1.What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Japanese approach to product development?

The Japanese methodology: Japanese industrial combines are not what they appear to be. They do not develop all of their own product line, nor do they manufacture it. In reality, these huge businesses are more like “Trading companies”. That is, rather than design and manufactures their own goods, they actually coordinate a complex design and manufacturing process that involves thousands of smaller companies. The goods you buy with a famous maker’s name inscribed on the case are seldom the product of that company’s factory – and often not even the product of its own research. Some else designed it, someone else put it together, someone stuck it in a box with the famous maker’s name on it and then shipped it to its distributors. Does this operation sound unnecessarily complex? Obviously, these huge corporations have their own factories and workers. So why don’t they employ their own resources to produce the goods they sell? They do, of course – but only partially. For instance, it would make every little sense for an electronics giant like Matsushita to farm out the design, manufacture and assembly of a refrigerator or microwave oven. These products are ideally suited to mass production in the kind of large, highly automated factories that the giant companies can afford. Their factories produce hundreds of thousands of these units every year. But what about products that companies must continually redesign to compete for public acceptance – like headphone stereos, small compact disc players, or personal computers? Redesigning means retooling a production line. It means sourcing new parts and lots of other things. For a typical product, a company might expect to sell 30,000 units in a few months, retool, sell another 50,000 u nits, redesign some basic components, retool again, see what the competition brings out, retool again and on and on, throughout the life cycle of the entire product line. Although some of the giant makers are now employing the newest flexible manufacturing system (FMS) to allow them more freedom in production, this retooling process is something many big companies want to eliminate. Thus, they farm out much of this business to subcontractors – smaller companies they can depend on. These companies in turn, faced with redesigning and producing a product three or four times a year, will subcontract the design or manufacture of a dozen key components to still smaller companies. How extensive is this sub contracting pyramid? Would you guess a few dozen companies? a few hundred? Think again. One electronics company I know has over 6,000 subcontractors in its industrial group, most of them tiny ships that exist just to fill a few little orders for the companies above them. Welcome to the real world of Japanese manufacturing. 1.What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Japanese approach to product development?

5 months ago - 1 answers