What Ford lacked, however, was a necessary responsiveness to ever changing consumer demands. His production systems meant that he could not produce variety in his automobiles. By the end of the 1920's, therefore, competitors more oriented toward customer demands (and less towards efficiency) dominated the automobile market, and Ford’s manufacturing strategies were lost. Japanese manufacturers recovering from World War II were next to catch on to Ford’s ideals. In 1950, W. Edwards Deming pitched system- wide quality improvement concepts to Japanese managers. Shigeo Shingo and Taiichi Ohno then exploded these concepts by creating the Toyota.
