> Deming helped develop in Japan

Deming’s process was about how to operate a business in a capital-intensive industry when you don’t have a lot of capital (with market-acceptable speed and quality). That you could continue to push it and raise quality as you increased the amount of capital you had was a side-effect, and the various Japanese automakers demonstrated widely different commitments to it.

And I’m sure you know that he started formulating his ideas during the Great Depression and refined them while working on defense manufacturing in the US during WWII.