I work at Toyota, and they credit him on day one of training on the Toyota philosophy. Toyota's success is just a function of them listening to western consultants after the war when western companies would not.
There are also some broader macroeconomic reasons that these philosophies took root in post-war Japan. The combination of a weakened currency and strong New Deal style labor laws (that were proposed but thwarted by Detroit) was unique. Labor was cheap but politically dominant and materials were in short supply (I believe Shoichiro took power in the wake of a nearly catastrophic strike that gave him very few options beyond innovating on process).
Or maybe it is the result of filling hollow, generic advice with some meaning. I'd really love to hear the original advice given by western consultants.
Deming had some genuinely counterintuitive stuff to say. The focus on reducing variance was obvious in retrospect, once you do the math, but important at the time.
