Shorter development lead times, other things being equal, contribute to competitive advantages in many of today's industries where market needs and available technologies are difficult to predict, rapidly changing or diversified and where novelty is highly valued in the market. In this paper, we...

This paper analyzes the modularization in the world auto industry. The modularization in the industry has involved architectural changes in product, production, and supplier systems with each region (Japan, Europe and the U.S.A.) emphasizing different purposes and aspects. As an attempt to...

The subject of this study focus on the car industry which is becoming an important element for the development of Chinese economy. The realistic comparison is conducted on their various adaptation behaviors to environmental change & management resource, the way of changing former organization...

This paper explores basic concepts of architectural strategy, or application of the concept of product-process architecture to strategic management and industrial policy-making, as well as the issue of measuring architecture. First, the paper discusses definitions and types of product...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the adaptation of the lean production system in China. In a large context of worldwide Japanization, the Chinese firms paid more attention to and introduction the Toyota production system earlier than American and European firms. First Automotive...

This paper describes the recent developments of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Australia(TMCA), re-interpreting its pattern of competitive activities as an emergent global strategy. By emergent global strategy the author means a pattern of strategic activities that does not necessarily follow a...

This Paper is a preliminary note on an empirical analysis that compares different interpretations and implementations of so called "lean production system", by different automobile manufacturers in the world. The paper tries to explain why significant inter-firm differences in manufacturing...

A product development project can be regarded as a bundle of problem-solving cycles by which an organization tries to construct a "cause map" for a future value-creation (i.e., production-consumption) process. Effective patterns of product development, in this context, means a set of...

This paper explores emerging trends in product development in some Japanese auto makers. After briefly summarizing the recent history of capability-building in automobile product development in the 1990s(e.g., the Western catch-up, fat design problem, design simplification, platform strategy,...

Shorter development lead times, other things being equal, contribute to competitive advantages in many of today's industries where market needs and available technologies are difficult to predict, rapidly changing or diversified, where novelty is highly valued in the market, and where...