian competitors have been closing in as Japan wrings its hands. Lee Kwang Hoon, an electronics analyst at Hanhwa Securities in Seoul, said that the recall of Sony-made batteries could offer an opportunity for the biggest Korean makers, Samsung and LG, to rival Sony in market share.

"The biggest change may not be that Japan has dropped in quality," said Masaru Kaneko, an economics professor at Keio University in Tokyo, "but that Asia is catching up."

 
 

主站蜘蛛池模板: 可以看av的网址 | 天堂视频免费在线观看 | 激情午夜天 | 久久黄色视屏 | 一本久道久久 | 欧美日韩精品免费观看 | 影音先锋在线视频观看 | 成人毛片在线免费观看 | 午夜在线 | 久久国产99 | 国产一级免费看 | 精品国产99久久久久久 | 欧美精品一级片 | www.亚洲国产 | aa黄色大片 | 成人无遮挡 | 91精品国产综合久久精品图片 | 天天摸日日 | 伊人精品在线观看 | 午夜影院免费 | 日韩一区欧美 | 欧美一级大黄 | 亚洲一区二区精品在线观看 | 成人高清视频免费观看 | 精品一级| 久久一区 | 欧美aaa视频 | 在线观看日韩av | 97超碰中文字幕 | 国产丰满美女做爰 | 国产区在线观看视频 | 黄色片在线免费看 | 欧美另类第一页 | 91天天干| 亚洲精品www久久久久久广东 | 久久久人人人 | 第一色综合 | 欧美国产精品一区 | 69精品久久久久久 | 毛片高清 | 天天色影院 |