I'm going to use car manufacturing/engineering as an example.

A few large American manufacturers such as General Motors created the concept of "manufactured obsolescence" to create products that had a predictable end life. Many didn't want to build products too well, as they felt that would put them out of work. Keep the economy producing and all that... They wanted to build products that would wear out after a given time, causing the consumer to invest in more product. Not all manufacturers in America subscribe to this philosophy, but enough do as to where it's become a problem with quality. The American auto industry suffered greatly in the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's because of this philosophy. Cheap but low quality. Things are changing though as people migrated to foreign products and Detroit took notice. American products are high quality and well engineered to last these days.

German and Japanese manufacturers have a different outlook on things. Many Germans have as a culture, felt the need to build products to the highest possible technical specification. This is good and bad. Good in that they traditionally build incredibly durable products in the aggregate (pre-Chrysler era Mercedes cars), and bad in that some things are incredibly overly complicated (BMW 750il V-12) and become difficult to maintain. We saw this in WW2 when they were rolling out the most amazing equipment, but hard to get parts, specialized tools, and complex repair procedures made them difficult or impossible to maintain in wartime field conditions. Half-tracks with fully independent suspensions, equipment with extremely tight tolerances, tanks, with heavy and oversized parts that were essentially overbuilt and wouldn't operate well in field conditions.

The Japanese as a culture have long felt a moral obligation to provide value and quality. Traditionally this is the way their culture has acted, although global marketing has caused them to loosen up over the years. Longevity for a value price has been much of their philosophy. Also maintaining face and honor by not tricking or taking advantage of their customers has been a significant factor in the way they do business. As a result, you invest a buck and they expect to give you a fair product for the price. Good quality and value for your money. They were less engineering focused and more focused on uniformity in production and high speed manufacturing through efficiency. That has changed with the electronic age and they now dominate the market with high quality engineering controls and products. Lexus, Infiniti, Acura, etc.

This is a rather simplistic explanation of a topic that is affected by many factors, but this is the cultural perspective.

Source: Engineering and Anthropology degrees