2008年7月27日 星期日

poohbah or Poohbah or Pooh-Bah

The pursuit of quality, Deming said, was the key to higher productivity, bigger profits, more jobs, and therefore a richer society. Quality, he lectured, did not begin by finding defects at the end of the production line. It had to be pursued along every link of the supply chain, with the active cooperation of everyone from suppliers to the humblest worker on the factory floor. If Japanese companies followed his 14 points, Deming promised his dinner companions and other managers in a series of lectures that summer, their goods would be world-class in five years. The notion seemed ridiculous. At the time, the term "Made in Japan" was such a joke that some factory owners set up operations in the village of Usa so that they could mark their products "Made in USA." But Japan’s poohbahs didn’t have any better ideas, so they decided to take up Deming’s challenge.

【注意;Usa為日本村鎮名,可以用來表示「Usa製」(Made in Usa),與「美國製」(Made in USA)混淆。

poohbah or Poohbah :這是1885年W. S. Gilbert著名的輕歌劇作品The Mikado(英文中表示「日本天皇」a former title of the emperor of Japan used chiefly in the English language.。此劇為想像中之日本皇朝下之故事)中之「(洋洋得意的、身兼數職的)要人、顯貴」。

As president, state warden, and security chief, the leader described in Gilbert and Sullivan's “The Mikado” is a poohbah


Pooh-Bah

('') pronunciationor pooh-bah n.
  1. A pompous ostentatious official, especially one who, holding many offices, fulfills none of them.
  2. A person who holds high office.

[After Pooh-Bah, Lord-High-Everything-Else, a character in The Mikado by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan.]





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