Knowledge is a source of firm's competitiveness and is created, diffused, and standardized within a company's knowledge network. The knowledge network of Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan comprises multiple automotive plants, the Operation Management Consulting Division (OMCD), and the Global Production Center (GPC) as nodes on that network. Knowledge is created on a manufacturing plant floor and diffused between multiple automotive plants through a direct interacting network without standardization. The OMCD diffuses both standardized and unstandardized knowledge. The GPC's important function is knowledge standardization. In conclusion, Toyota's domestic knowledge network maintains a balance between the diversification and standardization of knowledge created on the production floor through a mix of nodes at various standardization levels.
The production systems of Japanese companies are considered to be firm-specific advantages, which lead to superior productivity. The mother factory system, exemplified by Toyota Motor Corporation, has been used as a primary method for transferring Japanese production systems overseas. However in recent years, some companies, such as Hyundai Motor Company of Korea, have begun using a different way to transfer production methods overseas. This paper terms this method the "model factory system" and compares it with the mother factory system within the framework of knowledge transfer theory. In this framework, production systems are regarded as knowledge held by the home country. In this analytical framework, members, tools, and manuals represent knowledge that is directly moved; skills, organizations, and layouts represent knowledge that can be reproduced by the recipient. This framework was used to analyze cases of production system transfer overseas by Toyota Motor a) Manufacturing Management Research Center, Graduate School of Economics, the University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan, ruiberd@gmail.com A version of this paper was presented at the ABAS Conference 2016 Summer (Suh, 2016). © 2016 Youngkyo Suh. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 252Corporation and Hyundai Motor Company. It was shown that the mother factory system primarily transfers knowledge from the home country's factories, whereas the model factory system transfers knowledge from the corporate headquarters.
Simultaneously launching new models globally becomes a problem with an increase in global production. Although Toyota Motor Corporation and Hyundai Motor Company have different production systems, they have almost at the same time created organizations with similar functions to solve the problem of simultaneously launching new models globally. These organizations are Toyota's Global Production Center (GPC) and Hyundai's pilot center. Both were new organizations with their own pilot production lines instead of conventional mass production lines. However, Toyota's GPC, which is a part of the mother factory system, plays a complementary role vis-à-vis the company's domestic plants, while at Hyundai's pilot center, which is a part of the model factory system, the pilot center functions independently of the domestic plants. This is how Toyota reduces the burden on its competitive mother factories in Japan, while Hyundai opts to maintain a distance from its domestic factories, which are not a) Faculty of Business Administration, Toyo University, 5-28-20 Hakusan, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan, ruiberd@gmail.com A version of this paper was presented at the ABAS Conference 2017 Winter (Suh, 2017) © 2017 Youngkyo Suh. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This paper is a case study of a professional organization for offering customer solutions (POOCS) at Company A, a global materials supplier. Positioned in the upstream supply chains, Company A has the ability to handle materials, and most of its direct customers are second-and third-tier companies in the supply chain. Company A had difficulty understanding the general direction of the supplier system and industry trends for the very same reasons. However, by creating a POOCS, engineers at Company A were able to understand external information of Chain Captains and Trend Settlers and propose solutions without being distracted by semantic noise. In other words, the POOCS functioned much like the gatekeepers described by Allen (1977), who did not find any relationship between the existence of a gatekeeper and performance; however, in the case of Company A, performance clearly improved with the creation of the POOCS to act as a gatekeeper.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.