Xerox: American Samurai

Gary Jacobson and John Hillkirk, both journalists, wrote this account of Xerox's quality programme and its response to Japanese competition in copiers, published in 1986 while the recovery was underway.

The narrative covers Xerox's position after its patents expired, the entry of Canon, Ricoh and others selling small copiers at prices below Xerox's manufacturing cost, and the loss of most of its market share. It covers the discovery of the competitive gap through benchmarking, which the company conducted partly through its Fuji Xerox joint venture, and the Leadership Through Quality programme that followed under David Kearns, including the training of the entire workforce, the supplier certification programme, the reduction of the supplier base, and the changes to product development.

The book was written from outside with company cooperation and is admiring of the turnaround, which at the time appeared complete. It predates Xerox's subsequent failures, including the inability to commercialise the personal computing work done at its Palo Alto Research Center, the accounting scandal of 2000 and 2001 and the near-bankruptcy that followed. It covers similar ground to David Kearns's own Prophets in the Dark from an outside perspective. The benchmarking and quality material is the durable content.