In 1985, Zhang Ruimin, head of the factory that later became Haier, found that 76 of the more than 400 refrigerators in the warehouse had quality defects. He ordered them smashed. He took up the hammer himself and struck the first blow, and the workers who had made the faulty units smashed the rest.
“If I allow these 76 refrigerators to be sold,” he told them, “it is the same as allowing you to produce 760 more like them tomorrow.” The hammer was later taken into the National Museum of China.