Competitiveness of Japanese Electric and Electronics Factories

Abstract

This study employs data collected from a questionnaire survey of 97 business operations (factories) in Japan's electric and electronics industry to measure gemba-level and market-level competitiveness based on the framework of Fujimoto (2003). In addition, the employment situations within these sites were surveyed. The results of these surveys revealed that, as strengths of the electric industry gemba in Japan, 1) these gemba are superior in all metrics of competitiveness except for manufacturing cost, relative to overseas sites in the same companies; and 2) the high level of responsiveness to customers is the major source of market-level competitiveness. Nevertheless, the primary issue faced by these gemba is the skewed age composition of the full-time employees. There are few workers to carry forward necessary skills into future, and the labor costs of the veteran workers are increasing. Japan's manufacturing gemba must develop manufacturing competencies and improve design and development capabilities, in addition to nurturing younger personnel, to gain and sustain competitive advantage.

Knowledge-Intensive Mother Factory

“…Unlike their Western counterparts, Japanese multinational corporations have concentrated their resources and responsibility at their home base (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1989;Kim, 2015;Oki, 2013). For example, Japanese companies' home bases have strong capabilities compared with that of their foreign factories (Fukuzawa, 2015). Because Japanese companies' home bases are superior, they have supported their foreign subsidiaries by transferring their knowhow to the foreign subsidiaries (Mukai, 2015;Oki, 2012b).…”

The History of a Mother Factory

“…Japanese companies tend to concentrate authority, resources, and competencies at their corporate headquarters (Kim, 2013(Kim, , 2015Mukai, 2015;Oki, 2013). Particularly, with regard to production, because domestic factories are usually superior to overseas factories (Fukuzawa, 2015), Japanese companies tend to transfer their superior domestic production system to overseas factories (Oki, 2012). Thus, Japanese academic research has tended to focus on the function to support for "weak" overseas factories and has called the units that provide such support "mother factories.…”

Mother Factory vs. Model Factory

“…How those systems are transferred overseas is broadly discussed (Abo, Itagaki, Kamiyama, Kawamura, & Kumon, 1991;Liker, Fruin, & Adler, 1999;Yamaguchi, 2006). The Japanese production system has been researched for its high performance and productivity (Fukuzawa, 2015;Mukai, 2015), and the mother factory system has been used to transfer production systems overseas (Nakayama, 2003;Oki, 2011Oki, , 2015Oki, , 2016Yamaguchi, 2006). Nakayama (2003) defines the mother factory system (or mother plant system) as a technical support method.…”