Trade, Toyotas and tactics

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/02/2025 (243 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) was an American well known in some circles for his role in the emergence of Japan as an industrial powerhouse in the last century, and for why you have probably had a Corolla in your driveway at some point.

He helped Japanese industries change how they function. The manifest success yields takeaways for managing trade relations.

One type of change was how product quality is assured. The emphasis moved from reliance on after-the-fact product-testing to methods for building in quality throughout the production process. More on this later.

The other was to the culture of relationships among managers, workers, suppliers and clients to one of trust and collegiality. This replaced tactics such as motivational slogans, pay bonuses or similar incentives, and jingoistic ploys and gimmicks to promote better performance. Profitability and success hinged on the success and agency of each participant rather than on some submitting to others.

Applied to our current trade tangle, collegiality among territorial, provincial and federal leaders is critical to good outcomes. Unfortunately some don’t grasp this. Threats about national unity, for example, are politically self-serving, weaken Canada’s position and empower the U.S. to continue exactly as they are. This is injurious to Canada and so, ultimately, to each province and territory, too.

This is not just a sentiment; building supportive relationships among integrated players — in the context of trade relations, all provinces and territories with the federal government and with international trade partners — contributes to good outcomes for all.

Since this has proven true in the business world, perhaps all of our right-wing leaders, in particular, can put in abeyance their ideologies and temperaments to approach differently — that is, discretely and collegially — the securing of good outcomes for Canada in this fractious era of Canada-U.S .relations. Personal visits, ultimatums and side-deals, for example, are to our collective detriment.

As a foundational principle for seeking good outcomes, this includes being clearly and demonstrably committed to the well-being of the U.S., too, despite it being decidedly unreciprocated at the moment.

The next takeaway draws from industrial process control, noted earlier. Imagine a production process with myriad controllers — knobs, etc. — that can be adjusted to maintain the uniformity (e.g., dimensions, weight, composition) of a product, uniformity being a prerequisite of quality. Imagine also that measurements are taken and interpreted to adjust the knobs to keep the product on spec.

Knowing when and by how much to intervene — e.g., adjust a knob — in the production process is critical to quality. Statistical analyses can be used to determine if variation in a product results from a disturbance that is random and, so, unpredictable.

Importantly, if so, attempting to correct for it by making adjustments (turning the knobs) will result in more variation and poorer quality. (This was and is an important technique by which quality can be built into a product during its creation, as adopted by many industries in Japan at the time as described earlier.)

Canada is currently experiencing a great disturbance from our neighbour. Its behaviours are capricious rather than rational and coherent, and therefore unpredictable. As a result, tactics to placate the disturbance — to adjust a few knobs — are, and will be, futile. Furthermore, they will distract from time and effort better spent, and in further disruption and instability for Canada, particularly when ill-premised (e.g., non-existent northern border crisis).

And with a conscious actor causing the disturbances, our ill-considered reactions also reward and encourage further such behaviour.

Through media obsession and courtesy of some of our political leaders, the disturbance is also enjoying access to the control knobs to great effect and satisfaction. The feedback loop means worse outcomes for Canada arising from grandstanding, indiscrete (in the media) negotiating, and self-serving political posturing.

Laura Rance captured Deming and this key point well in her Feb. 1 Free Press column Canadian food, beverage sector problems need national solution: “Instead of pointing fingers and scurrying around like gophers beneath a hawk’s shadow, it’s time to focus on the things that are within our power to change.”

Ken Clark, retired in Winnipeg, had a brief career foray entailing the application of statistics to industrial process control, and sees correlations of those principles with many aspects of society.