Another important difference in business cultures is handling difficult or unachievable requirements. Say you send a work order that needs very tight tolerance in a certain set of holes or a high degree of flatness on a particular surface, and while the company can make the part, they cannot quite fulfill that specific requirement. How each culture handles that situation can vary dramatically, especially outside of the West.
For instance, a German manufacturer will generally tell you “no, we cannot achieve that” on the initial proposal and won’t agree to any requirement they aren’t completely confident they can meet. (This can be frustrating as it feels like they aren’t willing to try.)
An American manufacturer will generally be more willing to agree to requirements they might not be able to meet, as they will make an effort to meet them, and inform you early on when their effort fails. (This can be frustrating, as it feels like they’ve surprised you.)
A British manufacturer tends to be somewhere in between, they will initially flag the difficult requirement in an understated way, gradually becoming less understated as the problem grows. So there’s a hint of the German immediate no, and they ramp up to the American “So, it turns out…”.
Where this gets quite dramatically different is when you venture outside of the West.
The Japanese way is to continually promise fulfillment while conspicuously making no progress on it. It can be quite odd to experience - until you realize they’re trying to get you to notice the contradiction, so you can conclude for yourself that the requirement isn’t possible for them, and then reach out and relieve them of the obligation. It has the same function as the American “So, it turns out…”, it’s just obfuscated with politeness. Without awareness of this you can get into some really difficult situations.
The Chinese way is even more wild to Westerners. Their solution for a requirement they can’t fulfill is to produce a small sample of parts that do meet the requirement and give you those first. The idea is that you can use those to show your boss that the requirements have been met.