Deming had started his research on how to improve manufacturing just before WWII, he applied most of his knowledge in the War Effort. After the War he studied what had worked and not worked and came up with the "Deming School of Management". Deming was a Statistician thus kept looking at the statistics and came up with some conclusions that were compatible with US tax policy at that time, but even then US Corporations were noted for rejecting it for Deming had not come up through Management Ranks but as a Statistician.
In the early 1950s Deming made his now famous trip to Japan. He gave his lecture on how Japan could improve its products (Japanese products of the 1950s were know to be crap). Japanese businesses embraced his advice and even named the highest price in Japan for improvements in manufacturing for Deming. Basically Deming told the Japanese that the you output can be no better then your worse input, so don't concentrate at the what you are doing the best at, but look at where your worse input is and concentrate on that point. After a few years at improving those worse inputs your overall quality will go up. The US business community rejected the advice of Deming while Japan embraced it, and now seem to be embracing it again.
Now, the US had a factor that FORCED US Corporations to look at long term (I.e. Five years or longer, what Deming said to look at) and that was the 90% top tax rate AND the 50% disregard on income IF the income was the product of Five years investment (You made an investment that produced a huge profit and that profit was over a period of less then Five years, the IRS received 90% of that profit, but if you held it for FIVE YEARS OR LONGER, the IRS only received 90% of 1/2 of the profit i.e 45% of total income).
The later, the 90% tax rate and 50% long term disregard forced Corporations to look long term, what they did this year did not matter, their investors did not care for the IRS would get 90% of it, but over any five year period such profit would be taxed at half the stated rate).
These two influence help American Industry stay competitive through the 1970s (Even with the huge inflation of the 1970s, US Industry kept on looking long term). Under Reagan the Income Tax was "Reformed" and the overall rate dropped to 35% and the 50% long term disregard was abolished (The rate had since gone up slightly, but not even near the 45% effective tax rate of long term investments prior to the 1960s). This lead to a change in Corporate policy, previous do to the affect of the high tax rate and 50% long term Capital Gain disregard, Corporations planed their operations for maximum long term income i.e. that any income earned by people with large income would be long term Capital Gain. Since Reagan and his reform of the Internal Revenue Code, Corporations have come under increasing pressure from investors for short term gains, most investors do NOT care what will happen in Five Years, the tax rate on their investment is the same. Thus since Reagan Corporations have Stopped looking in terms of Five< Ten or Twenty Years down the road, and looking only at the profits this year, and this policy, driven by Federal Tax Policy, is what is causing US firms to fail. Long term investment in now anything over one year in duration, and no one thinks in terms of Five years, and of you understand industry and its need for long term Capital Investments this short term view is killing them. You can built a new Walmart in Three months, but a New Automobile factory in 3-5 years, thus you see a lot of new Walmarts but almost no new Factories in the US.
We need to change the tax code to return to a High End Tax Rate of 90% subject to a 50 % Long Term Capital Gain set-off, it was good enough for FDR it should be good enough for the US Today.
More on Deming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming