One hundred years after Eli Whitney's debut with rifles in New Haven and Marc Brunel's debut with blocks in Portsmouth, the Ford Motor Company, at Henry Ford's direction, advanced Ransom Olds' use of assembly lines for the mass production of interchangeable parts through the use of conveyor belts to create a moving assembly line. In a blitz, assembly lines, both moving and stationary, spread the world over, for those companies left behind feared they would perish. Leave it to actor Charlie Chaplin to satirize moving assembly lines in his 1936 film, Modern Times, for their conceivable adverse impact on factory workers. On close examination, moving assembly lines were built on an 18th century quality foundation of "good parts" and "bad parts" and also guided by Frederick Winslow Taylor's Scientific Management practices. Credit Taylor with advancing the practice of "division of labor," which continues in the 21st century to separate workers, rather than unite them, using a theory of management that closely resembled the theory of interchangeable parts. Credit Deming with introducing the Japanese economy to a theory of management that challenged the divisionism of Taylorism as well as the divisionism of managing parts and not the interactions between the parts.
 

W. Edwards Deming's impact on Japan began before his first visits in 1947 and 1950, when Japanese business leaders learned of his role in introducing statistical process control techniques to the US war industry during World War 2. His extensive series of summer lectures in 1950 followed an invitation from the Supreme Allied Commander of post-war Japan, General Douglas MacArthur, to share his quality management expertise with statisticians, engineers and senior managers. He was honest in stating that his systemic solutions were not "quick fixes" and that "it will not happen at once," but also suggested that results could be achieved within a few years.