Competitive Advantage: Manufacturing Strategies Used by US and Japanese Companies (free Business e-Coach)

Competitive Advantage: USA versus Japan

Manufacturing Strategies Used by U.S. and Japanese Companies

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Comparative Strengths & Advantages:

United States – where markets and technologies undergo constant and rapid changes
Japan – where technologies are relatively stable and making incremental improvements is the basis for advantage

Goals	Strategies
	U.S. Companies Venturing unlimited	Motto: "It's not the big that eat the small... it's the fast that eat the slow."	Japanese Companies Improvement unlimited	Motto: "O snail, climb Mount Fuji with no hurry."
The Core Advantage	Venture strategies		Continuous improvement
Making Things Better	Revolution: radical Innovation, changing the name of the game Technology-focused solutions to enhance product design and manufacturability Quality management: statistical control of processes, zero-defects, and vendor quality programs		Evolution: Kaizen, group technology, good condition and proper placement of equipment, smaller manufacturing units, and quality circles Kaizen (continuous improvement) culture Statistical control of processes, zero-defects, and vendor quality programs
Making Things Cheaper	Job enlargement programs Outsourcing Automation and robotics		Value analysis Standardizing products Lean manufacturing, just-in-time manufacturing Reducing lead and cycle times
Making Things Faster	Reducing bureaucracy Institutionalizing innovation Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) Innovation-adept culture		Continuous reduction of lead and setup times Equipment maintenance Supervisory training Broadening of worker's jobs
Being More Agile*	Fast company Opportunity-driven business development Enterprise-wide business process management (EBPM) Cross-functional communication improvements		Considering agility as an integral part of quality and delivery capability; a by-product of action programs to improve these areas
New Product Development	Moving ideas sequentially (vertically) through functional areas. Establishment of cross-functional innovation teams by leading companies.		Development by cross-functional product development teams; integration of all ideas in the early design stages, thus reducing time and cost, and optimizing the overall manufacturing process

* – the ability to introduce faster new products and designs and respond quickly to changing customer demands; the area in which Japanese companies maintain the largest competitive lead over US and European firms

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Continuous Improvement (Kaizen) Culture in Japan and in the West

Kaizen is a Japanese workplace philosophy which focuses on making continuous small improvements. Kaizen is constant. It is not a problem based approach.

Workers come up with new ideas and submit them all the time, and quality circles meet frequently. Any hiccup on the factory floor results in the meeting of a quality circle to talk about the issue and discuss changes to implement. As a result, Japanese companies are continuously becoming more efficient and streamlined, allowing them to effectively compete with other companies which also integrate the Kaizen philosophy into their daily practice.

Many well known Japanese companies such as Toyota and Canon use Kaizen, with a group approach which includes everyone from CEOs to janitors on the factory floor. This group approach has been adopted successfully in other regions of the world as well, but Japanese workers have refined it to an art form. It is Kaizen mindset and process-oriented thinking, as opposed to the result-oriented thinking favored by most Western firms, that has enabled Japanese industry to attain its competitive edge in the world markets... More