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

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Competitive Advantage: USA vs. Japan

Typical strategies used by U.S. and Japanese companies

Strategy

Sources of Competitive Advantage

Creator

Innopreneur

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

Systems Thinking vs. English Thinking

Language as a Competitive Advantage

G7 vs. BRICS

"There is a saying in the United States that the customer is the king. But in Japan the customer is the God."
~ Tak Kimoto

Did Japanese politicians outsmart American ones?

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 → Total quality management, 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

Tweet

→ Innovation distinguishes between

a → leader and a follower.

Steve Jobs

Apple

A person who can → create ideas worthy of note is a person who has

learned much from others.

Konosuke Matsushita

Panasonic

You don't have to be a genius or a college graduate to be → successful. You just need a framework and a dream.

Michael Dell

Dell Inc.

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done.

Henry Ford

Ford Moror

Carefully watch how people live, get an intuitive sense as to what they might want and then go with it.

Akio Morita

Sony

Mark Zuckerberg business advice quotes Facebook

I know it sounds corny,

but I’d love to improve people’s lives, especially socially.

Mark Zuckerberg

→ Facebook

Since I was a child, my dream has been to compete in motor vehicle races with a vehicle of my own making, and to win.

Soichiro Honda

Honda

Vision without → action is a daydream.
Action without vision is a nightmare.

Japanese

proverb

If we wonder often,
the gift of → knowledge will come.

American Indian

proverb

Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening,
no doubt, no awakening.

Zen

proverb

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.

Kaizen and Radical Innovation

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

Suggestion Systems: American-style vs. Japanese-style

The American-style suggestion system stresses the suggestion's economic benefits and provides economic incentives.

The Japanese-style suggestion system stresses the morale boosting benefits of positive employee participation... More

* - 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

Cultural Intelligence

Differences between TQM Practices in Japan and the West

Okinawian Healthy Lifestyle

Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Sources of Sustainable Competitive Advantage

3 Main Sources of Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Kaizen vs. Radical Innovation

Kaizen

→ Kaizen: 5 Principles

Kaizen Implementation in Japan and the West

Kaizen Culture

3 Pillars ● → 8 Key Elements