The competitive advantage of Japanese industry

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Our research subject is the competitive advantage of Japanese industry.We selected electronics industry as a main target for examining this subject. Reasons are as follows ; This industry displayed strong competitiveness until the former half of 1980's. However many data are showing that the international competitiveness has decreased during 1990's.On the other side, North American electronics industry dramatically recovered its competitiveness from the latter half of 1980's. It created and promoted so-called the day of Modularity and horizontal division of work among electronics firms. This means that specific module-components and parts are competitively developed and manufactured by each firms, if the explicit and comprehensive design rule is created and observed.As a result, product innovation by each was accelerated. Its typical product is MPU of Intel.Moreover, so-called EMS(Electronics Manufacturing system) have realized mass production and cost reduction by subcontracting the m … More anufacturing function of many electronics firms.In Korea, heavy investments have been achieved strategically and rapid progress of technology are realized by Zaibatsu firms. And in Taiwan, flexible integration between product design house and so-called foundry firms have showed its unique competitiveness.Japanese big electronics manufacturer had a tendency to neglect the competitive strength in American, Korean and Taiwanese electronics industry during 1980's. They focused their strategic target on other Japanese competitor's behavior. And they inclined to build nearly same business model of the full line of product and vertically integrated structure. This is inconsistent with the direction of modularity. And it was difficult to decide priority investment to the strategic field.Moreover, most of them have a tendency to lack effective communication and coordination between multiple functions such as product development, design, manufacturing and marketing.In the international perspectives, Japanese headquarters are inclined to transfer parent's established strengths to the oversea's subsidiaries straightly and build the mini・structure.Therefore they are insensitive to the strategically meaningfull message from the oversea's subsidiaries.The above mentioned problems in Japanese electronics industry are nearly same in Japanese manufacturing industries as a whole nowadays.Finally we are trying to find the directions to overcome such difficulties. Less