The Soviet MSX Story Part 4: The Pride of Revived Engineers
My father's company was responsible for factories in the Soviet Union at the following five locations:
Baku (Sumgait), Azerbaijan
Mazeikiai, Lithuania
Kharkiv, Ukraine
Krasnoyarsk & Yekaterinburg, Russia
My father received reports from these five locations every month in Tokyo. He was involved from the start of the factory setup by staying on-site for long periods at the Baku factory in Azerbaijan, but if the Baku factory's performance was poor, my father would lose face completely. As I introduced last time, there was this background to why my father went to great lengths to gift MSX computers to the Soviet engineers.
The factory's report card is its quality control data. I mentioned last time that this compilation was done on a PC-8801mkII, but only one unit was allocated to each factory.
Since the monthly production volume was in the tens of thousands, more than half was done on typewriters, and it was not rare for everything to be handwritten when the PC-88 broke down. However, the reports from Baku were perfect, all output from the PC-88.
This radio is a product from a military radio manufacturer in Dnipro, Ukraine.
At first, my father suspected, "Those guys are cheating." In the first place, from the Soviet side's position, they were putting the most effort into maintaining the main Russian factories. On the other hand, the de facto satellite states—or to put it bluntly, the backwater of Azerbaijan—were left entirely to the local government. Although, one could say that thanks to that, a foreigner like my father was given decision-making authority...
Also, the Soviet Union traditionally practiced a planned economy, but because it did not match reality at all, numerical falsification was endless. Furthermore, 1985 was the final year of the 11th Five-Year Plan (1981–1985), and significant falsification was being carried out in various places to make the final adjustments. It seems inspection fraud was not a specialty exclusive to our country.
My father, who had a strict personality, was angry and immediately went on an unannounced business trip to Baku. It was what you call a surprise inspection. With the experience of a long relationship since his first visit to the Soviet Union in 1969, my father had never trusted the negligent Soviets until then. However, the shocking sight my father saw on-site was...
Soviet engineers proudly operating quality control software they had created themselves using MSX assembler. Since they were doing what other factories were doing with one PC-88 by adding the six MSX units my father donated, it was only natural that efficiency would increase. Improving quality control is directly linked to product quality. My father, who was an inspection engineer, discovered the pride and enthusiasm of the Soviet engineers.
In extreme terms, quality control data is data about defective products. By scrutinizing which process produced how many defective products and the causes, the quality of the entire factory is improved...
My father took pride in the fact that there was blood, sweat, and tears behind the reason why Japanese industrial products had extremely few failures and maintained high quality.
However, from the Soviet side's perspective, whether there were defective products or not, making the planned economy's numbers add up was far more important. My father, who had been involved in local operations as a quality control expert for over 10 years, said he was beyond angry and completely exasperated with the Soviet engineers who would not improve at all.
However, the efforts of the members of the Soviet MSX team at the Baku factory were remarkable. Accurate and rapid quality control data was immediately fed back to the production floor, and the factory's production capacity improved day by day.
Of the five factories handled by Nippon Denki Seiki, the Baku factory, which had always been at the bottom in performance, stood at the top in production numbers at the end of 1985. And they held onto that position until 1991, when the business partnership ended.
1985 was also the year the Gorbachev administration was born, and it is said that they were even awarded as a "model excellent factory" when the Perestroika policy was fully implemented starting in 1988.
As a token of gratitude, my father gifted them Western brandy, which was precious in the Soviet Union.
By knowing the joy of seeing their own efforts take shape, my father recalls that "they regained the pride of engineers."
"We are doing work that is second to none compared to any factory in the Soviet Union!"
Their passion, having analyzed the MSX from a situation with no manuals or anything and created their own quality control software, knew no bounds. The morale of the Soviet MSX team rose, and they were bound by strong unity.
However, on the other hand, as a cruel reality of Soviet communism, "even if you work hard and get results, your wages do not increase" was the case. Meanwhile, my father raised his evaluation within the company and was promoted to section manager.
"I'm sorry, only me..."
When my father apologized to the members of the Soviet MSX team at his promotion celebration,
"Actually, comrade, I have a request..."
What on earth was the earnest wish of the Soviet MSX team?
The title photo is the Revolution Day in Sumgait, Azerbaijan, Soviet Union, where the story took place. You can see a Lenin statue.
