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...

This paper undertakes a practical analysis on the Chinese munitions enterprises' advance to the car production, their formation of the development strategies and the globalization process with foreign-ventured enterprises in order to formulate their mass production system. Along with the end of...

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,...

This paper analyzes the modularization in the world auto industry. The modularization in the industry has been involving 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...

The purpose of this paper is to specify the factors that produce successful R&D in the Japanese chemical industry. A questionnaire survey covering 51 projects in 22 Japanese chemical companies was conducted and various statistical analyses were performed. First, we divided chemical products into...

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...

The subject of this paper is an empirical study about the impact and introduced period of 3D-CAD(three dimensional computer-aided design) on the product development process in the automobile parts industry in Japan. In particular, this study examines how 3D-CAD impacts product design review and...