All in the above posts is true, and the big difference in the future of industry of those two countries (Japan and France) was the introduction of W. Edwards Deming, a statistical measuring and product quality expert, to some major Japanese industrial heads by General MacArthur as a way of improving Japanese industrial quality and productivity and thereby reduce costs of production and become competitive in the post-war world economy. The rest is history, but it is a terrific story and well worth reading about (if you’re a production quality geek). Stan’s experience with his Renault shows what happens when you ignore product quality as “too costly” to apply to manufacturing.
My old company bought in to the Deming philosophy hook, line and sinker from the CEO down to the janitors and after several years of concerted efforts had not only the best product quality in our industry, but according to Forbes we had the best product quality (and lowest relative product costs) of any industry by the end of the 1990’s. Deming’s Statistical Product Control methods really work and we proved it in the US Computer biz.