Abstract
During the last few decades, Japanese electrical and electronics companies have been struggling to compete against rivals from emerging countries, such as South Korea and China. As a result, they have lost global market share. However, are Japanese firms really losing their competitiveness? This chapter investigates the following questions: (1) Are Japanese factories maintaining competitiveness today? (2) If so, which are the main characteristics of these competitive organizations? 3) Which aspects are important for Japanese factories to maintain competitiveness in the future? Interviews with eight successful Japanese electrical and electronics companies and a survey of 97 business units were conducted. Our findings show that Japanese electrical and electronics companies are still competitive at the shop floor level, with higher performance than their overseas transplant, except in terms of cost. Some common features of these factories include (1) carrying out sales and promotion activities targeting their own headquarters or other companies in order to find new business opportunities and (2) gathering various functions in one place, ranging from product development and design to production and sales. However, key issues to ensure future competitiveness still need to be addressed, such as personnel development and transmission of skills caused by unbalanced age distribution.
This chapter is based on Fukuzawa (2015a), Fukuzawa and Inamizu (2017), Inamizu and Fukuzawa (2017), and Shintaku et al. (2014).
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Notes
- 1.
A part of this section was originally published in Inamizu and Fukuzawa (2017).
- 2.
Translated from the entry found at http://www.practical-japanese.com (search date 20 February 2017).
- 3.
In selecting items describing workplace openness, we also considered indices related to “organizational weight,” which is said to indicate poor openness (Numagami et al. 2007).
- 4.
A part of this section was originally published in Fukuzawa and Inamizu (2017).
- 5.
In Table 1, we can see an overall positive and significant relationship with A1–A10. However, there does not appear to be a significant correlation among A7 (number of new product introductions), A2 (external defect ratio), and A3 (production cost). Moreover, no significant correlation emerges among A10 (new product proposal and development), A3 (production cost), and A5 (delivery).
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The authors deeply appreciated the cooperation of the Japanese Electrical Electronic and Information Union.
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Fukuzawa, M., Inamizu, N., Shintaku, J., Yokozawa, K., Suzuki, N. (2018). The Nature of Surviving Japanese Factories in the Global Competition: An Empirical Analysis of Electrical and Electronics Factories. In: Fujimoto, T., Ikuine, F. (eds) Industrial Competitiveness and Design Evolution. Evolutionary Economics and Social Complexity Science, vol 12. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-55145-4_7
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