Nissan Motor Company was one of the major Japanese automakers that adopted Deming's quality methods through juse-union-of-japanese-scientists-and-engineers during the postwar quality revolution. Nissan won the Deming Application Prize in 1960 — five years before toyota-motor-corporation received it in 1965 — making it one of the earlier major companies to demonstrate comprehensive implementation of statistical quality control methods. The founding-of-the-deming-prize in 1951 by JUSE, named in Deming's honor, created a competitive framework that drove Japanese companies to adopt and institutionalize the quality methods Deming had taught.
Nissan's quality transformation was part of the broader japan-and-the-quality-revolution-1947-1960s. The company applied statistical-process-control-and-variation-theory to its manufacturing processes, adopted the pdsa-cycle-plan-do-study-act for continuous improvement, and embraced the principle of management-responsibility-for-quality — that quality is a system property that management must own. Nissan's success in the Deming Prize competition reflected genuine organizational transformation, not just statistical technique: the prize evaluation examined management philosophy, organizational structure, quality assurance systems, and results.
By the 1970s and 1980s, Nissan and Toyota were among the Japanese automakers whose quality and reliability were devastating American competitors. The quality gap between Japanese and American cars was not marginal but dramatic — Japanese vehicles had fewer defects, lasted longer, and cost less to manufacture. This competitive crisis was what drove the nbc-documentary-if-japan-can-why-can-t-we and ultimately brought Deming to the attention of ford-motor-company and American industry. Nissan's role in this story is as one of the companies that proved the chain-reaction-diagram at scale: quality improvement led to lower costs, higher productivity, market capture, and sustained business growth — exactly as Deming had taught Japanese executives in 1950.