The chronicle of Eger Tobacco Factory

The chosen company

he could go a long way towards mobilizing those inner resources. The factory management got its hands on some material from a Japanese conference on quality control, and what they read in this document supported their belief that quality management was a prerequisite for the achievement of solid economic results. It was in 1972 when the company introduced the Work With Precision system, and in February of the same year the Work With Precision co-ordination committee came into being. In March investigations were instigated into the causes of the factory’s losses, and by the summer it had been decided to introduce the Work With Precision system into the manufacture of cigarettes on an experimental basis. It was during this time too that something took place in Eger which, although it was all done without fuss and formality, was nevertheless a revolutionary step forward: the factory began to manufacture Golden Smart cigarettes under licence from the Austria Tabakwerke. Some might say so what? What’s so unusual about a tobacco factory launching a new product onto the market? Yet this case was different. The signing of this agreement meant that the Eger factory, its technology and its workforce, had been judged up to standard and chosen for the manufacture of their product by a well known western company. Austrian tourism in Hungary was booming at that period, and prices in Hungary were considerably lower than in Austria, meaning significant competition for the Austrian tobacco industry. At the same time the Austrian industry was undergoing a thorough revamping and modernisation programme worth several billion schillings. This meant that Austria was throwing out as old-fashioned and redundant machines, equipment and tools that still represented real innova-