It is well known that Japanese firms have quality improvement activities. It is important for the study of these activities to analyze the line and staff organization. The overall purpose of this paper is to investigate task sharing and the relationship between the Quality Assurance Department, the Inspection Department, and the shop floors, as well as the authority and responsibilities of supervisors and manual workers. This analysis is based on the examination of “The Toyota Explanatory Report of Quality Control, ” which received the 1965 Deming Prize. Some significant facts discovered in this analysis are as follows: First, most tasks about inspection were transferred from Honsya management to the Honsya plant and the Motomachi plant. This means that the inspection had been clearly divided into inspection tasks and inspection control, and that management transferred most inspection tasks and some inspection control to the factory floors. Secondly, Toyota corp. had changed the line and staff organization so that the technical staff in the plant would become responsible for solving most quality problems. Thirdly, rank and file employees and foremen did not have the authority and responsibility for examining defects and taking action.

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Currently, Japan is about to shift to low level stable economic growth, and the situation surrounding management and labor is in the midst of paradigm shift. More specifically, under increasingly fierce international competition, the labor management dispute has shifted from collective dispute to individual one. Consequently, the reform of the dispute handling system becomes urgent necessity. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has proposed the reform of the system for public discussion. In constructing a new system, it is important to enrich the content not only of the external system, but also of an intra enterprise dispute handling system. It is also important for the two kinds of systems to complement and mutually support each other. As for intra enterprise system, it is especially important to construct a new system with the following features: [1] Promotion of dispute resolution by a person who has both labor's and management's confidence [2] Promotion of informal solution based on the systematic handling [3] Promotion of intra enterprise solution with assistance from the outside of enterprise This paper develops the above mentioned ideas based on an investigation of results of the actual conditions of both inside and outside of the enterprise.

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