Johnson Electric, a Hong Kong-based company, is a leading supplier of micromotors for windshield wipers, hair dryers, cake mixers, hand tools, office printers and fax machines. Chairman Patrick Wang Shui Chung, a Purdue-educated engineer, brought in U.S. methods to upgrade production workers' skills and rewards. The efficiency of Johnson Electric's system is in contrast to most of China's state-owned factories, which are producing massive supplies of goods, from television sets to refrigerators. That's the bulk production that economists fear will flood world markets, bringing on recession. The factories have to modernize or they might as well close down.
Efficiency is everywhere Their shift in business practices carries other lessons as well.
One is that disinflation is not a matter of single shipments of low-priced garments or semiconductors but results from a continuing process of efficiencies in world industry. The increased productivity inherent in changed ways of working allows the 4 percent average wage increases that most economists predict for '98, without aggravating inflation. Twenty-one states have unemployment rates below 4 percent, which spells labor shortages. Technically skilled employees are in short supply everywhere. That's why Accustaff Inc. and Robert Half International, firms that supply professional temporary help, have grown rapidly.