Japanese steel manufacturing technology — Tom's 1985 Navy-funded visit

Tom's 1985 sabbatical in Japan; U.S. Navy sent him to learn Japanese steel for better ship construction. Discovery: Japanese were using 1950s/1960s American technology that U.S. firms had never commercialized.

Labor rates are still an important part of some of that stuff. But really, the developing countries — steel is such a fundamental material, if they're going to grow big — they look at the example of Japan. Japan had no steelmaking left at the end of World War II, we had bombed it all out. But the country helped build the steel companies again, and they had better steel technology than the United States by 1985. When I took my sabbatical over in Japan in 1985 to learn about Japanese steel technology, the U.S. Navy sent me over there because they wanted to build better ships. I visited steel plants to see how they were doing it. All they were doing was using the technology that had been developed at some of the American steel companies in the 1950s and 1960s but never got commercialized, because those companies didn't have the foresight. That's another story, about the management. But that's in some of the other lectures.

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