There is little question, however, that the American industry has learned valuable lessons from its day-to-day contact with Japanese manufacturing managers.

Five or six years ago, Ms. Lyons was in a class at G.E. with another woman, a manufacturing manager, and recalled a discussion they had.

He became a division sales manager and subsequently a manufacturing manager.

Mr. Rodgers sent out 240 resumes, and by the fall of 1994 he had a job as a manufacturing manager at a smaller company.

The success of Japanese products has convinced most American manufacturing managers that the just-in-time system works and they are laboring to trim their inventories.

His father retired as a manufacturing manager for the Raytheon Company, which makes missiles, electronics and other military equipment in Lexington.

Taylor was an American manufacturing manager, mechanical engineer, and then a management consultant in his later years.

"When the meter's running on a film or television project, people get understandably impatient," said John A. McQuade, the company's manufacturing manager.

She then spent eight years working as a manufacturing manager for Procter & Gamble making disposable diapers and toilet tissue.

Schindler watched him vanish into a crowd of the syndicate's manufacturing managers.